No you rarely need to expand memory.

Many dos 386 games will run fine on 4mb (or less)

The question is what games / goals do you have?

For me I’ve always pretty much used the system as it came
but obviously if you only have one machine you need to expand it to handle your intended software.

Also worth noting if your using real hardware and real drives 4mb + Windows 3.1 can be slow but most simple Windows games will run great once loaded. Other Windows apps not so much.

At the end of the day if you use the system as is and love it why worry about it?

Down the road if you find you can’t live without Duke 3D on a 386, understand there are other ISA solutions that can extend your memory to 8mb, sure it’s a little slower but who cares if it gets you over a hump?

True.

Many games worked back in the day when I had 386DX 25 clone (around 1990 or so), bought with my savings when I was young and still in high school, used the money from my work during summers, equipped with 4MB but I did not look beyond more games other than what I had.

That machine did run windows 3.1 and 3.11 on 4mb and yes was slower, one time I was testing extra 4MB on it and was nice for a person in same computer for short time.

I already have selection of other hardware using 486DX, DX2 66 and Pentium models for more demanding ones.

Cheers,

4 meg is more then enough for a 386. Unless maybe you wanted Windows.

4-8mb, either of those would be perfect!