Why do people purchase ridiculous amounts of RAM?

I max out my 6GB easily running virtual desktops. People over the ages have kept saying certain limits of RAM are all we need and look where we are now from ten years ago. Those who say it is an ego thing or some other over compensation for lacking in other areas are only partially right. RAM is cheap compared to other hardware and is one of the few things that can't hurt by having too much or some extra for the future. Also people mistake their memory usage for what is actually their page/swap file usage, two different things there.

Some people that work with CAD or Adobe Applications may need the extra RAM. I have seen PDF files that were almost 5 Gigs. Having the extra RAM allows you to open the file and be able to do the changes it may require. The majority of the people 99% do not need the extra ram. Any computer running Windows XP and 2 gigs of RAM should be enough for anyone go into Youtube, send emails and surf the web.

Well 4GB is starting to be not enough in a lot of instances of RAM. 8GB of RAM is the next step up in dual channel memory, which is better to have than single channel. You get much better transfer rates for data across the board and between components for dual channel. In most instances 8GB will be good for 95% of users. Your average user, gamer, etc, will not need more than this for a long time.

Though... in a few instances there are certain people who will use more RAM than this. Home servers, web servers, using visualization, high end graphic design (CS5 and higher) you can start to push up against that 8GB, so 16GB can be useful to a very few people.

Intel's new X79 chipset allows for two new features that utilize RAM in different than traditional ways. And can designate RAM for new uses, making the need (using that lightly) for RAM increased. The X79 boards have up to 8 DIMM memory slots, supporting 8GB per slot for 64GB total. This RAM can be used to create a RAM drive. Which is a virtual hard drive that uses RAM like a hard drive. The benefit of this is for someone who is transcoding HD video, high end graphics design like CS5, any memory intensive application will greatly benefit from this.

The other feature the X79 chipset allows you to do is RAM caching. This uses RAM as a buffer to either a SSD or a traditional mechanical hard drive. This speeds up the drive significantly when writing to it.

I have not been able to do a RAM drive yet myself. But I have had a client who did opt for 32GB of RAM, 16GB for system memory, 16GB for RAM caching, and end result was stunning!! RAM caching is amazing. *RAM caching is similar to SSD caching which is available in the Intel X58 chipset which uses a SSD drive (up to 60GB) as a buffer to a traditional mechanical hard drive.

Simple its cheaper, 64bit OS runs smoother, apps can address more memory. Also depends on usage. I run virtual machines a lot, even 8gb is not enough for me :P

yep, it is a ego thing