Denominations#
RAM is sold in the form of "sticks" that come in various fixed sizes, a lot like a hard drive does. Today these sizes are measured in gigabytes (GBs). It can be found to be measured in megabytes (MBs) too, especially in Cloud and virtualised environments.
In general most (physical) desktop computers ship out of the factory with a minimum of 4GB of RAM because that's what most modern operating systems like Windows 10/11 and Linux require, not to mention the software that they run also requires RAM. Generally speaking, therefore, more RAM is better however there is also such a thing as too much RAM.
Here's a very rough idea of the kind of RAM required for a desktop computer being used for different jobs:
| Job | CPU Cores | RAM | Graphics Card |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple web browsing | 2 | 4GB | Intergrated (built-in) |
| Complex, heavy web browsing | 2 | 8GB | Integrated (built-in) |
| Simple gaming | 4 | 8GB | Dedicated |
| Complex gaming | 4 | 16GB - 32GB | Dedicated |
| 4K video editing | 4 | 32GB - 64GB | Dedicated |
These are very general figures. When it comes to "designing" a computer you'll design it for a very particular use case and build out the hardware specifications to match.
When you're deploying Cloud based or virtualised systems you'll have to define how much RAM you want the system to have. This will usually be measured in GBs but you can measure it in MBs too. You'll see GBs as 4GB and the MBs as 0.5GB, which means 512MB.