As far as a RAM upgrade… I personally think that is a waste. If your system is eating up 8GB… the problem is NOT the hardware… it’s the software configuration. There is no reason in the world you should need more than 8GB unless you’re a hardcore gamer. 16 GB to write code? Seems obscene.
I run a pretty minimal system. I run a light window manager on a light Linux install. I only have 4 GB of RAM with absolutely ZERO problems… ever. At no time in the last 2 years of ownership have I said “Wow, my computer is slow.”
I’m about to build a custom desktop and there is no way I will install more than 6GB of RAM. I just won’t need it.
As a matter of fact, @traq and I have begun hardware hacking on BeagleBone Blacks. These only have 1GB of RAM and they’re definitely fast. I mean… they have no desktop environments… at least mine doesn’t but that only goes to show that for many tasks… all you need is a command line.
A Raspberry Pi has even less RAM than that and look:
People run full blown distros on them with desktop environments. More RAM will be a waste of money.
