8GB RAM standard?

AddRAM said:

I remember when I got my 1st Dell, it had 256 MB LOL

My first computer, '92 Hewitt-Rand 80386 with MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1, had a whopping 4MB RAM and 120MB HDD. First upgrade [8MB] was needed by WordPerfect for Windows 5.1 when working on more than 8 pages of a document, later went to a 210MB HDD.

16GB is the norm now. Lotta software out there that eats it up pretty fast. I wouldn't build a rig any more with less than that.

You can see price trends for various RAM types over the last 18 months here:

Memory - Price Trends - PCPartPicker

The bottom was May of last year.

Since then prices have roughly doubled for DDR 4, so I wonder if the PC manufacturers are selling fewer PCs with 16 GB than they did a couple of years ago.

You'll notice SSD prices have been stubbornly high lately too.

I have a table of RAM prices for 1957 through 2013, compiled from a website that is no longer around.

Summarized; per Megabyte; multiply by 1000 for GB equivalent.

1957: $411 million per MB ($411 billion per GB; I wonder if there was 1 GB in the world?)

1977: $36,800

1997: $4.63

August 1998: went below a dollar for the first time

2006: went below a dime

2011: went below a penny (below $10 per GB)

I still consider 8GB to be the minimum. For me, I go with 16GB these days, but I like to run VM's and those take up extra memory.

My first computer I personally bought was a 486 SX-25 with 4MB of RAM and 170MB hard drive, and it had a smoking fast 2x CDROM drive. It run DOS 6 with MS Windows 3.1

My first computer had 16 KB.
My second had 48 KB.
My third had 2 MB.
My fourth had 64 MB.
Next 256 MB.
Next 2 GB.
Next 8 GB.
Now 16 GB.

copiertech25 said:

My first computer had 64MB!

If you want to use your computer with 4GB, use SSD on Windows 10...Really.