# How much is Discourse affected by a faster CPU?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407>\
**Category:** Self-hosting\
**Tags:** hosting\
**Created:** [March 5, 2017, 11:11am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407 "2017-03-05T11:11:37Z")\
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**Author:** ![codinghorror](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/codinghorror/32/110067_2.png) [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)\
**Post date:** [March 5, 2017, 11:36am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-much-is-discourse-affected-by-a-faster-cpu/58407/3 "2017-03-05T11:36:08Z")

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The existing guidelines of 1GB RAM for “small” Discourse and 2GB ram for “medium” Discourse are quite reasonable and valid.

Swap is always recommended for Discourse. You can check `free -m` to determine how much swap is in use. In typical use you should see low swap use, like so:

```
              total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 2001 1343 107 218 550 253
Swap: 1023 175 848

```

If you see high swap use – if used was `900` instead of `175` that indicates a problem, that the instance may need more physical RAM.

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