How do I get total physical memory size using PowerShell without WMI?

I'd like to make a note of this for people referencing in the future.

I wanted to avoid WMI because it uses a DCOM protocol, requiring the remote computer to have the necessary permissions, which could only be setup manually on that remote computer.

So, I wanted to avoid using WMI, but using get-counter often times didn't have the performance counter I wanted.

The solution I used was the Common Information Model (CIM). Unlike WMI, CIM doesn't use DCOM by default. Instead of returning WMI objects, CIM cmdlets return PowerShell objects.

CIM uses the Ws-MAN protocol by default, but it only works with computers that have access to Ws-Man 3.0 or later. So, earlier versions of PowerShell wouldn't be able to issue CIM cmdlets.

The cmdlet I ended up using to get total physical memory size was:

get-ciminstance -class "cim_physicalmemory" | % {$_.Capacity}

If you don't want to use WMI, I can suggest systeminfo.exe. But, there may be a better way to do that.

(systeminfo | Select-String 'Total Physical Memory:').ToString().Split(':')[1].Trim()

Let's not over complicate things...:

(Get-CimInstance Win32_PhysicalMemory | Measure-Object -Property capacity -Sum).sum /1gb