Every new OS has some system requirements to run the OS smoothly. Similarly, Windows 11 has some minimum system requirements to run the new OS but it has been very controversial because Microsoft has announced that the minimum RAM required to run Windows 11 is only 4 GB. Can Windows 11 run with a mere 4 GB of RAM?
In this blog, we will compare the previous version of Windows running with 4 GB RAM and were users satisfied with that. We will also see whether Microsoft’s claim to run Windows 11 with a minimum of 4 GB RAM is true or not.
If you are planning to upgrade to Windows 11 from Windows 10, then this is a must-read blog for you.
If you are running Windows 10 and you want to check the minimum system requirements for Windows 11, then download and install PC Health Check to see whether your computer supports minimum requirements or not.
Once you have installed PC Health Check, run the application to the minimum system requirements and whether your system supports Windows 11 upgrade or not.
Click on check now to check the minimum system requirements.
I tested it on my computer and I was astonished to see that the minimum RAM requirement was 4 GB. Although it is not the cause of worry for me because I have 8 GB RAM to run Windows 11 successfully
Most of the computers at home are for education purposes for children which do not need a great configuration or the computers are for regular work like to watch movies or to make some presentation or to pay bills etc which do not have more than 4 GB RAM and they work quite good with the existing configuration.
But the question arises that if Microsoft claims that Windows 11 can run a minimum of 4 GB RAM then is it to think that the computer will only run or will perform some tasks also?
Speaking I have a computer with a great configuration of 8 GB RAM and Intel Core i5@ 2.90GHz. With this configuration, I can do the regular office work and can see movies, and can perform other tasks which do not require more processing.
However, I am not able to multitask on my computer and I have to suffer from unexpected shutdown instead of having genuine Windows 10. These unexpected shutdowns are very annoying and sometimes you have to start the whole task from the beginning if you have not saved it.
To try Windows 11, I used my new laptop (This is a testing laptop) as Windows 11 requires TPM and a minimum of 4 GB RAM. I installed Windows 11 Home as I already had Windows 10 in S mode.
Initially, I did not face any issue as no files and folders were open and no apps were running in the background, therefore, everything was going great. But after that, I started doing regular web browsing and started my office work and I started facing issues with Windows 11 on a 4 GB RAM computer.
I turned off the laptop and started again and this time the experience was worse because it took hours to start and once started I had to wait for another 15 minutes to see the cursor moving. The taskbar was not responsive and memory usage was over 80% without initiating any task.
I made a mistake by opening Chrome in my testing laptop because it jumped the memory usage at over 90%. Opening tabs to browse some websites was another big hurdle because my laptop was not able to take that much processing load and it went quiet for a few minutes.
Thereafter I tried to open some video editing tools and some screen capturing tools but it is all a dream now to take the screenshots of Windows 11 running with 4 GB RAM because computers will only start with 4 GB RAM and you will not be able to perform any task.
Also Read: Windows 10 Vs Windows 11 – What We Can Anticipate
Is 4 GB RAM enough to run Windows 11?
As Microsoft claims that the minimum requirement is 4 GB RAM then do not forget to emphasize the word MINIMUM because with 4 GB RAM, yes you can start a Windows 11 computer but you will not be able to do anything on it even if the applications are small.
To run Windows 11 smoothly the minimum required RAM is 8 GB with 1 TB hard disk.
With 8 GB RAM, you can easily do regular work and you won’t find any issues of crashing or memory usage going up to 90% or 95 %.
But if you want to run some heavy games and would like to do some professional work that requires some heavy applications, then I would recommend you to go up to 16 GB RAM for a better experience.
Also Read: How To Set The Default Browser On Windows 11
Running Windows 11 with 4 GB RAM and 8 GB RAM difference
| Windows 11 with 4 GB | Windows 11 with 8 GB |
|---|---|
| Computer startup takes a long time | Computer Startup is smooth |
| The browsing experience is not good because it is very slow | The browsing experience is great and many tabs can be opened at one time. |
| Files take more time to load and open | The file can be opened quickly |
| Hangs a lot | The computer does not hang |
| Not at all made for gaming | You can play games |
| Increased memory usage | Not much memory usage |
| Download speed is not enough and computer crashes | Download speed is great and users can work swiftly |
My recommendation:-
If you are using a laptop with Windows 10 on it and it just manages to have minimum requirements to get Windows 11, I would suggest sticking to Windows 10. However, if you are planning to upgrade your RAM or buy a new laptop or PC, you can think of getting an upgrade to Windows 11.