How much RAM do you actually need in 2026?

With turbulent times towards the back end of 2025 and into the new year regarding RAM availability and pricing, the question of "How much do I really need?" is more important than ever. We previously spoke about here, it highlights the common question even more about how much RAM do you actually need in your PC.

Don't want to read the whole article? We get it! Check out the table below for how much RAM we'd recommend for you.

Knowing how much RAM to choose when it comes to your new PC has always been and has always been an important question, behind GPU & CPU choice you could arguably put it in 3rd place. Truth be told, over time we have all been spoilt with decreasing RAM pricing over the years. Since we incorporated in 2009, we've seen a steady trend of RAM getting cheaper, as well as faster with the release of DDR4 and DDR5.

A decent spec and brand 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 kit would have set you back around £40 a year ago, yet when it first came out in 2014 the same RAM would have set you back 5 times the cost. Given all this, we have kind of taken RAM pricing for granted and if you decided on a system with 32GB or more when you didn't really need it, it didn't really affect the bottom line too much and it offered the flexibility of getting stuck in with more demanding tasks down the line should your need more out of your system.

The issue we face now, will affect your bottom line more than what it did 3 to 4 months ago because of how mad RAM pricing has got. 3 or 4 months ago the jump in price to go from 16GB to 32GB was anywhere between £20-£40, its now around £150-£200 and as a result we feel its right to highlight how much you actually need, and our thoughts on the situation.

1 - BREAKING DOWN RAM REQUIREMENTS

Gamers: 16GB to 32GB

This may come as a surprise, but even in 2026, 16GB is still enough for 95% of games. Titles like Fortnite, Roblox, Battlefield 6, COD:BO7, Marvel Rivals, Cyberpunk 2077, ARC Raiders and many more all recommend 16GB. Adding more is going to do virtually nothing for your FPS in these titles. After a quick scan, we can only find STALKER 2 and certain unoptimised simulation games recommending 32GB. Ultimately, understand your games system requirements but we would safely state, 16GB is fine for 95% of gamers.

Office Users: 4GB to 8GB

Both Microsoft Office 365 and Windows 11 recommend just 4GB of RAM. Both Chrome and Firefox browsers also check in at 4GB of RAM. Whilst 4GB is enough and putting our seal of approval for 4GB being enough for the large majority of users, 4GB of RAM new, doesn't really exist so would put that number at and also low bar of 8GB.

Workstation users: 16GB to 128GB+

The RAM recommendation here has always been a little more tricky, the short version is it depends on your use case and what you are actually doing.

• Photo Editing: 16GB is usually plenty for Photoshop, unless you're working with large resolutions.
• Video Editing: 16GB is also sufficient if you're only editing lower resolution video, without any fancy effects. For 4K, 32GB is highly recommended in Premiere Pro. More demanding tasks and plug-ins are of course going to require more than 16 or 32GB
• The High (Ram Usage) Rollers: AI Models, Heavy Transcoding & Machine Learning will all use as much RAM as you throw at it. More RAM means lower productivity times, therefore increased commercial throughput. If that's important to you, then having as much RAM as you can afford makes sense.
• Other Workstation Tasks: Look up what software you use, see what it recommends (or ask us) and try to aim for that amount.

2 - OUR THOUGHTS

Buying a fancy 64GB RGB kit when the games you're playing only need 16GB, is currently like throwing £500 down the drain. Now we'll happily pocket the small margin we make on that £500, but we've always been upfront with what you actually need so we certainly won't recommend it! Because our systems are designed to be upgraded, if you do find yourself needing more, you can easily upgrade down the line using the UKGC Upgrade Service.

With everything mentioned, we have also all been spoilt with historically cheap RAM, depending when it was, that fancy RGB 64GB kit of RAM mentioned above was already once £500 more in cost, it's just come down in price over the years.

Rubbing our crystal ball, unless the AI boom hits a brick wall anytime soon current RAM pricing is the now the new normal, we expect this to continue throughout the entire 2026 and potentially beyond. Buying RAM today is unlikely to be worth half what it was 2 months later so you are not going to get stung, and whilst the rise in cost is disappointing, we have all been used to what we would perceive as RAM being cheap and this is the market correcting itself making RAM cost closer to what it should be.