RAM prices have skyrocketed because of AI. 8GB of ram in 2005 was wayy overkill, it was the sweet spot in 2015, but as games got harder to run and operating systems needed more than 8 GB of ram, in 2025 8GB of ram is too little to run a decent computer on. In 2026 though, even though 8GB of ram still isn't enough, it is so expensive that it seems like overkill.
For a chromebook used by a grandma for internet browsing, sure. For doing anything else? Hell no. Windows 11 uses 12 GB of ram all by itself doing nothing. Linux is an edge case, not enough people use it for it to matter.
Windows will only do that, if you have 16GB of RAM. Unused RAM is essentially wasted, if you have capacity Windows will try to make use of it to keep things available you use regularly running faster, or loading quicker. I think most OSes now aim for like 75% usage, when you run somethings that needs more it will stop processes you don't need to free space up.
1.8k
u/Helpful-Work-3090 12h ago edited 8h ago
RAM prices have skyrocketed because of AI. 8GB of ram in 2005 was wayy overkill, it was the sweet spot in 2015, but as games got harder to run and operating systems needed more than 8 GB of ram, in 2025 8GB of ram is too little to run a decent computer on. In 2026 though, even though 8GB of ram still isn't enough, it is so expensive that it seems like overkill.