Help me choose my RAM

Want to buy a custom pc to play this awesome game. I dream of large solar systems filled with planets and players, the more the merrier. Always a fan of 4v4+ on supcom.

So I can either get an 8gb ram or a 16 gb ram. (2x8gb).

Which should I get?

Does it really matter? If it's not enough you can always download more.

You can download more..... I don't think you know how system memory works.

Yeah, get as much as you can afford and you can download some more RAM as you go.

sadly the more the better. PA won't care about ram speed so take cheapest.

capacity, however is all the stuff. It will actually speed up your game and unlock the generation of bigger systems for you.

For size-contest-worthy stuff, think about an SDD to be used as virtual RAM, which PA uses decently.

you're not in on our little club's joke yet, but you will be

if you can afford 16GB, then get 16. I always go by the rule buy what you can afford it'll future proof your machine even if you don't quite need the 16GB unless you plan on doing any major upgrades at a later date then yea, go with 8 in that case.

Actually mostly none of games is affected by RAM performance unless you using integrated graphics. What more important even cheaper RAM can work with low latency. I recently bought 4 sticks of Crucial CT102464BA160B and it's works great in 1600MHz and 9-11-9.

Now I only miss proper graphics card with 3-4GB of VRAM.

PS: @schuesseled192 buy more RAM, your OS know how to utilize it for file system and library cache.
...
Oops, I obviously mean 1600MHz...

Nope, don't get it.

I will have a 160gb SSD for installing windows and much used programs for quick loading. How do i use it for virtual ram should i want to?

why ain't there an option for 32

get as much ram for reasonable price as possible ... is what i would say ...

You shouldn't use it on SSD except if it's just temporary like if you want to generate large planet in system editor once. Otherwise it's just a best way to kill SSD fast. It's really hard to exceed SSD overwriting limit (e.g 100-900TB) with normal usage even in 5 years, but if you going to use it instead of RAM you'll achieve this in few days.

Get 8GB, don't for future-proof outdated components--DDR4 is out, with motherboards to boot, so I suggest saving up for a full upgrade a few years from now.

Edit: don't buy RAM just for one game, get it to fulfill your computer's purpose/s

Edit #2: Grammar 'n Stuff. Also, 16GB is better, but if you plan to upgrade your whole PC in just a few years, you're wasting a good $70.

No, that's not true at all. People keep repeating that, but that's not how it works.
All modern SSDs have advanced wear leveling algorithms which will still distribute the wear to various cells in order to achieve the guaranteed life time.

Only make sure that the SSD ALWAYS has some spare memory left. At least 10-15GB.
Because spare memory multiplied with the number of guaranteed life cycles determines the minimum life time. With MLC type flash, that's about 2-3,000 cycles per cell, so with 10GB spare, wear leveling ensures that you can actually write about 30TB to the SSD before it fails. (That's about 1500 PA matches if you are actually swapping 2GB per match - hint: you don't. It's OS memory which is going to swap first and most of that stuff is only written once on boot.) With SLC, this goes up to 100,000 writes per cell, so even 10GB spare memory result in at least 1PB written before the SSD fails.
With 20-30GB spare memory, you won't be able to kill your SSD any time soon.

Only gets bad once you are REALLY low on memory, speaking when you don't even have enough RAM to fit all the memory which is written to FREQUENTLY. For PA that would be 3GB or less. Even with 4GB, PAs memory will usually fit into RAM and it's going to be background or inactive processes which are going to be swapped out.

I commented on what @tatsujb saying, e.g generate planets in virtual memory.
This is kind a dangerous for SSD life if you'll do that often.

With Coherent using 2.5GB RAM in-game it's no longer valid any more.

I'm still baffled as to how something akin to a web page is so resource heavy...

It's not one web page, it's about 25+ web pages with sandboxing.
Basically each panel rendered by separate process to avoid "UI lags".

Security have it's own cost.

Meh, most SSDs can handle hundreds of TB of writes. Unless you are generating planets 24/7 it would still take decades to wear it out.

If you can afford 16, go with it. I run 32 at home because I do a lot of photo work and dev work - even so, the most I've used at one time is about 22GB. And that's not normal. 8 will probably be fine.

And as for the joke about downloading more, that was actually a (non joking) suggestion by someone on here ages ago, hence the humor.

In my experience Windows like to use page file / virtual memory in really unusual ways and there no way to configure it. Though I agree that you likely met problems with SSD controller rather than overwrite limit, but it's still doesn't mean that usage SSD as additional RAM it's good idea.