64GB is wasteful for general use with an i5-12400.

No.

For web browsing, Office, streaming, and light gaming, 32GB is more than you’ll ever use. Most people are fine with 16GB. The i5-12400 is a solid mid-range chip, but it’s not doing heavy rendering or running a dozen VMs. Even with a few Chrome tabs, Discord, and a game, you’ll rarely hit 32GB.

64GB makes sense if you’re editing 4K video, running large datasets, or hosting multiple virtual machines. For general use, it’s just money sitting in your DIMM slots. The CPU’s memory controller can handle 64GB, but you won’t feel any performance gain—just a lighter wallet.

Save the $50–80 for something that actually matters, like a better SSD or a faster GPU.