eli5 Why do pcs need ram, when you can just use your ssd as one

Question

It’s a common knowledge that computers run on rams, any application run on a pc is temporarily stored in the ram. So why can’t we just dedicate 32Gbs of ssd storage to ram and have our pcs run on it? That way one could have a 256Gbs of ram easily, without the need of the ram sticks and for so much cheaper.

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Answer 1

You can do that. You just don’t want to. Ssd’s are much slower than even old RAM. Since the CPU needs direct access to the RAM this sacrifice in speed would drastically slow down the computer.