Don't be snobs. That's my pc at home right now.
You don't really need more than that for most new games today.
No, not even close. Windows 11 alone can sit at roughly 6GB of RAM usage while idling depending on background services, drivers, and whatever else decides to quietly run in the background. Calling 16GB “entry level” in 2026 feels disconnected from how modern systems actually behave. With newer titles running medium settings alongside a few high presets, 32GB has effectively become the practical baseline, while 64GB is settling into what many would consider the high-end comfort zone for headroom and longevity.
About a year and a half ago I pointed out that GPUs with 8GB of VRAM were heading toward obsolescence and got laughed off by the usual armchair experts. Back then the narrative was that 8GB was more than enough and anyone suggesting otherwise didn’t understand optimisation. Fast forward to now and the market has quietly proven the opposite. Gamers have largely stopped buying 8GB cards in meaningful numbers, and both Nvidia and AMD have scaled back or repositioned several lower-VRAM models because demand shifted toward higher memory configurations.
Yes, 16GB can still deliver acceptable performance in some modern games, especially at 1080p and occasionally 1440p. But you’re often sacrificing stability, texture quality, or background headroom to make that happen. Frame pacing issues, asset streaming delays, and sudden performance dips become more noticeable as engines grow increasingly memory hungry. Once you move beyond 1440p into higher resolutions, 32GB stops feeling like a luxury and starts feeling necessary, with certain titles genuinely benefiting from 64GB or more depending on asset size, mods, and simulation complexity.
Simulation games are an entirely different category. Large maps, persistent AI systems, and heavy CPU calculations mean 16GB saturates quickly. You can launch the game and technically play, but that is not the same as having a smooth, consistent experience. There is a clear difference between “it runs” and “it runs well.”
The usual counterargument is that players can simply lower settings until performance improves. Technically true, but that point has been repeated to exhaustion. Most people upgrade hardware because they want to enjoy the features developers design into their games, not to disable half of them just to maintain stability.
The bigger issue is affordability. Hardware pricing has been volatile long before the recent AI-driven demand spikes, and many gamers simply do not have the flexibility to upgrade whenever they want. That reality does not change the direction modern game engines are heading though. Saying people should just make do does not stop requirements from climbing.
Personally, I would never recommend someone buys 16GB today, regardless of market conditions. Just because something works does not mean it is a smart long-term choice. Considering where pricing is heading and how quickly game engines are evolving, anyone still stuck on 16GB within the next year may find their playable library shrinking from “most titles” to “a select few.”
And yes, the usual armchair generals will argue that nobody can afford RAM right now. The irony is that several people on this very forum warned others to upgrade last year while prices were still reasonable. The response was that the market would stabilise in a few weeks. Now those same voices are trying to justify poor upgrade timing by insisting 16GB is still fine.
Esports titles might not demand huge amounts of memory on paper, but competitive play is about squeezing every possible frame and advantage out of your system. More RAM reduces background contention, improves consistency, and helps maintain smoother frame delivery even in lighter games. “Doesn’t need much” and “benefits from more” are two very different things.
I will reiterate to annoy people I am in the game development industry, I have been there, got the tshirt, blah blah, with over 20 years of exprience. When I tell you 16gig is not going to be good enough for much longer, you can take that to the bank.
