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What is/are you main gaming platform(s)?

  • Mac

    Votes: 77 39.9%
  • PC

    Votes: 78 40.4%
  • Console

    Votes: 89 46.1%
  • Handheld

    Votes: 32 16.6%
  • Other

    Votes: 19 9.8%

  • Total voters
    193
Are there people who have 100% gaming rigs where they don't use the computers for anything else but gaming?

Back when I built my PC, ram was cheap, it was a no brainer to go straight to 64GB. Imo, it was a different mindset on the PC side, given the relatively low cost. Apple users always paid a premium for ram, so I can see the need to justify the ram upgrade. Now in 2025, things have changed, and its more likely most people will not be looking to over build their machines
Yup. Me. 100% gaming. I do everything else on Apple products, except I have a raspberry pi as a streamer on my TV.
 
Games definitely do benefit from more than 16GB RAM. Gamers have been moving over to 32GB for a while now. At 4K the 12GB VRAM is definitely holding you back if you're playing recent titles. 32GB RAM is probably also holding you back. Whether you notice or care is another story.

According to Steam hardware stats:

16GB - 40.94% users (going down)
32GB - 37% users (going up)
64GB - 4.4% users (going up)

I have 64GB and admit it is overkill for gaming but my previous PC had 32GB RAM and i didn't like how close some games were cutting it. I've saw some games at 20-26GB RAM. Off the top of my head that was Flight Simulator 2020 and Fortnite (seriously). This was almost 3 years ago by the way.

The only time I really make full use of my 64GB is when doing other stuff like video editing or AI stuff. At one point I considered upgrading to 96 or 128GB RAM.

As for VRAM... no games so far really makes use of the 32GB VRAM on my 5090. If I'm doing AI stuff then 32GB simply isn't enough. I was thinking about getting an RTX Pro 6000 with 96GB VRAM and even that would struggle to load many local models.

Looking at Steam stats again for VRAM:

6GB is at 10% (going down)
8GB is at 33% (going down)
12GB is at 19% (going up)
16GB is at 8% (going up)
24GB is at 2.2% (going down)
32GB is at 0.59% (going up)

Personally, if I was building a new gaming PC today I wouldn't go any lower than 16GB.

And I don't even play at 4K. I have a 1440p 360Hz monitor.
Flight Simulator is a known violator and is one of the few games (not really a game; it’s in the name) that is more CPU dependant than GPU. I was not aware that Fortnite was a RAM hog but that entire genre is one I know little of. Can you give me further examples of games that push system RAM past 32GB?
 
I have a Nintendo Switch 2 and two PCs capable of gaming. RTX cards and stuff. I pretty much don't play PC-games anymore though outside of some WoW Classic.


Friend of mine has a gaming laptop with 16GB RAM. She's always running out! Discord + web browser and some Unreal 5 game and you're suddenly on the very brink. Too bad we kept delaying buying an extra kit.
I get that! But I did specify 100% gaming PC. Which I’ve seen people state here (and which isn’t weird to me, as that’s what I have)
 

there are games that are starting to have 32GB as recommended. But Stalker 2 is probably more of an exception due to how heavy and ambitious the game is.


another one. Indiana Jones, again, an exceptional game, akin to crysis back in late 00s. Recommended is 32G. We are probably not getting many more games like this since if your game is hard to run on commodity hardware (16GB RAM 6 core cpu with a RTX 4060, according to steam survey) then you are limiting out a big chunk of your potential customer base
 
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Yup. Me. 100% gaming. I do everything else on Apple products, except I have a raspberry pi as a streamer on my TV.
Fair enough - I'm largely of the opinion that most people who build/buy gaming PCs use them for other things, whether its surfing, facebook or various other tasks.
 
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I refuse to game on my Apple products.
I look at it not so much that I 'refuse to game with Apple products' but rather than 'Apple refuses to make it viable for gaming on their products'.

I'm saddened as someone who had an Apple ][+ when Apple was a target for the best games of the late 80s (sadly too busy in grad school to enjoy them!) and even the late 90s / early 2000s when it felt like more than half of the top games came to Mac and within 6 months of Windows and sometimes played better than on comparable PC laptops (thinking Jedi Knight II). But that 'golden age' was 20 years ago.
 
Only got back into PC gaming this year. I haven't had a PC for more than 20 years, so i went to a local company to build be me the following rig:

AMD Ryzen 7 9800XD
Gigabyte X870 Eagle
Gigabyte Eagle 5070 Ti
G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO DDR5 2x16gb

I'm pretty happy with the rig!
 
Brings a tear to my eye that there are other 50-series users.
There's one or two of you guys, you may break into the top ten steam survey this month :p
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Are there people who have 100% gaming rigs where they don't use the computers for anything else but gaming?

Back when I built my PC, ram was cheap, it was a no brainer to go straight to 64GB. Imo, it was a different mindset on the PC side, given the relatively low cost. Apple users always paid a premium for ram, so I can see the need to justify the ram upgrade. Now in 2025, things have changed, and its more likely most people will not be looking to over build their machines

Mine is 100% gaming and with 32GB of RAM.
 
Fair enough - I'm largely of the opinion that most people who build/buy gaming PCs use them for other things, whether its surfing, facebook or various other tasks.

Have you even used Windows??? :D

(I know you have)
 
I’m completely fascinated by those whose 100% gaming rigs have more than 32GB of RAM... Future proofing?
Not a 100% gaming rig in my case, but if it were I would still have gone with 64GB. To answer your question - mostly yes to future-proofing, but also simply because the difference in price between 32GB (the minimum I would consider) and 64GB was relatively small (less than $90 on a machine I was already expecting to pay just over $2k for). For that slight increase in price, I have a machine that currently never runs into RAM bottlenecks and if/when it ever does, I still have two unpopulated RAM slots.

The machine that this one replaced was originally built with 16GB in it and at that time that amount seemed overkill (can't remember the year, but for context, the CPU on that machine is a 2nd Gen Core i7). That system is still in use as a dedicated Minecraft server.

I tend to run machines for a very long time, and my current rig is likely not going to be replaced for at least another five years. I may upgrade the RAM to 128GB if it seems like DDR4 RAM is about to go by the wayside, but otherwise the only other thing that will likely "age" this machine faster than that is the GPU.
 
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I get that! But I did specify 100% gaming PC. Which I’ve seen people state here (and which isn’t weird to me, as that’s what I have)
But it's just that keeping the web browser and having some VOIP software on is pretty par for the course and expected for a gaming PC. A pure "launch Assasins Creed and make sure to kill all background processes"-machine is not something I could say build or advice someone to build as most people will not like a literal interpretation of "100% gaming only" and subsequently be disappointed when they have to quit Discord.

Anything over 32GB seems overkill for this kind of purpose, agreed. But RAM used to be cheap.
 
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But it's just that keeping the web browser and having some VOIP software on is pretty par for the course and expected for a gaming PC. A pure "launch Assasins Creed and make sure to kill all background processes"-machine is not something I could say build or advice someone to build as most people will not like a literal interpretation of "100% gaming only" and subsequently be disappointed when they have to quit Discord.

Anything over 32GB seems overkill for this kind of purpose, agreed. But RAM used to be cheap.
Discord for streaming or/and voice chat still counts as gaming‼️

At least while a game is running.
 
Built this in March 2023:
  • AMD Ryzen 9 7950X 4.5GHz 16C/32T 170W 64MB Cache AM5 CPU
  • ASUS GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB Noctua OC
  • Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 5200MHz Memory
  • Noctua NH-U12A Premium 120mm CPU Cooler
  • 3x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM 120mm fans
  • FSP Hydro PTM Pro 1000W Semi-Fanless Modular PSU, 80+ Platinum
  • 2x Samsung 990 PRO 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD
This thing is whisper quiet at a fixed 30% fan profile. I love it.
Right now I am anticipating my new ceramic keyboard from Keychron to add to my setup.

 
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For gaming I'm about 50/50 on a SteamDeck & PC running Bazzite Linux (7800x3d, rtx 4090). The PC is 100% for gaming. I use a Macbook Pro and Mac Studio for everything else.
 
In order of least played to most

PS4 (almost never now, upgraded the HDD to 1TB)
"Gaming" PC (upgraded this summer to AM5/DDR5 before the price hikes, Ryzen 7600x, Radeon 7800XT, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, 1TB SSD, 3TB HDD)
Steam Deck (base model upgraded with a 2TB NVMe and 1TB mSD card)
Mac Strudio (M1 Max, base model, several Thnderbolt drives for storage)
14 inch Macbook Pro (Recently aquired to replace my older model, M2 Max with 32GB RAM, 2TB internal and a 2TB extral magsafe drive)
 

there are games that are starting to have 32GB as recommended. But Stalker 2 is probably more of an exception due to how heavy and ambitious the game is.


another one. Indiana Jones, again, an exceptional game, akin to crysis back in late 00s. Recommended is 32G. We are probably not getting many more games like this since if your game is hard to run on commodity hardware (16GB RAM 6 core cpu with a RTX 4060, according to steam survey) then you are limiting out a big chunk of your potential customer base

In the case of the Indiana Jones game it not only wants more then 16GB RAM, but it won't run at all on videocards with 8GB of VRAM (which is still a sizeable percentage of the user base). Like Stalker, it is an outlier in terms of system requirements/recommended specs, and I think both games have suffered to some extent because of how many users they have excluded from the start.
 
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Fair enough - I'm largely of the opinion that most people who build/buy gaming PCs use them for other things, whether its surfing, facebook or various other tasks.

Most people do use a gaming PC for other purposes, myself included. After all, most people do not have multiple computers unless they have a home system and one issued by their employer.

Paid CAD$105 for my 32GB of RAM. Today's price for the same RAM modules, CAD$251. Ouch.

RAM prices are definitely inflated well above actual cost right now. When I upgraded, I was able to sell my old platform (Ryzen 9 5900x, MSI Tomahawk Max WiFi, 32GB DDR4) to recoup the cost of DDR5, so I wound up paying around $700 all-in for the 9800X3D, MSI X870e Tomahawk WiFi and 32GB DDR5 RAM.
 
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Boots up as "Powered by Android" but it's like no Android device I've ever seen and thankfully devoid of Google. Powerful enough to emulate Windows 11. It's an Honor MagicPad3 13.3-inch WIFI 16GB+1T, more I use it the more it impresses, doubt you will see the same build in the west.

Honor just pushed an OS update that improves both performance & battery life, kind of the opposite of the major operating system providers who seem intent on slowing your HW down versus optimisation....

Q-6
Ah, somewhat disappointing. I was hoping for a more typical Linux distro, usually I run into issues trying to do work stuff on Android tabs. WSL is slightly less troublesome.

In the case of the Indiana Jones game it not only wants more then 16GB RAM, but it won't run at all on videocards with 8GB of VRAM (which is still a sizeable percentage of the user base). Like Stalker, it is an outlier in terms of system requirements/recommended specs, and I think both games have suffered to some extent because of how many users they have excluded from the start.
That's not true, the minimum specs are 8GB cards. It needs hardware RT, but it's even possible to run it on a pretty meagre 6GB Intel Arc A380.

 
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After all, most people do not have multiple computers unless they have a home system and one issued by their employer.

Is that actually true? I would think that it would be fairly common for normal people to have both a desktop and a laptop, at least. Or maybe my friends are just too nerdy.
 
My m4 mac mini has been the first mac desktop I've used in 20 years (imac G5 was the last).

Over the summer, I used my Mac 99% of the time because my PC puts out a lot of heat. The only game I own that plays on Mac is the Sims 4. On PC, I mostly play Fortnite and just got Dying Light-The Beast to play on PC.

Now that fall and winter is here, I find myself spending more time on the PC than the Mac. It's nice to have a furnace going when it's cold.

I just built a new gaming PC after Newegg ran a crazy sale on an intel bundle with "free ram" about a month ago. I got a 265KF, a z890 MSI Edge motherboard and 32GB DDR5 RAM for $450 total after tax.

I upgraded my 3080 to a 5070Ti. There was a crazy 20% off Paypal deal when using pay in 4, so the GPU was like $580 after taxes.

The final piece of hardware I needed was a 4K monitor and I got one with a KVM switch so switching between Mac and PC is a breeze. The Mac UI looks a lot better on 4K than Windows does.
 
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