how to find how much ram you have

How to find how much RAM is installed on a computer

Updated: 12/31/2020 by Computer Hope

To view how much RAM is installed and available on your computer, follow the steps below.

Windows 10 and 8
Windows 7 and Vista
macOS
Linux
Windows XP, 2000, NT4, 98, 95, and ME.
Windows 3.x
MS-DOS

Windows 10 and 8

To view the total memory on a computer running Windows 10 or Windows 8, follow these steps.

Press the Windows key, type ram, and select the View RAM info option in the search results.

Or, in Windows 10, open Settings (click the gear icon in the Start menu, or press Windows key+I), click the System option, and select About in the left navigation menu.

In the System Properties window, look for Installed memory (RAM) in Windows 8, or Installed RAM in Windows 10.

Windows RAM total

Note

If the computer does not recognize the memory, it's not included in the "Installed memory (RAM)" or "Installed RAM" entry in the System Properties window.

View used and available resources

To determine the amount of available system resources, including memory, and what is currently being utilized, open the Task Manager. On the Processes tab, you can see which programs are running and using resources. On the Performance tab, you can see an overall picture of all the system resources. Click Memory on the left side to see how much memory is used under the In use (Compressed) label, and what's available under the Available label.

View memory in use and available in Windows 10

Windows 7 and Vista

To view the total memory on a computer running Windows 7 or Windows Vista, follow these steps.

Press the Windows key, type Properties, and then press Enter.
In the System Properties window, the Installed memory (RAM) entry displays the total amount of RAM installed in the computer. For example, in the picture below, there is 4 GB of memory installed in the computer.

Windows 7 System Properties

Note

If the computer does not recognize the memory, it's not included in the "Installed memory (RAM)" entry in the System Properties window.

Click Start.
In the Search box, type ram and click the Show how much RAM is on this computer entry in the search results.

Click Start.
Click System and Security
Under System, click View amount of RAM and processor speed.

View used and available resources

To determine the amount of available system resources, including memory, and what is currently being utilized, open the Task Manager. On the Processes tab, you can see which programs are running and using resources. On the Performance tab, you can see an overall picture of all the system resources. Click Memory on the left side to see how much memory is used under the In use (Compressed) label, and what's available under the Available label.

macOS

To view the total memory on a computer running macOS, follow these steps.

In the menu bar, click the Apple icon to open the Apple menu.
In the Apple menu, select About this Mac.

The system overview is displayed, including the amount of RAM installed.

Mac memory

Linux

To view the total memory on a computer running Linux, use the free or top commands.

Open a terminal and run free -h to view memory stats, including total RAM and swap.

free -h

          total     used      free    shared   buff/cache  available Mem:     985M     154M      182M    5.6M     647M        682M Swap:    511M      12K      511M

Or, run top, and press m to display total and available memory.

top

top - 12:36:53 up 1 day, 17:08,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00 Tasks:  99 total,   2 running,  55 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie %Cpu(s):  0.3 us,  0.3 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.3 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0          KiB Mem :  1008704 total,   187512 free,   157684 used,   663508 buff/cache          KiB Swap:   524284 total,   524272 free,       12 used.   698800 avail Mem

Windows XP, 2000, NT4, 98, 95, and ME

To view the total memory on a computer running Windows XP, 2000, NT4, 98, 95, or ME, follow these steps.

Open the Control Panel.
Double-click the Systems icon.
On the General tab, the amount of RAM currently installed and detected is listed.

Note

If the computer does not recognize the memory, it's not included in the "Installed memory (RAM)" entry in the System Properties window.

Alternative method

Windows 98, ME, 2000, and XP users can also run the System Information (msinfo32) program that comes pre-installed on the computer. For additional information about this program, see our msinfo32 definition.

View used and available resources

To determine the amount of available system resources, including memory, and what is currently being utilized, open the Task Manager. On the Processes tab, you can see which programs are running and using resources. On the Performance tab, you can see an overall picture of all the system resources. You can see how much memory is available next to the Available label.

Windows 3.x

To view the total memory on a computer running Windows 3.x, open the File menu, then Exit Windows. At the MS-DOS prompt, run the mem command.

MS-DOS

Note

These instructions are for early versions of Windows and MS-DOS. If you are running a Windows command line, the mem command is no longer supported.

At the MS-DOS prompt, type mem and press Enter.

Note

MS-DOS 6.2 does not accept or recognize more than 64 megabytes of RAM when typing mem. For further help with the mem command, see our mem command page.