PCMag Finds Windows 11 Struggles on 8GB RAM, Recommends 16GB Minimum

3 articles · Updated · PCMag · Aug 4

PCMag’s test found Windows 11 turned sluggish on an 8GB setup, with light multitasking already slowing app switching and larger programs like Adobe Photoshop pushing the system close to a crawl.
Task Manager showed about 6.6GB of RAM in use right after boot, leaving little headroom and forcing Windows to swap data to the SSD early even during modest Chrome browsing.
Adding Spotify and Slack kept the PC usable, but restoring windows and loading pages became noticeably slower as background swapping increased; Photoshop caused white-screen delays in Slack and tab reloads in Chrome.
PCMag said the test used a high-end Ryzen 9 9900X desktop with a fast PCIe 4.0 SSD, suggesting cheaper 8GB laptops would likely perform worse.
With Microsoft still selling 8GB Surface configurations and promising memory optimizations, the report says buyers should treat 16GB as the baseline because web-heavy third-party apps remain memory-hungry.