Yes, upgrade to 16GB for large C++ projects

Yes, upgrade to 16GB for large C++ projects.

For something like Chromium, 8GB is almost certainly a bottleneck. The compiler will hit swap hard, and that 256GB SSD will be thrashing instead of building.

Here’s the short version: Chromium builds are heavily parallelized (make -jN or ninja). Each compilation unit needs a chunk of memory. With 8GB, you either limit parallelism or push the laptop into swap hell. Either way, your build is slower. With 16GB, you can run more parallel jobs without hitting swap, and the SSD will spend more time on actual I/O.

The $40–50 is a no-brainer. You’ll see a noticeable improvement – not a 2x speedup, but likely 20-40% faster for full builds, and dramatically less frustration during incremental compiles when you have a browser, editor, and terminal open.

Future You will thank you every time you kick off a build.