While Valve jokingly asked the industry for spare RAM at GDC, Markiplier was streaming Resident Evil Requiem with 192GB of memory and 96GB of VRAM

As the games industry awaits the arrival of Valve's Steam Frame VR headset, Steam Machine mini PC, and brand new Steam Controller, the RAMpocalypse is raging on. So much so that Valve jokingly asked at GDC last week if anyone had any spare RAM, could they send it the company's way to help with the launch of its new hardware. While everyone scrambles to find the best RAM for gaming, it seems that not everyone is short of memory in their at-home rigs.

While scrolling through my feed today, I found an absurd screenshot from one of Markiplier's Resident Evil Requiem livestreams, during which his PC specs were on show. The screengrab was caught by Twitter user @KipAshleyy, who observed that the content creator and Iron Lung star had an absurd 191.25GB of RAM in his machine, along with an RTX 6000 Workstation GPU and 95GB of VRAM.

Until now, we've thought that all the RAM shortages are due to AI data center construction snapping up the world's supply, but I think a raid on Markiplier's house might reveal some things.

Before you actually get your coat and shoes on to go and raid a famous YouTuber's house, I do have some answers as to why there's such an absurd amount of memory in Markiplier's gaming PC.

Since he was the driving force behind the recent movie, Iron Lung, it turns out the YouTube star had to put together a "render farm" in his house in order to simulate the graphics and visual effects needed for the film's water and more.

On his Distractible podcast, Markiplier has discussed the process of pulling together this render farm through eBay discounts on server hardware, using his base of knowledge from building computers to learn how.

"I was so proud of my ability to go on eBay and find deals", he said about his server hardware.

"And people need to understand it's not just for like, rendering video or encoding video, that's not what it's for. It's not even for just rendering CG scenes which it can do very well. It's purpose-built for distributed simulations. Simulations need a lot of compute power."

More recently, since the film's release, he's been talking more about how he's selling off the components and subsidising his own personal PC with updated parts from it. Clearly, that's the case.

"Now that Iron Lung is wrapping up, I'm going to get it out of my bathroom... But I'm gonna be moving it, I'm gonna be selling stuff, and then I'm gonna convert it to {be} much more optimized streamwise," he said.

Sadly, I don't think Valve will have much luck if it heads to eBay to find deals on server hardware while manufacturing the Steam Frame and Steam Machine, but it's good to know that at least someone has ended up with a plentiful supply of computing memory in these trying times. Right now, RAMageddon is meant to continue on until at least 2028, based on those manufacturing contracts suppliers have signed with AI companies.

Maybe creating a film in your garage and spilling a render farm server into every nook and cranny of your house is the way to go if you're looking for new RAM deals. That said, I'm not sure how sustainable that solution will be if you don't have the solar panels Markiplier has for his home.