The Valve October 2026 Steam Hardware Survey has revealed that most users on Steam are using just 16GB of RAM… again.
As memory prices continue to skyrocket due to the demands of AI, securing memory for PC gaming is more difficult than ever before. In the UK, 16GB of RAM has jumped from around £50 in May 2025 to just shy of £200 in October 2026, and that’s just for DDR4 memory as well.
With OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claiming its “terrible to have everybody have a bunch of the world’s limited supply of DRAM” instead of cramming it into datacentres, PC memory is suffering from enforced scarcity at the hands of billionaire tech giants. In fact, the constrained supply chain for memory isn’t expected to ease until around 2029.
In the most recent Steam hardware survey, 16GB of RAM has now reclaimed the top spot as the most popular memory configuration. In the survey, 41.42% of users sport just 16GB of RAM, increasing by 3.60% over September 2026.
In September 2026, 32GB of RAM briefly overtook 16GB configs, but that number has now dropped by 5.16% back down to just 37.06% of users. Additionally, 24GB of RAM is down by 0.25% to 2.31%, and 48GB of RAM is down by 0.27% to 1.19%.
With that said. 64GB and more than 64GB of RAM is on a very minor increase this month with the former rising by 0.23% to 3.94% of users, and the latter rising by 0.07% to 0.60% of users. Users with less than 4GB of RAM has stayed stagnant at 0.02% of users.
It’s worth noting that the Steam Hardware Survey does change all the time, but the usage of 64GB of RAM is down compared to this time last year. In October 2025, 4.35% of users were sporting 64GB of RAM in their gaming PCs, and that number was climbing prior to the memory crisis.
The worry then is technological stagnation with the rise in memory in gaming PCs between 2024 and 2025 being almost entirely eliminated over the past year. Prior to the ongoing memory crisis, RAM was one of the cheapest elements of PC building, and now everyday users are struggling to get their hands on enough RAM to hit even the minimum requirements of most AAA games.
This in turn is also hurting console gaming as well. While the entire appeal of a console is to be an affordable way to enjoy AAA gaming, next-gen machines are rumoured to cost upwards of $1,000, and can they be enough of a jump above current gen?
