| Condition | Pagefile need | | :--- | :--- | | RAM usage never exceeds 20–24 GB | Very small (2–4 GB) | | RAM usage sometimes hits 28–30 GB | Small (4–8 GB) | | You run VMs, After Effects, or large datasets | Medium (8–16 GB) | | You want crash dumps (kernel/memory dumps) | Minimum ~2 GB + RAM size (32+ GB) |
For Windows 11 systems equipped with 32GB of RAM, determining the optimal paging file size can be a nuanced topic. The paging file, also known as the page file or virtual memory, serves as an extension of the physical RAM, allowing the system to use hard drive space as additional memory when the physical RAM is fully utilized. paging file size for 32gb ram windows 11