RAM & Gaming – How much RAM do you need for gaming?

This blog was updated in August 2022.

In a gaming PC, RAM might not seem as important as a discrete graphics card or a processor. While that’s true, if you don’t have the right speed or amount of RAM, you won’t be able to game at your system’s highest potential. But what even is RAM, and how much do you need to play the latest triple-A releases without any issues? Whenever RAM is brought up, these are always the most asked questions, so let’s answer them in this guide to RAM and gaming.

What is RAM?

RAM, also known as memory or PC memory, holds onto the data of programs running on your PC. Importantly, RAM is ‘volatile’ or short-term, meaning it’s wiped clean whenever the PC is powered down. Don’t worry, unlike your PC’s storage, anything that’s in RAM is only there temporarily.

This is the most important distinction to make between RAM and, say, a HDD. It’s not that intuitive of a concept to grasp as the term ‘memory’ can lead you to believe RAM is used to store files, documents, and programs. However, that’s the role of your storage, such as hard drives and solid-state drives.

So, what’s even the point of RAM then? Programs are constantly accessing data to run smoothly. Going to and from your storage for this data, however, is far too sluggish and can slow things down.

That’s where RAM comes in. RAM is blisteringly fast, even compared to a PCIe Gen4 SSD. Rather than accessing data from your slow storage, it’s temporarily copied over to your fast RAM so it can be accessed as fast as possible. And when you’re done, the data is saved back to the storage, so nothing’s lost.

Think of RAM as a middleman between your storage and your programs, ensuring that any essential data is served up at a moment’s notice and keeping things running smoothly. Without enough RAM, your programs would have to slowly pull data off your storage which can result in stutters, frames-per-second drops, and even some games outright not booting. Check out our What is RAM blog for more information.

What RAM is best for gaming?

When you’re looking to buy RAM for gaming, there are two main tech-specs to consider: speed and size. Fast RAM can serve up data even quicker, and more RAM means you can have more programs open at once, without things bogging down.

RAM speed, measured in MHz or MT/s (Mega Transfers per second), determines how fast the RAM operates and in-turn how fast your PC is. Ebuyer stocks RAM ranging from 1,600MHz up to 6,000MHz. That’s a broad range, but for gaming, all you need to know is that 3,200MHz RAM is the sweet-spot of price to performance.

If there’s a great deal on 3,600MHz RAM, then go for it. However, you won’t see as much of a performance increases as going from 2,666MHz RAM to 3,2000MHz, for instance. Importantly, due to the way they’re engineered, AMD CPUs are much more sensitive to RAM speed than Intel CPUs. We went into why in our What is an AMD Ryzen Threadripper blog. Slow RAM can absolutely cripple the performance of AMD CPUs, so it’s imperative that you’ve got at least 3,200MHz RAM in an AMD gaming PC.

Apart from MHz, another way RAM can be categorised is by generation, such as DDR4. ‘DDR’ stands for Double Data Rate, while the ‘4’ refers to the generation. Just as there’s DDR4, there was DDR3, DDR2, and DDR1 before it, with DDR5 to gain popularity in late 2022. As you can except, DDR5 is faster than DDR4. While DDR4 RAM maxed out at around 4,000MHz, DDR5 is achieving 6,000MHz right out of the gate and will no doubt get clocked higher as the technology matures.

Categorising RAM like this makes it easier to determine what’s the most recent model, and whether or not it’s compatible with your motherboard. This is important as unlike a lot of other PC hardware, RAM isn’t backwards compatible. You can’t slot DDR5 RAM into a DDR4 motherboard, for instance, as the physical connector on the RAM DIMM and the motherboard’s DIMM slot aren’t the same. As such, you should double-check your motherboard supports the RAM you’re looking at buying.

What’s more, fast RAM speed is technically achieved through overclocking. This is known as XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) on Intel boards and AMD (AMD Memory Profile) on, you guessed it, AMD boards. Don’t worry, enabling XMP or AMP isn’t like manual overclocking. It’s as simple as a couple of clicks in your board’s BIOS. Rather, the issue is that some lower-end boards and CPU don’t support RAM overclocking, leaving RAM that’s capable of super-high clocks running at their slowest speed. If you’re picking up super-fast RAM, make sure you’ve got the hardware to back it up.

How much RAM do you need for gaming?

When it comes to a gaming PC, how much RAM you need largely varies on the games you want to play. So, the simplest way to answer this question is to look at the RAM requirements of a few games. You’ll find these under ‘System Requirements’ on a game’s Steam page, every game must have them. There will be a minimum and a recommended requirement. The minimum amount of RAM might not make for a good experience, but at least it will be ‘playable’. Recommended is what you should really be looking at, however, as it’s the intended amount and will make for a great experience.

  • Dying Light 2: 8GB RAM minimum, 16GB RAM recommended
  • Elden Ring: 12GB RAM minimum, 16GB RAM recommended
  • Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered: 8GB RAM minimum, 16GB RAM recommended
  • Total War: Warhammer 3: 6GB RAM minimum, 8GB RAM recommended
  • Cyberpunk 2077: 8GB RAM minimum, 12GB RAM recommended
  • Red Dead Redemption 2: 12GB RAM minimum, 12GB RAM recommended
  • Forza Horizon 5: 8GB RAM minimum, 16GB RAM recommended

As you can see, 4GB of RAM just doesn’t cut it for a modern system. 8GB of RAM is now considered the new minimum, with 16GB being the recommended. It’ll be a while until 32GB is needed for gaming. For context, 2015’s Dying Light lists 4GB RAM as minimum and 8GB RAM as recommended, demonstrating how RAM requirements are increasing as games get more intricate and complex.

If you’re a gamer who doesn’t regularly play the latest triple-A releases and sticks more closely to esports and free-to-play games, you might be able to get a way with 8GB of RAM. It’s a good target to aim for as it lets you play a range of games. Even triple-A games from time to time, albeit not at the best settings. Apex Legends, a less graphically intensive games, lists 6GB RAM as minimum and 8GB RAM as recommended. And as an battle-royale featuring up to 60 contenders in an expansive map, it’s one of the more demanding F2P games. Older but wildly popular esports games like Counter Strike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 have a minimum requirement as low as 4GB RAM. So, how much RAM you need really comes down to the games themselves.

How much RAM do consoles have?

When deciding how much RAM you need for gaming, a good point of reference to look at is how much RAM the latest consoles have. As the most popular gaming platform, consoles represent the baseline of development. Games are designed around their hardware. If your PC doesn’t at least match the tech-spec of these consoles, then your PC might not hold up in the latest releases.

The two market-leading consoles at present – the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – both have 16GB of RAM. So, if you’re looking to play games exclusive to this generation, it’s not an unwise to get 16GB of RAM in your gaming PC as well. However, you’ve got to remember these are the highest-end consoles, targeting a 4K resolution and a high frame rate to boot. The lower-powered Xbox Series S, which achieves 1080p at 30FPS in most games, is instead equipped with 10GB of RAM. And the last-gen consoles, which remain a popular choice, have just 8GB of RAM.

As you can see, you can go as low as 8GB of RAM for gaming, but it won’t be the most enjoyable experience. There will be compromises, whether that’s to a game’s presentation or performance. Unless you’re on an extremely tight budget, we’d recommend 16GB of RAM for gaming. It’s what the latest consoles have, meaning you’ll be able to ride out the rest of the generation comfortably. If a game is on these consoles, it’s safe to assume the PC version won’t use more than 16GB of RAM.

While we’re at it, let’s look at how much RAM the past few consoles had:

• 16GB – PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X
• 10GB – Xbox Series S
• 8GB – PlayStation 4, Xbox One
• 512MB – Xbox 360
• 256MB – PlayStation 3
• 64MB – OG Xbox
• 32MB – PlayStation 2

This demonstrates how the requirement for RAM has grown over time with each console generation. If things keep progressing at this rate, it’d be safe to say that by the time the PlayStation 6 rolls around, we could be looking at a console generation with a whopping 32GB of RAM.

RAM isn’t like, say, a graphics card. Upgrading it won’t necessarily net you a faster frame rate. Rather, upgrading RAM enables you to play a whole new generation of games. Going from 256MB to 8GB of RAM coincided with the explosion of open-world games, for example. Looking at this list, you simply wouldn’t be able to play games from the PlayStation 4 generation with just 256MB of RAM. Even if your graphics card was fast enough, you would have to upgrade your RAM to play them.

How important is RAM for gaming?

Now that you know how much RAM the latest consoles have, you’re probably wondering if you should match or exceed their RAM with your PC. Well, when it comes to a gaming PC, there’s arguably more important hardware to consider and prioritise over RAM. Although RAM is undoubtedly a core component in any PC, the graphics card and processor have a much larger impact on performance and that all-important frames-per-second metric.

If you’re building your own PC, you don’t have to go all-out on the RAM as it’s one of the easier upgrades you can make later down the road. You could pick up a memory kit of 2 x 8GB DIMMS, or ‘sticks’, of RAM at first, letting you allocate more of your budget to the CPU and GPU. If after a couple months you feel as if you need more RAM, it’s easy to pick up another of the same memory kit and slot it into your motherboard. Check out our guides on how to install RAM.

Anyway, why would you need more than 16GB of RAM for gaming? Perhaps you want to ‘future-proof’ your PC, so it’s ready for any game you throw at it. Or, more likely, you use your PC for more than just gaming. Most gamers don’t have just a game open on their PC and nothing else. In the background, a gamer might have open: a memory-hungry web browser loaded up with tabs and add-ons, a voice-chat client like Discord, live-streaming software like OBS, several utilities to control their rig’s peripherals and lighting, launchers for their favourite games, and more.

When all these things are totalled up, it can eat up a lot of RAM that’s supposed to be reversed for gaming. As such, it might be wise to get more than 16GB of RAM to act as a buffer, so while gaming you never run out of RAM.

Upgrade your RAM at Ebuyer

Whether you decide on 8GB of RAM, 16GB of RAM or more, you can get single sticks and memory kits of PC Memory over at Ebuyer from all the biggest names in PC memory, including Crucial, Kingston, Corsair, and more. In sizes and speeds to suit any budget, you’ll be sure to find RAM that’s perfect for your next PC build.

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