🧩 Is 8GB RAM still enough in 2026 or should I go for 16GB?

My PC has 8GB RAM and it's been getting slower. It's worst when I have lots of browser tabs open. A normal day for me is 15 to 20 tabs across a few windows, music or videos playing, and sometimes a light game. Switching between apps lags in a way it didn't a year ago. I opened Task Manager during a bad moment. Memory was almost full the whole time. So I'm fairly sure it's the RAM, not the storage or the processor. I was thinking of adding 1 more stick to make 16GB. My questions were about mixing brands. The old stick is 1 brand, and an exact matching one is hard to find. Does mixing cause problems? Also, is dual channel worth the trouble, or should I just replace both sticks with a fresh matched kit? A matched kit costs more, but at least I wouldn't be guessing. Update: I ordered a matched 16GB kit. I didn't want a compatibility headache for the sake of saving a little. Fitting it was simple. I only had to check the manual to put both sticks in the right slots for dual channel. Within a day the difference was clear. Switching tabs is instant now, with none of the freezes I'd got used to. Apps in the background stopped reloading all the time too. I should have done this a year ago. Total cost wasn't much more than a single stick would have been, and I'd pay it again. The old sticks are in a drawer now. If you're stuck at 8GB with the same slowdown, Task Manager takes 1 minute to check. Anyone using 32GB? I wonder if that's overkill for normal use.

Mixing two different brands generally works but you lose the guarantee of both sticks running at the same speed and timings, one ends up dragging the other down to its slower spec most of the time. If dual channel matters to you for gaming, just get the matched kit and skip the guesswork entirely. Task manager sitting near full at 8GB is a pretty clear signal on its own.

16GB has been the sensible default for a couple of years now, 8GB starts choking the moment you have a browser open alongside anything else running in the background. Went with a matched kit myself instead of adding a single stick, mixing brands worked fine for a friend of mine but he did have occasional random freezes that went away after switching to a proper matched pair.