Microsoft quietly purges 32GB of RAM recommendations from its website — company reels from the effects of the memory shortage as it released 8GB base models for Surface laptops this year

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Microsoft wants you to forget that it ever suggested 32GB of RAM, as its base-model laptops only come with 8GB of RAM.

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In May of this year, Microsoft said that 32GB of RAM is now the future-proof “no worries” configuration if you’re a gaming enthusiast, and that 16GB of RAM is now the new “practical starting point” if you want to have a smooth experience with Windows 11. However, it seems that the company is backtracking on this announcement as it removes all references to the post on the Windows Learning Center website, according to Windows Latest.

Microsoft previously posted a blog titled “How to optimize your gaming PC setup” in November 2025, where it said that 32GB is the ideal capacity for hardcore gamers who demand the best possible quality for AAA games or use mods a lot. However, this page is no longer available, and people who attempt to visit the link are automatically redirected to the Learning Center Homepage.

Many manufacturers are once again releasing laptops that just have 8GB of RAM. Microsoft is part of this move, as it dropped its budget Surface Go and Surface Laptop Go models and introduced 8GB base versions of its Surface Pro 12, Surface Laptop 13, and Surface Laptop for Business. Thankfully, Redmond is not leaving users who cannot afford expensive RAM out to dry, as it recently promised to optimize the operating system and reduce its footprint by this year.

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Even though Windows 11’s minimum specifications just require 4GB, the prevalence of many web-based apps and interfaces on the OS use up a lot of memory on many systems. While using web-based React and WebView2 is easier for developers, they’re not as efficient as apps that are built to run natively on Windows. This wasn’t a problem when memory was cheap and plentiful, as people could just spend a few dollars to upgrade their Windows PCs. However, now that memory modules are expensive and it’s hard to find the best prices for DDR5 and DDR4 kits, developers are going to be forced to optimize their software to use as little memory as possible.

This was actually what Windows programmers had to do in the 1980s and 1990s, when every Microsoft engineer had a stopwatch to ensure that their work remained fast, even on the limited hardware of the time. Even the original Task Manager, which was built by the same person who integrated ZIP file support into Windows, was only 80KB big so that it could run smoothly on “potato” hardware.

Hopefully, both Microsoft and app developers will rise to the challenge brought about by the memory shortage and make Windows efficient once more. This is especially true as Microsoft is now facing some competition from macOS and Linux (although Windows is, by far, still the most popular operating system today).

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

52 Comments Comment from the forums
  • RoLleRKoaSTeR
    640K is all anyone needs...
    Reply
  • SmokyBarnable
    Now our OSs are being messed up because of the AI insanity.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    SmokyBarnable said:
    Now our OSs are being messed up because of the AI insanity.
    No. Microsoft's 16/32 GB recommendation was in a gaming context.

    Most of the problems long complained about over the last 5 years of Windows 11 do not relate to AI, with some complaints even going back to Windows 10, 8, 7, and beyond. "Recall" is the primary AI problem child in recent memory but all the rest of the things people have gotten upset over are: forced online user accounts, the recently discovered GDID tracker, TPM 2.0, UI stupidity such as disabling the capability to move around the task bar, Microsoft advertisements and 3rd party advertisements everywhere, the dark patterns of trying to coerce people into accepting settings they would not normally select, and the insane amounts of memory that Windows has long been consuming which did not all of a sudden appear (WHERE DID YOU COME FROM???) in the AI era.

    Nobody was all of a sudden surprised that Windows is HulkOS when it comes to gulping DRAM because now we are in an AI era. This is not new information.
    1oIyk13JwQMView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oIyk13JwQM
    https://www.tomshardware.com/software/windows/microsoft-now-recommends-32gb-of-ram-as-the-future-proof-no-worries-config-for-gaming-16gb-becomes-the-new-practical-starting-point-during-the-ramageddon
    The company does lay out its reasoning for this — it says that more RAM will help in running apps like Discord alongside your game, while AAA blockbuster titles also benefit from the extra breathing room. That's true in essence because, of course, having more RAM will always be nice; it'll allow the system to rely less on the page file, which is much slower, while keeping more things in memory.
    https://www.techpowerup.com/348715/microsoft-now-recommends-32-gb-ram-as-a-no-worries-upgrade-for-windows-11
    Microsoft has published an updated support document outlining what the company believes the best Windows 11 gaming PC systems have in common. Among the listed specifications, Microsoft makes an interesting note about the system's RAM capacity configuration. The document suggests that 16 GB is a baseline for a modern PC, describing it as a good "starting point." However, the company recommends that gamers aim to surpass this baseline, as it now suggests 32 GB as a "no worries" upgrade for gaming PCs. This higher RAM capacity makes running multiple workloads much easier, which is naturally true, but raises question about the feasibility of Microsoft's future plans to bring more optimizations to the operating system.

    Most TechPowerUp readers are PC enthusiasts who understand how a RAM-limited system performs and know that more RAM is almost always better. However, in an era where the DRAM shortage is making it difficult for enthusiasts to easily buy more RAM, many are turning to more optimized operating systems like Linux-based distributions or even macOS, which is an entirely different platform. Microsoft now recommends a 32 GB capacity, stating it "helps if you run Discord, browsers, or streaming tools alongside your games." The extra memory also provides newer titles with more breathing room as memory demands continue to rise. This might also indicate that Microsoft's operating system is more RAM-hungry these days than it used to be, during a challenging time for RAM upgrades.
    Tom's and others were talking about gaming and Discord and others, not AI.

    While it is true that all of the AI focus from Microsoft does indeed make things just that much worse, pretty much all of this was going to be true anyways when we pretty much exclude the AI question from the equation.
    Reply
  • DS426
    SmokyBarnable said:
    Now our OSs are being messed up because of the AI insanity.
    Mmm, well, this mempocalypse situation is causing Microsoft and other software providers to do what they should have been doing anyways: more focus on memory optimization.
    Reply
  • DS426
    Has anyone here ever ran Windows 11 on a PC with 4 GB of RAM? I can't begin to imagine how miserable that experience would be.
    Reply
  • JeffreyP55
    RoLleRKoaSTeR said:
    640K is all anyone needs...
    Bill Gates denies every having said that. Sure Bill... :)
    Reply
  • Lamarr the Strelok
    JeffreyP55 said:
    Bill Gates denies every having said that. Sure Bill... :)
    He said it in a context that was accurate. This isn't Steve apple, Bill knows what he's doing in actual coding.
    Reply
  • Vidikron
    ezst036 said:
    Tom's and others were talking about gaming and Discord and others, not AI.

    While it is true that all of the AI focus from Microsoft does indeed make things just that much worse, pretty much all of this was going to be true anyways when we pretty much exclude the AI question from the equation.

    You entered that whole post and then glossed over and buried at the end why they removed the recommendation. If all this is true outside of AI then why did they remove the recommendation if it should still be true? Because of the AI induced hardware crunch. A crunch they themselves have helped create. They are now afraid to admit how much RAM you might need in specific scenarios because the prices have sky rocketed.
    Reply
  • purposelycryptic
    DS426 said:
    Has anyone here ever ran Windows 11 on a PC with 4 GB of RAM? I can't begin to imagine how miserable that experience would be.
    Reminds me of the heyday of the netbook, most of which would come with 1GB of RAM and the 32-bit version of Windows 7.

    It would technically run, but the way a Honda Civic runs when you fill the entire trunk and back seat with bricks - you'd get where you were going eventually, but not anytime soon, and it wouldn't be what you'd call a smooth ride.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    DS426 said:
    Has anyone here ever ran Windows 11 on a PC with 4 GB of RAM? I can't begin to imagine how miserable that experience would be.
    Tiny11 will apparently run in 2GB RAM.
    Just don't try to do anything beyond making it boot up.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tiny11-lean-windows-11
    Reply