I've got a laptop with 16GB DDR5 RAM and a RTX 4060, and I want to stream to Twitch while playing newer games like Black Myth: Wukong. Right now it feels sluggish and I'm getting stutters. Should I upgrade to 32GB or is something else bottlenecking my setup?
The stutters you're hitting are almost certainly your GPU maxing out rather than RAM - a 4060 does struggle when a game like Black Myth: Wukong is also sharing resources with streaming encoders. If you haven't already, try dropping your in-game settings or switching to a lower bitrate on Twitch, which costs you way less than a RAM upgrade and will tell you pretty fast whether it's actually a VRAM/GPU problem.
Before you drop money on RAM, check your CPU usage and disk activity while streaming and gaming - that's where your real bottleneck probably is. 16GB DDR5 is genuinely enough for gaming and streaming together, but the RTX 4060 paired with most laptop CPUs means your processor is likely maxing out trying to encode the stream while the GPU handles the game. That's what's causing the sluggishness, not the RAM itself.
Streaming eats a ton of CPU cycles no matter what, and a 4060 is already being pushed hard by Black Myth: Wukong at decent settings. You'd get way more benefit from lowering your stream bitrate, reducing in-game settings (especially ray tracing), or using hardware encoding if your setup supports it. Some games and streaming software can offload encoding to the GPU, which would free up your CPU significantly. Even bumping to 32GB wouldn't fix a CPU bottleneck - you'd just be throwing money at the wrong problem.
If you're determined to upgrade, I'd honestly look at what CPU you've got first. That's probably your real issue here. Throw some monitoring software on there (like MSI Afterburner or Task Manager on the performance tab) and watch what's actually pegged at 100% when you're getting stutters. Once you know what's struggling, you'll know if RAM is even part of the solution.
16GB should technically handle gaming and streaming together, but your sluggishness likely isn't purely a RAM problem - the RTX 4060 is the real constraint here, as it's already pushing hard to run something like Black Myth: Wukong at decent settings, and adding encoding workload on top of that will tank your frame rate. Before dropping money on RAM, try lowering in-game settings, reducing your stream bitrate, or using hardware encoding instead of CPU encoding if you aren't already, since that moves the workload off your processor. If you're still getting stutters after optimization, the GPU is what needs upgrading, not the RAM - 32GB would just sit idle while your graphics card does all the struggling.
What's your actual GPU usage sitting at while you're streaming - is it pinned at 99%? If so, that's your answer right there: the 4060 can't handle Black Myth: Wukong at your desired settings while simultaneously encoding a stream, and RAM won't fix that. You'd need to dial back game settings, lower your stream bitrate, or accept frame drops.
One thing everyone's glossing over though - what's your CPU doing? If you're using NVENC encoding on that 4060, you're still burning GPU resources, but if you're trying to use CPU encoding instead, your processor might be the real villain here, not the RAM or even the GPU. Check task manager or your streaming software's stats and see where the actual ceiling is.
I'd look at your GPU first, not your RAM. The previous responses nailed it - 16GB DDR5 is solid for this workload, but a 4060 is genuinely struggling with Black Myth: Wukong at any decent settings, especially when encoding a stream simultaneously. That game is demanding, and streaming pulls real GPU resources away from gaming performance. The RAM upgrade won't fix stutters if your graphics card is already maxed out trying to do both jobs at once.
Your best immediate move is actually checking what's happening under load. Run a monitoring tool and see if your GPU is sitting at 99% utilization while streaming - if it is, throwing more RAM at the problem is pointless. I've dealt with similar situations where people assume they need more memory when really the bottleneck is elsewhere entirely. You might need to dial down game settings (resolution, frame rate targets, graphics quality), use a lighter streaming encoder, or accept that streaming 1080p 60fps while playing a AAA title on a 4060 just isn't realistic. Some people get decent results with NVIDIA's RTX encoding, which offloads some work from the main GPU cores, so that's worth experimenting with if your streaming software supports it.
If you're determined to keep streaming at decent quality without dropping game settings, upgrading the GPU would help way more than upgrading RAM. But honestly, before spending anything, verify exactly where your usage is peaking - CPU, GPU, or RAM - because the fix might just be configuration changes.
Don't just throw more RAM at this and hope it fixes things - you'll waste money. I had a similar situation where I kept blaming memory when my actual issue was way simpler. Turned out my CPU was thermal throttling while streaming, and my GPU was doing all the heavy lifting. Since you've got DDR5, your RAM bandwidth is already solid. The 4060 is the real culprit here. That GPU has to render the game *and* handle encoding (either hardware or software) at the same time, which is legitimately asking a lot of a mid-range card.
Before spending on upgrades, try this: lower your in-game settings first - especially resolution or ray tracing. Check what happens to your framerate and overall system responsiveness. Also, make sure you're using NVENC (your GPU's hardware encoder) in OBS or whatever streaming software you're using, not CPU encoding. If you're already doing that and still getting stutters, honestly the 4060 just isn't beefy enough for smooth 1080p/60fps streaming *plus* running Black Myth: Wukong at high settings simultaneously. A RAM bump won't change that equation 🎮
If you're set on upgrading, a better GPU (like a 4070 or newer) would actually solve your problem. More RAM might help slightly if you're also running a ton of other stuff, but I'd watch your Task Manager's memory tab while streaming first - if you're only using 12-14GB out of 16GB, that's not your issue.
Have you checked whether you're encoding the stream with your GPU or CPU? 16GB DDR5 is solid for this workload, but here's what folks often miss: if you're doing software encoding (CPU-based), your processor is doing double duty and that's where the real strain hits, not the RAM itself. The GPU is probably your tighter constraint with the 4060, yeah, but before throwing money at an upgrade, try switching to hardware encoding if your streaming software supports it - that offloads the work to your graphics card's dedicated encoder and frees up CPU cycles. If you're already using hardware encoding and still getting stutters, then you're hitting the limits of what that GPU can push while maintaining stream quality and game performance simultaneously.
Looking at your setup, I'd say grab a monitoring tool like MSI Afterburner or even the built-in task manager and watch what's happening during a stream session. Everyone's already nailed it that the GPU is your likely culprit, but here's the thing people sometimes miss: your encoding choice matters massively. If you're using NVIDIA's hardware encoding (NVENC), you're offloading it from the GPU cores doing the game rendering, which is good. But if you're on software encoding through OBS, your CPU has to handle both game logic and streaming compression at once, which pulls resources everywhere.
Before dropping cash on 32GB, try lowering Black Myth's resolution or frame rate target by just a bit - even going from 1440p high to 1440p medium can free up enough GPU headroom to make streaming actually playable. The RAM upgrade won't solve this because your problem isn't memory pressure, it's that single graphics card trying to do two demanding jobs. If you really want to stream that game smoothly at high settings, you'd be looking at something like an RTX 4070 or better, which is obviously a bigger investment. The 16GB you have is genuinely sufficient; the 4060 just isn't the right tool for this particular job.
I'd actually lean toward the GPU being your culprit here, but not for the reason you might think. The RTX 4060 itself can handle Black Myth: Wukong, and 16GB DDR5 is solid for streaming too - the real problem is that streaming encoders like OBS pull from your GPU resources, and that's where things get tight. When you're gaming and encoding simultaneously, you're basically asking one card to do two demanding jobs at once. The stutters you're experiencing are likely frame drops happening because the GPU's memory bandwidth and compute cores are getting hammered.
That said, before you upgrade anything, actually measure what's happening. Open Task Manager or GPU-Z while you're streaming and gaming, and check if your GPU is sitting at 95-100% utilization. Also keep an eye on your CPU - if that's maxing out instead, then the bottleneck is somewhere completely different and RAM won't fix it. A lot of people assume RAM is the problem because it's the easiest thing to blame, but in your case with a 4060 running Black Myth: Wukong while Twitch encoding happens in parallel, the graphics card is almost certainly the limiting factor.
If GPU is indeed pegged, your realistic options are either dropping in-game settings (lower resolution, reduced ray tracing, frame caps), using a better streaming encoder if your CPU has headroom, or considering a GPU upgrade down the line. Throwing 32GB at this won't solve the stutters though - it'll just sit there unused while the 4060 struggles.
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