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Microsoft admits 8GB RAM is fine for Windows 11, after years of pushing 16GB as the baseline
(www.windowslatest.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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Yeah no. I'm at 32 and task manager says that 28+GiB are being used on idle. The sum of everything that appears on task manager doesn't reach 2GiB.
And it's not "the OS is using it because you aren't", because if I do anything demanding, the OS won't give me back that RAM, it'll use the swap instead.
You have other problems beyond windows. My laptop has 32gb and it uses like 6.5gb with nothing open on the desktop.
That is not how this works. The system isn't using all that, I can guarantee that. Even launching a terminal (or any app) as hidden will not make it and its usage appear in taskmgr - I once unknowingly managed to exhaust my 64GB by launching hundreds of terminal sessions withoutever killing them. Try something like sysinternals process manager to see what's actually going on.
You can guarantee it? Are you a Microsoft Windows developer? In that case, I'd like to fill in a bug report.
When I turn my machine on, without me doing anything at all, task manager would display >20GiB used. I don't have many applications to run at startup. At most iCUE (Corsair keyboard drivers). I don't think iCUE is using 20GiB if RAM.
Then, I open 2-3 vscode instances. Each instance launches its own rust-analyzer, since I'm looking at 3 rust projects simultaneously.
Each rust-analyzer instance uses ~3GiB of RAM.
That is enough to reach 100% ram usage and the computer becomes noticeably slower, even if CPU usage is at 7%.
Tell me, Microsoft Windows developer. Why does my machine grind to a halt when I use ~10GiB of RAM, if win11 says that the recommended amount is 16GiB and I have 32? 10+16 = 26. I should have a minimum of 6GiB left. The math ain't mathing.
Have you tried using the windows debloat tool to get rid of all the AI and garbage that Win11 comes pre-installed with? Might help with the excessive RAM usage on startup.
I would advise against doing your own math
Not only are you a Microsoft developer. Are you also a maths PhD? I thought I was using maths of a level I'm comfortable with. Mainly addition, abstraction, and multiplication if real numbers.
Perhaps I've committed a grave mistake. Please show me where my mistake is.
You are funny, but no, it's just unnecessary.
Using appropriate tools, such as the aforementioned process explorer, will help you avoid any guesswork.