What is the highest amount of ram a computer can support?

There are multiple factors that go into how much RAM a computer can suport. The two main things that can throttle the amount of RAM a computer can support, is the motherboard and the OS. 64-bit operating systems can support up to a theoretical 9 terabytes of RAM and the amount of RAM a motherboard can support depends on the manufacturer.

Possible. But 2500!? Impossible. It would need to cost at least 10000.

Yes this is possible to have that and more. A company in America named Maingear custom build some super performance PC's and they offer up to 98GB of RAM! They also overclock their CPU's to insane speeds of around the 4GHz mark.

It depends on the Computer.

A 32 bit system can support up to 4gb og memory and a 64bit system (in theory) support 16TB of memory. Now I'm just a first year student so don't quote me, but I think that I'm right....I hope.

It's possible but I highly doubt it only cost him $2500 for the whole thing.

Absolutely not. You would never find an HP desktop straight from the manufacturer in this configuration. It would require an extremely customized motherboard, and HP's selection of motherboards isn't terribly varied.

If your friend turned on virtual memory, it would be possible for the computer to simulate 36 GB of ram, but the only real reason to have 36 GB of actual ram would be some sort of virtualization and cpu sharing, I suppose.

Theres really no real reason for a modern computer to have that much ram. If I had the money to spend on such a powerhouse, I would rather buy several computers to dedicate to individual purpose, rather than a 36GB monster just because I could.

Windows 7 Ultimate supports up to 192Gb of ram.

36GB of RAM for that price is stupid. 1TB isn't impressive anymore.

£20000 I know a build with 12 cores, 48gb DDR3 and 3 6990s when they are realeased