7 signs it's finally time to upgrade your RAM

Knowing which component to upgrade first can be tricky for PC users. Often, it’s not terribly clear where the fault lies, while sometimes, you might be swayed by a desire to upgrade to a new and expensive product just for the sake of it. The signs pointing to a necessary RAM upgrade, however, are easier to spot than most. Your PC will make it clear that it’s running out of memory, and the ball will be in your court.

In 2025, the ideal amount of RAM differs depending on who you ask, but there are still obvious patterns you can look for that signal a memory upgrade is in order. If your PC feels sluggish overall, games and demanding applications have performance issues, other components suffer from side effects, or you experience frequent BSODs, it might be time to upgrade your RAM.

7

You still have 8GB of RAM

The end of the line

8GB of RAM might not feel obsolete 24×7, especially if you’re not gaming or using heavy applications on your PC, but a modern Windows system is bound to feel the pinch one way or another. Even before getting into the actual symptoms of insufficient RAM, I would suggest upgrading to at least 16GB of RAM in 2025. The only computers that should remain on 8GB of RAM are home PCs used only for web browsing or secondary machines used turned on infrequently.

When I built my previous PC in 2017, I started with a single 8GB DIMM to save a few bucks, but I did upgrade to 16GB a year later. If you’re using your PC for playing games, working on assignments, or creative workloads, you are unlikely to have a satisfactory experience. Those with DDR4 systems can easily get a second 8GB DIMM for around $15, which is nothing for the game-changing upgrade from 8GB to 16GB of RAM.

Patriot Viper Steel DDR4 RAM kit

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6

Your PC feels like it’s on notice period

Don’t know, don’t care

If your machine feels like it’s doing the bare minimum to support your work or play, it might be time to install more RAM. Insufficient memory typically makes its presence felt when launching programs, switching between apps, and running heavy applications. Your mouse cursor will suddenly start lagging or jumping around, indicating the system isn’t able to keep up with the existing load. The actions that usually take half a second will take much longer, irritating you to no end.

If you already have an SSD and a fairly modern CPU, then these signs indicate a lack of enough RAM. You could try modifying your workload to delay the inevitable, but the permanent solution is to upgrade your RAM. Adding an identical, second stick of RAM is possible if you have an empty slot, but if you don’t, you might need to replace your existing sticks. Installing more RAM, whether you’re on a desktop or a laptop, is one of the simplest PC upgrades that anyone can do.

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5

Games stutter even with enough VRAM

Your GPU and SSD might not be the problem

The usual suspect in the case of microstutters in games is the graphics card, usually due to insufficient VRAM. As you increase the render resolution, textures, or other in-game settings, the game needs more VRAM to run smoothly. When it runs out of the framebuffer, it starts exhibiting stutters, freezes, or crashes. If you know your GPU has enough VRAM for the game in question, then your RAM is the most likely culprit.

Every game needs to load textures, models, and other game assets into the RAM for fast access to the CPU and GPU. If you run out of RAM, the entire pipeline will encounter slight delays as free memory becomes short in supply. So, introducing more RAM into the system is likely to inject a significant boost into your gaming performance. Many games today consume lots of RAM, so having 32GB is the new sweet spot for gaming rigs.

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4

Video editing or rendering takes forever

Professional use needs as much RAM as possible

You might already know this if you’re running professional workloads on your PC, but heavy workloads like video editing, 3D rendering, AI/ML workloads, and others require tons of memory for a smooth experience. If you’ve started experiencing slowdowns in your daily workloads that you didn’t see earlier, it means you’ve outgrown your RAM, and need an urgent upgrade.

System slowdowns during heavy workloads can be attributed to various factors. From a weak CPU and slow storage to low memory, there can be any number of reasons, but the latter is often the answer if the issues weren’t always present. If you are running a 3-to-4-year-old rig, you might also want to consider a platform upgrade. Moving from DDR4 to DDR5 RAM, accompanied by one of the latest CPUs and SSDs, can translate to a huge performance uplift and time savings.

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3

Memory usage is close to 100%

As sure a sign as any

Noticing system slowdowns is one way to realize you’re running out of RAM; seeing it on display in Task Manager is another. Although near 100% RAM utilization in Task Manager might not be a bad thing in itself, correlating it with a sluggish system makes things pretty apparent. The next time your system slows down to a crawl, open Task Manager and see the percentage number on the Memory tab. If it’s about 80–90%, you should start looking for your wallet.

On Windows, applications don’t always “use” the entire amount of memory allocated to them; it’s just a reserved amount. However, when your PC isn’t able to perform at the level you want it to, high memory utilization is a sure-shot sign that you need an upgrade.

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2

Frequent spikes in disk usage

Things are getting out of hand

When your PC runs out of available RAM, it starts biting into the storage to offload data from the RAM in a last-ditch effort to keep things running smoothly. Needless to say, this often doesn’t go well, as your SSD is much slower than the RAM. The system begins to slow down, and the disk usage starts rising. If you look at Task Manager and see an unusually high number on the Disk tab, then it’s a sign that your RAM can’t go solo anymore.

This “virtual memory” created on your SSD or HDD allows Windows to treat the ROM as RAM, but it isn’t really a sustainable solution to memory insufficiency. Using virtual memory can lead to stutters during games, lag in general usage, and blue screens, in the worst case. Hence, the ideal remedy is to increase the memory capacity on your machine, minimizing the dependency on secondary memory as much as possible.

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1

Your RAM is faulty

Nothing lasts forever

Naturally, this is the worst kind of problem to have. When your RAM develops hardware faults, you’re forced to replace it completely. No number of half-measures, such as reducing the system load or increasing the virtual memory, will work anymore. Confidently identifying faulty RAM can be tricky, since other factors can be at play, but some signs can help you pinpoint the issue to the

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RAM, so you can start looking into diagnostic tests:

• The PC fails to boot, accompanied by some beeps
• The system slows down the longer it’s running
• Frequent BSODs
• Unexplained system restarts
• The PC displays less memory than is actually present

If programs like MemTest86 and HCI MemTest confirm your suspicions, then there’s only one thing left to do — order a new memory kit. You might get lucky if only a single stick turns out faulty. You can turn the system off, and install one stick at a time to check which ones are faulty. Although memory failure is rare, power surges and extreme overclocking can still damage RAM.

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Sometimes, an upgrade is the only choice

You might not like it, but upgrading your RAM might be the only option in some situations. Modern games and other applications require ample RAM to function smoothly, and 32GB of RAM is fast becoming the standard. If you’re using 8GB of RAM, or your PC is feeling starved even with 16 gigs, then an upgrade is all but necessary.