On 12/29/2012 1:54 AM, James Freer wrote: > I've got two spare PCs so i've never looked > at VM and certainly never had a PC capable of taking 16GB RAM. Current PC is > only about 18 months old so i think i need to shop more carefully next time. the new Intel Core i5 box I built last month can hold 32GB ram (4x8GB), I put 2x8GB in it. CPU is a I5-3570k, motherboard is Z77 based. 16gb of fast high grade memory was like US$59 my 2008 vintage Core2Duo box supported 8GB, that was plenty to run a 2-4GB VM as long as you aren't running /too/ much other stuff on the host OS concurrently. When I bought it, I only put 4GB in it. after upgrading my desktop system to the i5, I took the core2duo, put 8gb in it and set it up for my son (a college student), added a SSD as the main disk, and wow its fast now.