How To Allocate More RAM To Minecraft

If you play Minecraft on Windows regularly, chances are you have a big world. Maybe you play with mods or have multiple people in it. Either way, you may have experienced the occasional slowdown, especially when loading new chunks. If so, you may want to allocate more RAM to Minecraft.

This guide covers everything you need to know about how to allocate more RAM to Minecraft, including why you would allocate more RAM to Minecraft, the amount of RAM you should typically have allocated based on your PC’s total amount of RAM, and how to allocate more RAM through the default Minecraft Launcher.

Note: This guide only covers Minecraft: Java Edition on Windows. Minecraft: Bedrock Edition does not allow you to allocate more RAM.

Updated 4/28/2025

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What Happens If I Allocate More RAM To Minecraft?

Allocating more RAM to Minecraft can improve your performance, especially if you’re playing on a large world or server. The larger your Minecraft world, the more memory your computer needs to run smoothly.

If done improperly, allocating more RAM to Minecraft can slow down your computer as it needs RAM to run other software, such as Discord. If you’re uncomfortable with some light hardware tweaking, you may want to find someone who can do this.

How Much RAM Should I Allocate To Play Minecraft?

The amount of RAM you should allocate to Minecraft depends on how you’re playing it. If you’re playing vanilla Minecraft, you only need around 3-5GB of RAM allocated — a little bit more than the 2GB of RAM allocated by default.

If you’re playing Minecraft with mods, try to have 5-7GB of RAM allocated, depending on how many mods you have installed. More mods require your computer to load more into its memory, hence the additional RAM requirement.

Of course, the more RAM you have, the more you can allocate — but only up to a point. If you only have 8GB of RAM, buying more RAM might be best if you want to play Minecraft with mods.

How To Check How Much RAM Is Allocated To Minecraft

To check how much RAM is currently allocated to Minecraft, open the game and press F3 to open a detailed overlay.

While the overlay can be overwhelming, you only need the Mem section in its top right corner.

Ideally, a new world will fluctuate between 20% and 40% of your allocated RAM. If you’ve been playing for a while and your RAM is fluctuating close to 100%, you may want to allocate more memory if you have it.

How To Find Your Current Amount Of RAM

Before you allocate more RAM to Minecraft, you must figure out how much RAM your computer has in the first place. After all, you can’t allocate more RAM than you have, and you should never allocate more than half of your total RAM to Minecraft. If you do, you risk slowing down your PC in other ways.

1. Open Start

Open your Start Menu by clicking the Windows button on your taskbar’s bottom left corner or hit the Windows Key on your keyboard.

2. Type System Information in the search bar

On top of the menu is a search bar. Type System Information into it, then click the System Information app that appears.

3. Find your RAM amount

Under System Summary, browse the list until you find Installed Physical Memory (RAM). That number is your total RAM.

You can also find your total RAM through the Windows Task Manager. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, select Task Manager in the resulting menu, then select Performance in the Task Manager list.

How To Allocate More RAM To Minecraft: Java Edition Through Minecraft Launcher

Now that you know your PC’s total RAM, as well as how much RAM you should allocate to Minecraft, here’s how to allocate more RAM to Minecraft: Java Edition through the default Minecraft Launcher.

Note: This process does not work with Minecraft: Bedrock Edition.

1. Open the Minecraft Launcher

Open the Minecraft Launcher and select Minecraft: Java Edition via the left-hand sidebar.

2. Select Installations

Select the Installations tab on the page’s top left corner.

3. Choose your release

Find your release via the list, then click the … icon. Then click Edit via the dropdown. For this guide, we’ll be choosing the default Java Edition release.

4. Select more options

The Edit Installation page provides you with some settings. However, we won’t be adjusting these. Instead, click the More Options dropdown.

5. Find the JVM arguments text box

Find the JVM arguments text box, and click into the part that says “-Xmx2G.”

Then, change the 2 to the amount of RAM you’d like to allocate. In this example, we’ll change the 2 to a 4.

Don’t forget to click Save on the Launcher’s bottom right corner.

How To Allocate More RAM To Minecraft Using CurseForge Launcher

If you use mods while playing Minecraft, chances are you have the CurseForge Launcher installed to manage those mods. CurseForge is an alternative to the default Minecraft launcher, and it includes an even easier way to allocate more RAM to Minecraft.

1. Enter Settings

Open CurseForge and click the Settings icon at the bottom left.

2. Click Minecraft

Select Minecraft from the list of games on the left-hand side.

3. Find “Java Settings”

Scroll down to the Java Settings category and find the Allocated Memory area. You can drag the slider to allocate RAM to Minecraft: Java Edition. Apply the same logic we covered previously in this guide. Don’t allocate too much RAM to Minecraft — only as much as you need to run it with mods.

Note: This process only applies to Minecraft: Java Edition if you launch it through the CurseForge Launcher. If you want to alter the RAM allocated to vanilla Java, you must follow the process covering the default Minecraft Launcher.

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