RAM, also known as Random Access Memory or simply “memory”, is incredibly important to the health of your desktop or laptop. RAM upgrades have become all the more essential with game requirements soaring from 2GB to 4GB to 8GB to 12GB to 16GB in only the last decade. The demand for RAM is only going to rise higher over the next few years, and soon 32GB of RAM will be considered the norm.

Fortunately, upgrading your RAM is a relatively easy endeavor, especially for desktop PCs, and is one of the more affordable upgrades you can make.

• How much RAM do I need?
• What RAM speed do I need?
• How to upgrade your RAM
• Installing RAM on PC
• Installing RAM on a laptop


• Will upgrading my RAM make a difference?

How much RAM do I need?

Generally, we recommend having 8GB of RAM as an absolute minimum for any modern PC or laptop. However, gamers will want to aim for 16GB at minimum in order to meet the system requirements for modern AAA titles.

Very few games need more than 16GB, but that’s only true for now. 32GB will eventually become the minimum requirement, so you may want to install 32GB in your newest gaming rig to cover just about any major game release for the next few years.

What RAM speed do I need?

While capacity is one of the most important factors to consider when looking at RAM, you also need to pay attention to the speed at which your memory operates.

Modern gaming rigs will want to aim for 3200MHz of DDR4 RAM at minimum, pushing into 6000MHz+ on DDR5 for gamers with a bigger budget. Just bear in mind that the speed increase you gain with faster RAM sticks will only translate into a small FPS boost overall (often only a single digit of improvement unless the RAM upgrade is a significant improvement over the previous RAM).

The critical detail to watch out for is mismatched RAM sticks with different speeds.

If you install an additional RAM stick which is of a different speed to the one(s) currently in your machine, the faster RAM will match the speed of the slowest. In effect, if you were to install a 3200MHz RAM stick into a system with a 1600MHz stick, both sticks will run at 1600MHz.

This isn’t necessarily a problem, as you will have expanded your overall RAM capacity, but you won’t benefit from the speed boost of the faster stick.

How to upgrade your RAM

Upgrading RAM comes down to a simple checklist:

• Is there a free or modifiable RAM slot in your device?

• What form factor is your RAM?

• What is your RAM’s speed?

Before you think about installing RAM, you’ll need to decide if you are replacing any pre-existing RAM or adding an additional RAM stick. If you’re replacing the RAM, you’ll need to know if the pre-existing RAM can be removed or if it is soldered onto the motherboard - DDR5 in particular is frequently soldered directly to the board, and thus cannot be upgraded.

If you’re adding an additional RAM stick, you’ll need to check if there is a free slot to take the extra RAM. This is easy enough to do by accessing the Task Manager program, navigating to Performance, and then checking the “Slots used:” field.

The other, slightly more labor-intensive option is to visually inspect your motherboard by opening your PC’s or laptop’s chassis and confirming there is an empty slot.

The second thing you need to do is know what RAM is compatible with your system. DDR4 RAM is not compatible with DDR5, nor is it compatible with previous models such as DDR3, and vice versa. As such, you need to buy RAM that is specific to the slot on your motherboard.

Fortunately, the risk of slotting incorrect RAM is quite low as manufacturers use different pin layouts for different form factors. The only way you'll get the wrong RAM form factor to fit is if you ram it in (pun unintended) so hard that it bends or breaks the pins.

Identify which type of RAM your PC or laptop can take by checking your computer’s specifications. There’s two easy ways of doing this:

• Go to System Information > System Summary and check the “BaseBoard Product” which will tell you the name of your motherboard. With that in hand, Google the name and check what RAM is compatible with your motherboard.

• Check your PC’s original purchase order, which will document what type of RAM shipped with your device.

• If you cannot find the original order, check your computer’s model number against the computer brand’s main website.

Once you’ve identified if you can install a new RAM stick, confirmed your RAM’s compatible form factor, and made sure your new RAM matches or exceeds the speed of your old RAM, you’ll be ready to install RAM.

Installing RAM on PC

If installing RAM into a PC, you’ll typically find that it clips in, and is held into place by two levers.

Simply open up the two clips on your motherboard, slot the new RAM into the slot (a notch in the board will prevent you from inserting the RAM stick in the incorrect orientation), push down until the RAM is neatly slotted in, and close the two clips on either side of the RAM.

To ensure your RAM is running in dual-channel mode (if installing more than one RAM into a PC), insert your RAM into slots two and four. If two and four are already occupied, use slots one and three but be aware that channels one and three are normally reserved for single-channel RAM.

If you install your RAM side by side and not in either of the above sequences, you will not be able to take full advantage of multi-channel memory.

Installing RAM on a laptop

For laptops, RAM typically requires you to slot it in at an angle, then push it flat against the board, and then clip the RAM into place.

Will upgrading my RAM make a difference?

Improving the speed of your RAM might not have as noticeable an effect as swapping out your graphics card, processor, or changing from a HDD to the best SSD for gaming, but upgrading your total RAM capacity likely will if you’ve been running low on RAM previously.

Faster RAM will improve gameplay performance and framerates (if only a little), and a larger capacity of RAM will reduce the amount of lag and unresponsive programs you experience.

As a side note, games which can be hugely expanded upon with mods will likely demand RAM far and above what the original system requirements needed (depending on how far you take to modding the game). The biggest example of this for us would be Minecraft.

The Minecraft system requirements only demand 4GB of RAM. However, install a modpack of some 100+ mods (a very low threshold if you’ve ever stepped foot into the Minecraft modding scene), and you’ll soon discover some major lag spikes if you don’t have additional RAM.

In short, more RAM is almost always better.

If you’re looking for a full guide on how to build a gaming PC, you’ll find a number of helpful tutorials over on PCGamesN and Custom PC.