How to Start Minecraft With More Ram in 2023

Playing Minecraft can sometimes end with stuttering and lag, while your PC is with good hardware, and is in great condition. Reasons for FPS drops can be many, and one of them is the lack of RAM allocated in Minecraft.

To fix these lag issues, we will need to know how to start Minecraft with more RAM and understand how much RAM should be allocated for optimal performance.

Does Minecraft need a lot of RAM?

Minecraft is not a resource extensive game, and it does not need more than 4GB of RAM to work on a computer. With that said, you will need at least 4GB of RAM free to enjoy the game without any client lag or FPS drops.

If you are playing Minecraft on Windows and you have 8GB of RAM, reserving 4GB for the game only could keep the gameplay, but you will also need to measure if your OS doesn’t go overboard with the resource usage.

While many players have been reporting lag stuttering with the above-mentioned RAM, we always recommend using a motherboard with 2 RAM or 4 RAM sticks plugged in it.

By having all of your motherboard slots filled out, your computer is receiving an increased boost to memory bandwidth, ensuring that no lag will be encountered while playing your favorite block game.

Can you play Minecraft with 4GB RAM?

Minecraft requires only 4GB of RAM, but that doesn’t mean your PC should have a total of 4GB. To play the game without any lag or FPS drops, you will need to have 4GB allocated to the game only, and make sure that your system can afford it.

While most computers are built with 4GB of RAM and try to run Minecraft and have constant stutters, the game is still playable under the lowest settings.

To prevent further lag in Minecraft, players will need to seriously consider the items they are using. Redstone items can be a lag causer, thus they can act as forbidden items, and ensure smooth gameplay.

Will allocating more RAM to Minecraft make it faster?

Allocating more RAM to Minecraft will indeed make the game faster. It will also let you boost your render distance and other graphics.

While Minecraft was in its early beta stages, using 2GB of RAM was more than enough, but with the newer updates, using 4 or more gigs of RAM will ensure you have a pleasant gaming experience.

Experimenting with Minecraft items can also cause a huge lag and completely delete your server. Not to mention what can happen if someone joins a Minecraft server and gets hit by a lag machine.

To help you understand more about Minecraft and how resources hungry it can get, you can view this list of the laggiest items.

1. Glowing signs

Glowing signs are one of the laggiest items in Minecraft, especially when done in bulk. They can be easily stacked one next to another, and cause players to experience huge FPS drops.

To create a glowing sign, a player needs to have a glowing ink sack, which is used to add color to their sign, making it a glowing one.

However, to improve the lag experience from glowing signs, players can also use all the lines and characters, a sign can give, causing players to drop FPS until far away from them.

2. Maps

Maps are one of the biggest lag causes for Minecraft worlds. By just creating a single map while exploring, the world folder will generate a special map file, which cannot be deleted.

Discovering and creating multiple maps can use additional space in Minecraft, causing lag over time.

If you are playing Minecraft Bedrock edition the lag caused is even more, because every time a map is created, it gets divided into 5 different items. The map starts from level 0 and shows the whole map, with additional 4 levels, introducing the different parts of the map generated.

The bad part with maps in Minecraft is that you cannot simply delete them from your world folder, as they will keep existing.

However, there is a way to erase all data, and you will need to use a tool to erase Minecraft maps, which is externally downloaded.

3. Hoppers

Hoppers are known for being a dangerous lag item in most Minecraft servers. For them to work efficiently, the server will need to check them over a certain amount of ticks.

On top of that hoppers can perform an action depending on the tick rate set, requiring optimizations and knowledge, so players don’t experience slow hoppers.

But even a well-optimized Minecraft world or server can be easily targeted if a hopper filled with items points to a chest filled with different kinds of items.

Imagine having wood inside your hopper, but your small chest is filled with cobblestones. The hopper will continuously try to find an empty space so it can start extracting its items into the chest.

If the hopper cannot extract items, it will be left retrying, causing resource consumption. When this is done with multiple hoppers, resource consumptions grow immensely, and cause tremendous server lag.

4. Glowing item frames

Glowing item frames are my favorite item when playing on small anarchy servers. They are one of the easiest to obtain and craft items, which can also act as landmines.

When creating glowing item frames, the tick rate of the server can start dropping depending on the number of frames existing on certain land, and players near them.

The easiest way to destroy player experience without getting caught is by destroying 1 block beneath surface, and placing glowing item frames, so when players search for a safe spot, their FPS will drop down quickly.

To boost the power of glowing item frames, you can place a glowing item, such as a glowstone, sea lantern, or any other item with glow effects.

5. TNT Explosions

One of the oldest tricks in the book – is TNT explosions. When a chunk is filled with exploding TNTs, players get small amounts of FPS drops, which increase by the amount of TNT placed, and chunks affected.

While newer versions of Minecraft offer TNT explosion optimizations, players can still suffer FPS lags, depending on how many TNTs were blown at the same time.

Since the world or server needs to count every working item, igniting a huge amount of TNT, and making them explode at the same time can be a lag trigger.

6. Continuously moving items

Continuously moving items are also a lag causer, which depends on the type of entity, and how often they will be moving. For example, a low-level piston activation system can easily cause lag, but a high-level piston activation will cause lag more frequently.

Not to mention that moving carts with powered rails are also counted as a moving entity, and can cause Minecraft FPS drops while using it for a villager collecting system or similar projects.

How to add more RAM to Minecraft Java Edition

To allocate more RAM in Minecraft, you will need to stop your game and then open your Minecraft launcher.

1. Head over to the Minecraft: Java Edition tab, and locate the “Installations” tab.

2. Find the Minecraft version profile you wish to edit, and click on the three dots.

3. After you get to the “Resolution” screen, you will need to click on “More Options”, located under the resolution fields.

4. Scroll down until you see “JVM Arguments”, and then edit the “-Xmx(number)” to the number of gigabytes you wish to allocate for Minecraft.

5. Once you have edited the amount of RAM you wish to allocate, hit “Save”, and close the settings.

Upon starting your Minecraft launcher, a new amount of RAM will be applied, and the need to tweak the settings once again will not be needed.

How much RAM should I give Minecraft

Depending on the OS you are using, different amounts of RAM can be allocated in Minecraft. For example, Windows 64-bit versions require 4GB of RAM to be reserved for the system.

If you are playing on an 8GB PC, allocating 4GB of RAM to your Minecraft launcher is the maximum capacity.

However, if you have more RAM in your PC, going up will not be a problem. Your only problem would be the RAM usage from Windows and the minimum requirement of 4GB RAM free space for the system.

For Linux users the same terms don’t apply. Linux requires less than 500MB of RAM to operate properly, so starting Minecraft with more RAM will not cause any issues.

However, as per many recommendations, reserving at least 1 or 2GB of RAM for your Linux OS is the healthiest way to keep your system without issues, and prevent Minecraft from crashing.

Conclusion

Minecraft is one of the few games that doesn’t require a huge amount of resources to play the game. It can have its graphics lowered, and provide a healthy amount of FPS.

However, allocating all of your RAM can cause the game to crash, or drop frame rates since the system will not have any resources to use and upkeep its processes.