Question Do I really need more than 8gb DDR5? Torn on which Zenbook 14X Oled to keep

[SouthTwin]

I ended up ordering two Asus Zenbook 14X Oleds on Best Buy's sale yesterday: one with evo i5-13500h and 8gb ram ($500), and the other with i7-13700h and 16gb ram ($700). Currently using a Dell Latitude 7200 2-in-1 ('19, i7-8665U, 16gb DDR3) but it started having weird keyboard/touch screen issues, so I need something more reliable while traveling though will probably keep using the Dell at home with external monitor and peripherals til it dies.

90% of the time I'm using a mix of Edge (5-10 tabs), excel (nothing too macro-heavy), word, acrobat, powerpoint etc, sometimes google earth. Occasionally I do audio stuff, such as recording live tracks with audio interface, sequencing midi and synth/sample based plugins, and/or mixing with DAW and plugins. Nothing too crazy, just a hobbyist. Also sometimes use an eGPU (Razer Chrome X) with 2070 Super for 1440p gaming (got a desktop 3070 ti for 4k).

The much older Dell has been fine for all of this so far, and I'm wondering if the extra $200 for the better CPU and 8gb more ram on the higher end Zenbook will be noticeable in my case. The lower end i5-13500h processor is already a huge upgrade from my current one which I haven't noticed as a bottleneck, and even though I currently have 16gb ram, it's DDR3 and I assume 8gb of DDR5 might be comparable. Thanks for any thoughts!

 

[Rokinamerica]

Do your normal load on the current lappy and look in the resource monitor to see how much Ram you are using so you can have better info to base this on.

I use my pc all day long and usually are in the area of about 10GB Ram used so anything less than 16GB would not work for me. If I was using around 6GB I would not worry about more Ram at this point.

 

[SouthTwin]

Do your normal load on the current lappy and look in the resource monitor to see how much Ram you are using so you can have better info to base this on.

I use my pc all day long and usually are in the area of about 10GB Ram used so anything less than 16GB would not work for me. If I was using around 6GB I would not worry about more Ram at this point.

I was under the impression from some googling on this topic that Windows will take up a big percentage of the available ram to make things operate more quickly, so the total amount shown in task manager performance tab memory usage is misleading (i.e. a lot of that is the Windows "page file" vs actual active usage). Like when I look at my "Processes" tab and sort by Memory, it really does not seem to add up to the 8.4gb shown in the "Performance" tab, more like 2-2.5gb.

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

Currently, it's widely considered that 8GB of RAM is the absolute minimum for general use and 16GB for most modern games.

Your ASUS laptops have soldered RAM so they can never be upgraded in the future so my advice is to choose the 16GB laptop.

 

[SouthTwin]

Currently, it's widely considered that 8GB of RAM is the absolute minimum for general use and 16GB for most modern games.

Your ASUS laptops have soldered RAM so they can never be upgraded in the future so my advice is to choose the 16GB laptop.

I guess what I'm really wondering is, will a new laptop with 8gb DDR5 ram be more constrained than my old one with 16gb DDR3? Especially in terms of audio software (mixing with multiple plugins and synths etc, which I understand is more CPU than RAM intensive) and 2k gaming with eGPU. Fwiw, I never had bottlenecks with my old '13 MBP that had 8gb ram with audio stuff, but I worry that Windows' background processes will grow more RAM hungry with time; still I would think much faster DDR5 speeds would at least somewhat mitigate that.

 

[Dragos Manea]

Post exactly what notebook, i cannot find the one you mention, the oens i can find are with 16GB of ram, but usually notebooks with 8GB of ram soldered can be added another 8GB stick, at least that is how my vivobook x1502 is (i5 1240p), came with 8Gb soldered and added another 8GB stick totalling 16GB.

 

[SouthTwin]

Post exactly what notebook, i cannot find the one you mention, the oens i can find are with 16GB of ram, but usually notebooks with 8GB of ram soldered can be added another 8GB stick, at least that is how my vivobook x1502 is (i5 1240p), came with 8Gb soldered and added another 8GB stick totalling 16GB.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-zenbook-14x-14-5-2-8k-oled-touch-laptop-intel-evo-platform-i7-13700h-16gb-memory-512gb-ssd-inkwell-gray/6543526.p?skuId=6543526

Need to switch to the 8gb model in the above link, the url doesn't change when I do that. From what I can see online older vivobooks had an option to upgrade ram but the newer zenbooks do not

 

[Secret-Squirrel]

............................ but I worry that Windows' background processes will grow more RAM hungry with time; still I would think much faster DDR5 speeds would at least somewhat mitigate that.

8GB of DDR5 RAM won't be much use to you when it's all used up.

For just $200 more you really should get the 16GB model with the slightly faster CPU because you will never be able to upgrade its RAM.

 

[melac]

As you now have a more capable laptop, I believe you will likely add more tasks than you were used to with your old laptop.
For example, you might open five more tabs or choose not to close a program because switching is quicker.
Even though the new one is much better, I wouldn't recommend a decrease in RAM if I were you.
Therefore, I would suggest you choose 16 GB.