Performance and Memory Utilization, is 8GB enough RAM?

Last updated: 2026-10-01

Understand RAM and performance considerations for Content Search operations. Learn whether 8GB is sufficient and how to optimize memory usage.

This article will advise you about memory and CPU usage when using SharePoint Content Search.

Question

How much memory and CPU is needed for using Content Search? Is 8GB enough RAM?

Answer

The tool’s memory usage is managed by the .NET Core and will try to allocate the correct amount of memory available that is on the machine.

The number of results in the report will impact how much memory the application will need to render all of the results.

Is 8GB enough?

A machine with 8GB RAM will still work for smaller jobs (less than 100K files), but may hang for a large job.

As a general rule if you have more than 50 sites and more than 100K total items/files, 8GB would not be adequate and 16GB or more would be recommended.