32GB RAM -- beneficial or just money sinker?

[blueskull]

For the members who run VMs, is there a necessity to go with 32GB RAM rather than 16GB?

I'm talking about casual stuff, not heavy video editing or large FEA simulation.

Windows will be the host, running Altium, Edge (Chrome-based), VS2019 and maybe some FPGA tools, while VM will run Linux, mostly running test code or at most doing some compiling, nothing more than 8GB RAM consumption (which is the worst case, Yocto compiling, requires 12GB RAM or 8GB RAM+swap, tested with iMX6ULL BSP).

For such applications, should I consider 32GB upgrade or stick with 16GB if the price difference is $300 (soldered, not user upgradable)? I plan to keep this computer for at least 2 years, and I expect to score a good price when selling it, so it must still be usable (not essentially blazing fast) in 2022.

Thanks for any advices.

[james_s]

How many VMs? I mean I use VM's on my 8GB laptop, I used them on my 1GB PC years ago, normally I'm only running one or two machines at a time though. I have 16GB in my desktop and work laptop and that has been totally adequate for what I'm doing. Then again, $300 is not really a huge amount of money and if you can't upgrade it later it might make sense to just max it out now.

[james_s]

Sounds like today you'd be perfectly fine with 16GB. Whether that will be true in a year or 4 is anyone's guess.

I was about to upgrade my laptop from 8 to 16GB but I went to a SSD instead and that made such a big speed improvement that I don't really care anymore. Virtual memory is painless now, and supposedly SSD endurance for better ones is high enough that no normal person will wear one out.

[hamster_nz]

16GB fine, 8GB too little, 32GB overkill.

WSL is actually quite usable for a lot of things, so install it as well, if only for  experience. Be waned that AV tends to make WSL slower than native WIndows.

Oh, and don't go for small SSD + huge HDD. The price of midsized SSDs is pretty sharp now.

I would do for 500GB NVMe or M.2 SSD, and archive off old data and backups to an external USB HDD. When an NVMe can do 500+ MB/s at sub-millisecond latencies it makes an "extra RAM for disk caching" argument very weak.

I really like my new-to-me Intel NUC with an older i5, 16GB RAM and 500GB NVMe, even if on-CPU 3D is pretty average. So much smaller!

[maginnovision]

Sort of depends what kind of RAM you want/need for the VM. I don't think 32GB is needed if you stick to 4GB. If you go to 8GB and disable the windows swap file(like you should) then you can start seeing a reason to break 16GB. Regardless of an SSD making a swap file less annoying it still takes up time that it shouldn't but for my customers PC's I don't disable swap without 16GB. They do a lot of media processing so it does eat up a bit.

In the end I personally would go for the 32GB even though 300 is a little higher than I'd want to pay. You'll be running enough software on both the PC and VM that it may be necessary for peak performance. It also allows you to throw 16GB to the VM if you need it in the future. For my PC I have 32GB and a couple of TB NVMe drives running windows and ubuntu VM's(VirtualBox). Both windows and the VM run well with an average of 54% memory used. That's without running any memory intensive stuff.

[daqq]

Given your application range I'd also say that 16GB is fine. 32GB is only needed very rarely and if you need it you know it. I have 32GB on my machine, but the only time I actually used them was for a larger FDTD simulation. They were actually purpose bought for that reason :-)

[ebclr]

I have 64 GB, And still, need more, 

[I wanted a rude username]

As primarily an IT consultant, I feel I should give a contrary opinion.

Buying computers with insufficient RAM is one of the most common mistakes I see in the industry. And it happens again and again. Makes it easy for me to resolve performance issues by telling clients to buy more, but you can't do that with most sub-14" laptops.

When you see n GB of RAM used, that doesn't take into account the further amount the OS uses for cache ... or the amount already swapped because the OS wants to maintain at least some cache. SSDs are quick but the latency is still orders of magnitude worse than RAM. If you are seeing in the order of 16 GB used now, and you want to run VMs, and you want to use your computer for another three years ... and the RAM can't be upgraded ... do yourself a favour and spend that $300.

[wraper]

If you go to 8GB and disable the windows swap file(like you should) then you can start seeing a reason to break 16GB.

Like you shouldn't  . It won't do any good but possibility of causing problems is quite real. Those who are concerned about SSD wear are just ill informed.

[madires]

300 bucks for +16GB? Even with windows as host 16GB are sufficient to run a VM. 32GB would make sense for a small dedicated VM host system. And caching is a complex topic, it isn't "the more the better".

[olkipukki]

For such applications, should I consider 32GB upgrade or stick with 16GB if the price difference is $300 (soldered, not user upgradable)? I plan to keep this computer for at least 2 years, and I expect to score a good price when selling it, so it must still be usable (not essentially blazing fast) in 2022.

This is a game changer.
If a resale value is your primary objective vs a bit of compromise and discomfort in case when 16GB will be not enough (such as close an app to "free" memory, "loss" of time to make things faster etc. ) lead to a simple question - can you return your $300 (directly or indirectly)?

As example, 6 years ago I have maximised MacBook Pro 2013 Retina with 16GB (max) and 512GB SSD (max) when standard was 4GB/8GB and 128/256.
Today, I still use it and can run Altium in VMware in case of emergency 

[LeonR]

32GB makes sense if you are working with 4+ VMs simultaneously or doing nested VMs (clusters, etc) labs. I for one don't like being constrained to setting my lab VMs to 1-2GB since performance would go to a crawl on some occasions.

As other suggested, also invest on a large SSD (500GB+) especially if you are into virtualization.

[ebclr]

Sooner we all will have terabytes  of RAM, 16 GB will be a joke

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/optane-dc-persistent-memory.html

[BravoV]

For such applications, should I consider 32GB upgrade or stick with 16GB if the price difference is $300 (soldered, not user upgradable)?

What computer is that ? Apple ?

[LeonR]

Optane DC isn't a DRAM replacement but rather a ultra-low latency storage that pushes the boundary of 2nd tier memory.

https://www.storagereview.com/node/7416

It isn't even a new tech. Sandisk and DiabloTeK (or something like that) have done it some years before with the ULLtraDIMM:

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6815/sandisk-ulltradimm-ddr3-400gb-ssd-enterprise-review/index.html

Since LGA2011 dual socket made its debut it's feasible to get a 1TB+ of RAM on a single system. But it's a bit of a moot point since desktop-class systems standard usages are more CPU than RAM oriented.

[Mechatrommer]

i've been living with 3GB for many years fine (not a moment virtual HDD/SSD memory need to be allocated edit: ok its paging, but i cant feel it thats why the previous (striked) comment). but then otoh i'm going to fill all empty slots of my newly acquired used HP Z800 to 72GB all because i can think a way to deplete all those and the 12 cores. so for me, "it depends" on what applications you run on it. but then i'm not at the liberty to talk about this since i dont VM. but i suppose VM doesnt use much RAM and i suppose the real answer lies on the task manager's memory usage report.

[Jeroen3]

For the members who run VMs, is there a necessity to go with 32GB RAM rather than 16GB?

If you want to. Now is probably the last time DDR3 is affordable. (see price history here)
If you can upgrade by adding modules, because your CPU allows extending life a couple of years, go for it.
If you have to replace modules, meh.

A new workstation with VM purposes definitely can benefit from 32 GB.
Recently build an Ryzen 3600 pc with 32 GB as replacement for my old E3-1230 with 16 GB. Now I can run two windows VM's at once  No more swapping.

[tszaboo]

I have 16GB in my main desktop. I had 24 when I was compiling Yocto, plus a 6 core xeon. I think it could've used more. My next machine for sure will have 32GB, because RAM is cheap. 80 EUR or so for the extra 16 GB. I even wrote pythn computation stuff that could've used more. Had games which went above 16GB. And I'm quite sure that chrome with a single webpage open will use 16GB memory in a few years.

With VMs, for sure. Although a VM can be simple 512MB machine that barely runs. Or something that runs OpenCV, processing multiple simultaneous video streams.

The other thing I'm getting rid of in my home desktop is the spinning rust.

[Bud]

I run Altium routingly at 12 Gb RAM usage. I have 32Gb so that is about right considering i might fire 2-3 VMs sometime in addition to that so the total usage comes to 20-ish Gb. I also use part of the RAM for a RAM drive and i point the Temp folders and scratch folders to that RAM drive to speed things up. I d say consider using the extra RAM for a RAM drive, you may find that helping with performance.

[mariush]

When you're doing that compiling that uses lots of memory, does it also do a lot of disk access?
If that's the case, it may be worth getting more ram in order to give you the ability to create a temporary drive and copy the files into the ram drive before compiling.

[coppice]

I have 64 GB, And still, need more, 

I HAD 64GB, and I rarely used more than 20GB rest of rendering videos, which I now have another desktop to do the task.

How often did you use between 16 and 20GB? If it was frequently, then having only 16GB might be rather annoying. If it was rare, then you might just live with some swapping.

[Jeroen3]

If you compile a lot using -j (multithreaded) then more ram is very useful.

[senso]

Using a couple VM's(with Win7/10) on a base Win 10, all with updates on, 16GB wasn't cutting it, and the laptop had a free slot, so I went with an extra 8GB(because they where on sale, got 2666Mhz 8Gb stick for 30€), but regret it a bit, having a nice round 32GB would be better, but with 24GB I can run 3 VM's with 6GB each dedicated RAM and feel no slowdowns due to lack of RAM, only due to running the VM's still in an HDD.. 

Waiting for some decent prices on 1TB NVMe drive to upgrade the crappy 240GB SN 520 WD that the laptop came with.

[james_s]

If you go to 8GB and disable the windows swap file(like you should) then you can start seeing a reason to break 16GB.

Like you shouldn't  . It won't do any good but possibility of causing problems is quite real. Those who are concerned about SSD wear are just ill informed.

I had mine disabled for a while with 8GB and it was mostly fine but occasionally after being up for a few months it would start running out of memory. I reenabled the swapfile and noticed no negative effects whatsoever and it never gets screwy from running out of memory.

In a nutshell I agree, no reason whatsoever to disable swap.

[rstofer]

I just did a quick price check of 32GB memory cards at Amazon and, without considering features, the price was around $139.  That isn't a number worth thinking about.  If a 16GB card is half that then the difference is only about $65.  Why even think about it?

That's pretty much how I wound up with 32GB of 4133 MHz DDR4.