Wednesday, August 5th 2026
Microsoft Is Quietly Deleting 32 GB RAM Recommendation for Windows 11
Microsoft is retroactively removing documentation from its website and materials that mention 32 GB of RAM as a recommendation for new PC builds or purchases. Instead, the company is now emphasizing 8 GB devices that are optimized to run Windows 11 smoothly, even with that RAM configuration. Thanks to Windows Latest, which spotted the changes, Microsoft's Windows Learning Center has been updated to remove mentions of the 32 GB RAM recommendation. Previously, Microsoft published a document suggesting that 16 GB is a baseline for a modern PC, describing it as a good "starting point." However, the company also used to recommend that gamers try to surpass this baseline, suggesting 32 GB as a "no worries" upgrade for gaming PCs.
At that time, this sparked significant controversy as gamers were vocal about Microsoft recommending more RAM when purchasing additional memory could cost as much as an entire PC, depending on the configuration. Amid a severe DRAM shortage, Microsoft faced pushback from gamers and quietly removed the mention of the 32 GB "no worries" recommendation. This also raised concerns about whether Microsoft would optimize the Windows 11 operating system to perform better on lower-spec PCs with less than 16 GB of RAM, such as the 8 GB PCs that Microsoft sells itself, like the Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 13, both of which come with 8 GB base configurations.
We already know that the company is overhauling many components within its Windows 11 operating system. Microsoft has made substantial improvements in memory efficiency and latency to accelerate the modernization of Windows 11. It has reduced memory overhead across apps and components and has optimized WinUI 3 to make built-in apps use less memory. Microsoft also outlined its plans for future Windows 11 memory efficiency improvements, specifically stating that the Windows team will be working on "memory optimization for 8 GB and above." As a result, the company has removed recommendations and mentions of 32 GB RAM from its documents and websites to avoid additional pushback.
Source:
Windows Latest
At that time, this sparked significant controversy as gamers were vocal about Microsoft recommending more RAM when purchasing additional memory could cost as much as an entire PC, depending on the configuration. Amid a severe DRAM shortage, Microsoft faced pushback from gamers and quietly removed the mention of the 32 GB "no worries" recommendation. This also raised concerns about whether Microsoft would optimize the Windows 11 operating system to perform better on lower-spec PCs with less than 16 GB of RAM, such as the 8 GB PCs that Microsoft sells itself, like the Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 13, both of which come with 8 GB base configurations.
56 Comments on Microsoft Is Quietly Deleting 32 GB RAM Recommendation for Windows 11
In my opinion, this is a case for consumer protection authorities.
Regards,
Fred.
I'm not even gonna rant. This is sad because they can erase literature all they want, matter of the fact is, you can boot and use Windows 11 with 8GB of RAM... so as long as you don't use OneDrive, Windows Defender or Security, Teams or Edge. Then you'll realize really fast that an upgrade is due aaaaand to what capacity? 32GB.
They certainly didn't want to do it but I guess the writing is finally on the wall with this.
It's either clean up the slop in your OS or lose users to an alternative like Linux and they know it.
This is ridiculous how bad those browsers are nowadays.
MS caved and said fine
Meanwhile, Linux Mint on my PC happily idles at about 1.5GB RAM usage...
Or the millions upon millions of office PC's with 8-16gb of ram which has been the bare minimum thanks to all of the bloat, memory leaks and webview2 code MS hasn't fixed.
Maybe cut down on the phoning home and your device being where other people get their Windows update from?
The point of having more memory is to be able to hold more, larger, programs that can do more. If the programs just balloon me.ory use without improving, then increased memory capacity is just pointless.They need to go back to native apps. The new electron calendar app uses half a gig of RAM because it's a glorified web browser. The old C# calendar program ran on kilobytes of RAM.
This kind of contractor bloat is everywhere in 11.Except every other OS on earth can manage with less memory then WinBlows.
Are you claiming that Linux or macOS are less efficient or effective as operating systems then windows?You're not too familiar with corpobloat, are you?
Your PC is just bare windows. Go and add sentinel one, mandatory Microsoft teams login, management software, and so on.
Corporate machines with 8GB are just painful to use these days. Lord help you if you need to open a big Google sheet.
And their own Surface PC's shipping with 8GB struggling to do anything must've been embarrassing enough, combined with losing a lot of sales to the Mac neo.
The OS using up all available memory on bloat, memory leaks, Copilot, OneDrive, then leaving nothing for applications to run is the issue. MS needs to ditch the webview2 layer being slapped over legacy applications to "modernize" them and go back to legacy code, including going back to the old control panel, and maybe let people customize the start menu and UI again.
I edited my post so it won't confuse people that just want to argue with me over question-baiting nonsense.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of bad things to say about Windows, but it's memory management is ok. People have been asking for a "debloated Windows" for literally decades, but that would defeat the very point of Windows.So do people on this forum. Before the RAM thing no one serious would suggest anything less than 32GB in a new system, unless you had an extremely tight budget. I have 8GB at work and it's ... fine. Even with Onedrive on.
Remember that CoD extraction shooter? that game would reserve pretty much all of your systems ram, but it would not use it, if you opened up some programs while playing the game, it would just give that ram up again.