WTF?! Cinder City, an upcoming open-world co-operative PvE game from NC (formerly NCSoft), is a first for PC gaming – and not a good one. Its Steam listing reveals that the recommended amount of system memory is a whopping 64GB, which in today's AI-driven hellscape will require selling more than just a kidney.
Games are getting bigger, more hardware-intensive, and less well-optimized. The end result is usually more high-end GPUs being required for "standard" gameplay, but Cinder City asks for just an RTX 4060 (8GB). What's unusual, however, is the staggering 64GB of RAM it recommends.
It's often a point of contention when a PC game recommends "just" 32GB of RAM. In Cinder City's case, this is the minimum requirement.
According to the latest Steam survey, only 4% of participants have 64GB in their machines. 16GB remains the most popular amount, used by 41% of participants.
Given that RTX 4060 recommendation and the fact it also asks for an Intel Core i7-12700/Ryzen 7 7800X3D, this could be a mistake, but it seems unlikely given the listing has been up for several days now.
NC couldn't have picked a worse time to release the first game to recommend 64GB. Right now, 64GB DDR5 RAM kits on Newegg start at $800 and reach $2,800.
It looks like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Ethan Tan, a memory industry consultant and former Samsung China executive, recently said that he expects memory prices to rise by 40% to 50% in the third quarter of 2026 compared to the prior quarter, and by another 30% to 40% in Q4.
NC still hasn't confirmed a release date for Cinder City, so that 64GB recommendation could change. It's worth remembering that IO Interactive originally recommended 32GB of RAM for 007 First Light, before later specifying that this was only for the 4K Ultra setting.
Even if things do change, it's shocking to see a 64GB recommendation for a game, especially at a time when few people are willing to pay a fortune to upgrade their PCs.