Win 10 RAM question

[MoonC A T]

Building a barebones internet browsing/streaming PC (no GPU) from leftover parts using a G4400 processor. I believe the board is H110 chipset based, not sure will have to check later.

Only DDR4 I have lying around is a single stick of 4GB DDR4-2133.

Is this enough for WIN 10 64-bit? I am aware of the minimum requirement but by "enough" I mean I won't notice any performance issues having multiple windows open or YT.

[The Rt Hon. Sir_Sampie]

For casual internet browsing and youtube? It'll most likely work fine. You already have that stick of ram right, so you might as well test it and see if the performance is sufficient to you.

[76561198343548661]

it s but you d better put Win 7 and disable some services . Whats the difference . With Windows 10 , you ll have less than 2GB left but with Windows 7 3GB free RAM is achievable .

1 open tab in browser costs 200-250MB ! Thus max 8-10 tabs for smooth use

[MoonC A T]

smallcat lähetti viestin:

it s but you d better put Win 7 and disable some services . Whats the difference . With Windows 10 , you ll have less than 2GB left but with Windows 7 3GB free RAM is achievable .

I understand your suggestion but I already have a retail key for Win 10 that I can use.

[76561198343548661]

If you have no other option just do it .

My old laptop has Windows 10 and 4GB . I use it for browsing, Youtube and light gaming .

edit
When Windows 10 was launched it was taking 1.6GB RAM and was faster in gaming than Windows 7 on PC with little RAM so i made the transition but now Windows 10 takes more than 2GB .

[MoonC A T]

smallcat lähetti viestin:

If you have no other option just do it .

Yeah, Sir Sample is right. Why not just try and see.

[Elucidator]

MoonC A T lähetti viestin:

Building a barebones internet browsing/streaming PC (no GPU) from leftover parts using a G4400 processor. I believe the board is H110 chipset based, not sure will have to check later.

Only DDR4 I have lying around is a single stick of 4GB DDR4-2133.

Is this enough for WIN 10 64-bit? I am aware of the minimum requirement but by "enough" I mean I won't notice any performance issues having multiple windows open or YT.

Yes, but you will need to turn off a lot of things and adjust the browser's settings as well.
Like,.... you will need to uhm, make a windows 10 makeover basically.
Technically 4GB is enough, but by default it eats more RAM than this.
Turn off all bloatware, remove it if possible. Shutdown some services (preventing them from starting / eating background memory)
Tone down the UI / effects.

In the browser, disable most stuff including javascript where possible, or take a browser that is memory friendly and not build on chromium.

For streaming, you may need to enable paging (depending on the software) by a lot
If you stream towards that PC, then all you need is internet I guess.

[76561198343548661]

Just checked the memory usage-
Windows 10 64bit , takes 1.6GB RAM , 2.4GB free of 4GB installed

Apparently Microsoft have done some improvements and Windows 10 takes not more RAM than upon launch . Yey , it s good

old laptop
i3 2350M , 4GB RAM , GT 520MX 1GB , 500GB hdd

edit
on my desktop with 16GB RAM , Windows 10 takes 2.4GB

[Zefar]

Win10 makes use of the RAM you got. Now 4 GB RAM might not give you a good experience but it should work.

If you have a lot of RAM Win10 will make use of that RAM for things. It can adapt.
I'd say just browsing Youtube is gonna eat up most of that RAM.

[_I_]

4g is ok, but if you want to do anything other than stare at the desktop, 8g min for browsing and normal tasks

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It will be fine. Just remove the pagefile and hibernation. Then lock the pagefile into 16GB
Can grab another 4GB DDR4 off Ebay super cheap. This also will help so you have Dual-Channel.

Make a fresh USB with Win10 64bit 22H2
Install fresh to an SSD, not a HDD.

[Illusion of Progress]

4 GB should be "fine" even if it's constraining. You might have to limit multi-tasking but it would work. I have another PC for such a use and it has 8 GB, but I think 4 GB would be okay for it.

Bad 💀 Motha lähetti viestin:

It will be fine. Just remove the pagefile and hibernation. Then lock the pagefile into 16GB

I find that to be bad advice. You generally don't want to limit the page file (especially with a lack of RAM, but regardless).

It's unlikely to matter because you'd probably have to be well beyond 4 GB of RAM for a page file limit of 16 GB to present an issue, but then... it begs the question of why you'd even limit it to begin with then? Windows can manage this dynamically on the fly so it needs no limit, and it doesn't need to be reserving 16 GB when it doesn't need to either. Just leave it to system managed unless you come across issues with it that way, and only then change it.

[[☥] - CJ -]

8GB would really be better if you can get a matching stick, 4GB might get a lot of pagefile/drive usage due to the low amount


Setting a limit can have benefits, saving space being one of them, but it can also help resolve potential issues. But as it wont be for gaming the default should be just fine unless you need to limit it to save space.

But i suppose 4GB should be enough if you cant get another stick, i really wouldnt go for less than 8GB though even just for browsing/streaming.

[Illusion of Progress]

☥ - CJ - lähetti viestin:

Setting a limit can have benefits, saving space being one of them, but it can also help resolve potential issues.

What are these benefits?

Saving space? It's only going to guarantee always saving space if you set the page file to a size smaller than it initially is. With only 4 GB RAM, that amount is incredibly low (and in reality, it's almost surely going to reserve more than the minimum initial amount with only 4 GB RAM because of how low that is, which means it needs whatever it reserves and limiting it lower than that is a bad idea for what I hope are obvious reasons). In reality, I can't imagine the storage space is a bigger concern than physical RAM is here so space savings is probably not even an issue anyway.

What are these other "potential" issues? And why would you not only change this if and when you encounter such potential issues, instead of introducing additional potential risks to avoid a less severe risks?

[_I_]

fixed page size will not let the space be used for other files, and it will always have room as long as its more than enough

[76561198343548661]

In theory , a page file with fixed size must improve the performance , in case of hdd (defragged). But in practice , auto size is the best , from my experience. A huge impact has the amount of RAM , the bigger it is the more cache is used and the faster disk operations are .