I was going with 16gb at first but people told me I could settle for 8gb (since I don't do video editing).
Was also going for that first :3 But the i7 processor only got the advantage in a few games (atm). So if it will change in the future I will go for it :>
Well, lets say you use youtube, all of us do. 10 tabs? Lets look at the memory consumption...
At the same time, we run toribash, not to much of a change, except it keep leaking and eating more and more. Ouch.
Now lets add a game upon that, BF3, Arma, whatever, wow, we passed 8Gig by far.
Lets continue; a Movie! 8Gigs are crying, and so is the youtube buffert that keeps on emptying now.
Wait! I want to open PS and edit a avatar, or Blender and make a fast 3d illustration cause I feel like it (by now you'd have to kill stuff.)
And to add some topping; Lets open uTorrent and share some 100% legal stuff to over 100 peers!
8Gigs won't do for sure, not if you want to stay on top.
I do see your point, I got no idea how much anything consumes in RAM :3
Ctrl+shift+escape and you can watch your UC and RAM use and stuff ;p
More than 8gb of Ram isn't very usefull actually, windows 7 + basics softs use approximatively 1gb, that makes 7gb left for games and softwares. If you're not planning to have 3 or 4 screens and do a thousand stuff at the same time you can stick with 8gb
I don't see the point to be able to play 2 games, watch a movie and browse the internet at the same time, unless you have 2 brains and 8 eyes ;o

yeah sure add vodka
also about pc build
i7 3000 series will be proper choice
High settings
Lower
Temperature at full load
Some benchmarks at OC