This is fine. SQL server generally tries to obtain as much memory as possible but this is not an issue for small scale development. If you really are concerned by memory etc, I would look at creating a VM and hosting your server on that. You can use a great product from Oracle no less. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html?ssSourceSiteId=ocomen[^] install the software and load an image onto your pc. It is great because you set the memory, cpu and disk so if your sql server was on the vm and you limited the vm to 2gb, you never use any more than that. Anyway, your pc seems more than capable for this. I have (unfortunately) worked on lesser memory than yours so it should be fine!!! Just go ahead and install. If the performance is a real pain, re-think and uninstall or turn of the services... either way, there is no harm in playing! :-D