How much RAM do you need for gaming? 16 vs 32 vs 64 GB in 2026

The short answer

Whatever the capacity, buy it as two matching sticks so the memory runs in dual channel, and turn on XMP or EXPO in the BIOS. Speed and channels are a separate question, covered in our guide to whether RAM speed matters for gaming.

8, 16, 32 and 64 GB in four builds

Average FPS / 1% lows in AAA games at High settings, with the bottleneck underneath. The first two builds are limited by the graphics card, the last two by the processor. Click a number to open that build with that much RAM in the calculator.

Three things stand out.

• 32 GB and 64 GB are identical. In every build, doubling from 32 to 64 GB changes nothing, because games at normal settings don't come close to filling 32 GB.
• 16 GB is close to free when the GPU is the limit. The Ryzen 5 5600 + RTX 5060 and the Ryzen 5 7600 + RTX 5070 lose 1% and 0% at 16 GB. The CPU-bound builds lose 4% and 3%, because anything that slows the processor shows up directly in the frame rate when the processor is the limit.
• 8 GB is a stutter problem first. The averages drop by 4–19%, but the 1% lows drop by 17–28%. On the RTX 5070 build at 1440p, the average only falls from 100 to 96 FPS while the 1% lows fall from 78 to 65. You notice that as hitches when you turn a corner or enter a new area. On the budget build, 8 GB also flips the limit from the graphics card to the processor, while 16 GB leaves it GPU-limited.

If you're not sure whether your own PC is CPU- or GPU-bound, our guide on CPU vs GPU bottlenecks explains the difference, and how to check for a bottleneck shows how to measure it.

It depends on what you play

The same Ryzen 5 7600 + RTX 5070 across four kinds of games. Average FPS / 1% lows:

Ray tracing leans so hard on the graphics card that 16 GB costs nothing. Simulators and strategy games are the opposite: the processor is the limit even at 1440p (41% CPU-limited), so 16 GB costs 4% and 8 GB costs 20%. Competitive shooters at 1080p are also CPU-bound at these frame rates, so 16 GB costs them 4% too, and 8 GB drags their 1% lows from 244 down to 175 FPS.

The model gives you the average case. Real games vary more. Big open-world games, city builders and flight simulators can use well over 16 GB on their own, and a few of them are noticeably smoother with 32 GB. Small competitive games run happily in far less.

Background apps count too

Games don't run alone. Windows 11 itself keeps several gigabytes in use, and most gaming PCs also run some of these while you play:

• a web browser with a few tabs open, often the biggest consumer after the game,
• Discord, especially with screen sharing or video,
• game launchers (Steam, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Battle.net), each with its own background process,
• OBS or another recorder if you stream or capture clips,
• RGB, motherboard and peripheral utilities.

Each one is small, but together they're the reason 16 GB feels tighter than it looks on paper. When the total passes your installed memory, Windows moves the least-used data to the page file on your SSD, and the game hitches whenever it needs that data back. That's the 1% low drop in the tables above.

Two ways to check where you stand: open Task Manager (Ctrl + Shift + Esc) while your heaviest game is running and look at Memory on the Performance tab. If "In use" is regularly within a gigabyte or two of your total, you're out of headroom and 32 GB will help. If you have several gigabytes spare, more memory won't change anything. Closing the browser before a long session is the free alternative.

Who actually needs 64 GB?

Not gamers, as a rule. In our model 64 GB gives exactly the same results as 32 GB in every build and game type. You'd buy 64 GB for what you do around the games:

• Heavily modded games. Large mod lists for Skyrim, Fallout or Minecraft, and high-resolution texture packs, can push memory use far past what the base game needs.
• Simulators with big add-on libraries. Flight simulators with detailed scenery and city builders with thousands of custom assets are the games most likely to need more than 32 GB.
• Creators. 4K video editing, 3D rendering, large photo projects and music production with big sample libraries all scale with memory.
• Streaming and recording while you edit, running virtual machines, or running AI models locally.

If none of those apply, spend the difference on the graphics card or the CPU. If you think you might want 64 GB later, buy 2 × 32 GB rather than 4 × 16 GB, because four sticks are harder to run at full speed, especially on DDR5.

Two sticks, kit sizes and prices

Always two sticks

Desktop platforms have two memory channels, and one stick only uses one of them. A single 32 GB stick has the capacity but roughly half the bandwidth of 2 × 16 GB, which costs real performance in CPU-bound games. Buy a matched two-stick kit and put it in the slots your motherboard manual recommends, usually the second and fourth from the CPU. Mixing kits from different packs often means the board falls back to a slower speed.

Sensible kits in 2026

• 2 × 8 GB (16 GB): budget builds only, and only if the price gap to 32 GB is large.
• 2 × 16 GB (32 GB): the default for gaming.
• 2 × 24 GB (48 GB): a DDR5 option between the two, useful for modders and creators.
• 2 × 32 GB (64 GB): for the workloads above.

Prices

Memory prices rose sharply from late 2025, so RAM is a bigger share of a build than it used to be, and the gap between 16 and 32 GB is wider than it was a year earlier. Check current prices before you decide. If 32 GB stretches your budget, a 16 GB dual-channel kit is a reasonable stopgap on a GPU-bound build, and you can add a matching kit later or replace it when prices settle. On a CPU-bound or high-refresh build, 32 GB is worth paying for.

Integrated graphics and APUs

Chips like the Ryzen 7 8700G have no video memory of their own. They reserve a slice of system RAM for graphics, set in the BIOS, and Windows can lend the integrated GPU more when a game needs it. That memory comes out of what the game and Windows can use, so 16 GB on an APU system behaves like noticeably less. Our model treats integrated graphics as having no fixed VRAM budget, and since an 8700G with Radeon 780M is so heavily GPU-bound (about 34 FPS at 1080p Low in AAA games), capacity doesn't change its frame rate there. In practice, 32 GB in dual channel is the safe choice for an APU build, and fast memory matters more than usual.

Macs and unified memory

On Apple Silicon the CPU and GPU share one pool of unified memory, so RAM is also your video memory. macOS lets the GPU use roughly two-thirds of it by default: in our Mac gaming calculator a 16 GB Mac gets about 10.4 GB for graphics, 24 GB about 15.6 GB and 32 GB about 20.8 GB.

That makes capacity matter more on a Mac than on a PC with a graphics card. On a MacBook Air 13″ M4 (10-core GPU), 16 GB leaves it about 1 GB short of graphics memory at 1440p Ultra, and 24 GB clears it (about 14 vs 15 FPS in native AAA games; the small GPU is the main limit either way). You can't upgrade a Mac's memory later, so if you plan to game on one, 24 GB is the safer configuration. Our guide to Mac vs gaming PC covers the rest.

More guides

Check your CPU and GPU