Some of my friends and online acquaintances tease me about my memory fetish.
Right now, my main production system runs on an Intel Core i7-6700K with 32GB of DDR4 in the form of four 8GB Corsair low profile DDR4 modules. Although I run Photoshop and Audacity pretty often, I don’t do much video editing, and I certainly don’t build software. My work mainly consists of writing technology analysis articles. Oh, and I also use this system for gaming.
So why run 32GB? Wouldn’t 16GB be enough?
No. Here’s why.
You can click on the image to embiggen it. On the left side, you’ll see a Task Manager window showing 14.9GB in use. I’ve got over 65 Chrome tabs open, plus Photoshop, Word, Outlook, and a bunch of file manager windows, sprawling across two displays. I’ve seen memory use go higher, but this looks pretty typical for my daily use.
It’s only going to get worse, of course, as more features are added to Windows, as more 64-bit games emerge, and as I timidly enter the world of video editing. It’s entirely possible that 32GB may not be enough over the long term, but it should suffice for the next year or two.
1 comment
Another use case that demands a lot of ram is software development, and in particular game development. 32GB workstations have been pretty standard in the studios I’ve worked in over the last two years. I am planning on at least 64GB for my home computer rebuild next year.