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Question

PC Ram Usage through the roof (Start up and while idle)

Mar 23, 2018 12:41PM PDT

Good Afternoon,

I have recently been noticing that my computer is using almost all of my ram at start up in some instances, but mainly it is when my computer is just sitting "idle". I've done a little bit of research and checked my processes and nothing that I have found seems to be anything that I could think of being a threat to it. Then again I am not the most advanced PC user. I am hoping to get some help in figuring out a solution to this. Computer is a about 6 years old and a custom build the specs I will list below.

OS- Windows 7 professional (I am sure I probably need to update this.)
Processor - Intel i7-2600k CPU @ 3.40GHz
RAM- 16.0GB (Kingston Hyper X 4gb) x 4
64-bit
Graphics Card - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti

Whatever additional information is needed I am more than happy to get and post for you.

Thank you in advance for any help!

Post was last edited on March 23, 2018 12:42 PM PDT

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Sounds proper to me.
Mar 23, 2018 12:59PM PDT

Microsoft has tuned Windows to use all the RAM since it beats disk access in every scenario. Since Windows can release RAM in a microsecond for use by another app, this is a good move.

Unused RAM is wasted RAM is best remembered.

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Windows says no RAM available.
Mar 23, 2018 1:14PM PDT

Oh I did not know that. Alright well that brings me to my next question with this issue. 2-3 times a week I will get a message stating something like "No more available ram blah blah blah" and computer gets super slow. My display seems to change and looks like its a more simplified UI. If windows takes ram and gives it back when it needs it. Why is this type of event occurring? Thank you for your information so far.

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When this happens I
Mar 23, 2018 1:21PM PDT

Look to task manager all processes and sort by memory use. I rarely see an issue myself but work this for others.

Also, some folk tinker with virtual memory. I continue to have to put it back to system managed. But that will fail when disk space gets too low.

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How To
Mar 24, 2018 2:39PM PDT

Just in case the original poster isn't already totally familiar with Task Manager it's worth mentioning exactly how to check which processes or apps are using all that RAM.

Right-click on an empty area of the Taskbar and select Task Manager in the popup menu. The Task Manager window opens.

Then click on View-> Select Columns-> Tick Memory Usage and CPU usage. Here you can see exactly which Processes are using the most RAM. If you don't recognize the memory-hogging process just type the process name into a Google search window in your internet browser to get an definition and explanation of that process. After that you can either tell the app or process not to run at startup, or disable the process in "services.msc", or uninstall the app using that process, or run MalwareBytes (free anti-malware app) to remove it from your computer.

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Answer
Task manager>performance
Mar 24, 2018 1:07AM PDT

What does the bar graph for memory usage show?

Let the machine sit at idle and watch the graph.