6 GB RAM enough?

[alanm26]

Recently I accidentally bumped my computer case, which caused it to lock up. I couldn't get it to start again until I removed the RAM stick from the leftmost slot, and sadly after testing, it's the slot that's bad, not the stick. So instead of the 8GB I've been used to having, I'm down to 6. I had 4 x 2GB sticks and RAM prices are lower than I thought, I was thinking of getting 2 x 4GB or even 2 x 8GB if I found a good deal. But now I'm wondering if I'll even notice the missing 2 GB. I mostly just play games, recently lots of WoW and XCOM, sometimes with Chrome and IM open in the background. Occasionally I'll stream or record video. I'm trying to make this computer last another 2 years before I get a new one, so I don't mind the investment unless it's not even going to matter.

Intel i7 2600k 4.3Ghz
6 GB PC1600 RAM
EVGA Geforce 660Ti SC 2 GB
OCZ Vertex 3 SSD (pagefile enabled)
Windows 7x64 Home

[Deleted]

I shouldn't think so.

I used to use 5GB before I upgraded to my current system, no issues recording WoW or even playing it with Chrome open (I can't Imagine IM would take up enough RAM to tank your system).

Other games were fine to, most were more graphically and CPU intensive than XCOM.

Don't worry about it too much, 6GB should be fine for now, but keep an eye on your memory usage and if it does start to peak at the higher end, check out the 2 x 4GB prices.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I've run two WoW clients and D3 before now and not broken 4.5GB RAM used. 6 should be more than plenty, just make sure it is running in Dual Channel mode.

[mypally]

If you are just playing games, 6 is fine. I think wow needs something like 1gb to run, and 2gb to run decently. Basically going from 6 to 8 is the difference of being able to have 10 youtube videos playing while on wow vs 30. For the most part, RAM is used for heavy computing, for video games, the majority of the work is done by the video card anyway.

[at05gt]

So if his 6gb is fine is my 16gb overkill?

Kidding btw, yes 6gb of ram should be more then enough for 99% of what a mainstream PC user runs.

[Keller]

4 and even 3 should be enough.