32GB is the new minimum for 4K editing.

Yes.

16GB will work for short clips or lightweight projects, but the moment you add multiple tracks, effects, or color grading, you’ll hit the wall. Premiere Pro eats RAM for breakfast—especially with 4K footage. You’ll see stuttering playback, longer exports, and frequent crashes. 32GB gives you breathing room for proxies, background rendering, and actually seeing your timeline without fighting the software.

If you’re doing anything more than cutting single-stream 4K with no effects, 16GB is begging for frustration. 32GB won’t solve everything (GPU matters, storage speed matters), but it fixes the most common bottleneck.

Don’t cheap out on RAM if you value your time.