You aren’t likely to cause catastrophic damage to your system because you use too much RAM on an application–the worst that happens is that a program will crash or background programs might behave in odd ways. Risks of Using Too Much RAMįor the most part, RAM is harmless. For example, Microsoft Excel on 32-bit operating systems is restricted to 2GB of RAM. Many applications are coded to use a specific amount of RAM based on your operating system, regardless of how much you have available. If you are looking for a more in-depth explanation, here is another article than can help.Įach game and program will have a different method for allocating more RAM, if it is even possible. There is no upper limit to the amount of RAM you can have except what your motherboard can support, although there is a limit to how much you can reasonably ever use.

Motherboards often use something called dual-channel memory, which means you want RAM of the same type–either sticks of 4, sticks of 8, or sticks of 16. In modern computers, RAM is typically found in multiples of 4. If you have multiple applications running at the same time, you will need more RAM than if you are only using a few at a time. It allows your system to access data far more quickly than it can through even the SSD. Think of RAM as short-term memory for your computer. Without it, you will be unable to run most applications, and those that you can run will perform at a seriously reduced level. RAM is an acronym for random access memory, and it is one of the most important parts of your computer. The good news is that you can allocate more RAM to specific apps to help improve their performance. This is true in titles like Minecraft, as do games like Shadow of Mordor which needs a whopping 8.3 GB of VRAM.

How to allocate ram to steam games