Pc idling is chewing on 3-5Gb of Ram

rm24uk · 16 Apr 2012

Hi Forum

i formatted my pc yesterday as i was concerned that my pc was using too much ram 3gb at the time Now its idling at around 5gb, now i have 16gb in here 4x4gb corsair sticks so perhaps this is nothing to worry about can anyone tell me if this is the case or not please

intel core i7 2700k sandybridge overclocked to either 4.5 or 4.7
corsair ddr3 4gb sticks 4 of

i generally run skype mIRC and google chrome thats about it, other than when i play GTA4 however when im not using that its generally turned off in my opinion 5gb just on 2 programmes and a web browser is a bit much but i know nothing i suppose lol

whs · 16 Apr 2012

Lucky man. You get at least some use from your RAM that you paid with your hard earned money (I assume). There is nothing to worry about. Win7 has an excellent RAM management.

rm24uk · 16 Apr 2012

why is it eating so much??? or is it just making use of what its got so to speak???

yea hard earned took me ages to save up for this lol

fseal · 16 Apr 2012

Is this after you have had it on for a long time? Started and stopped a lot of programs? Or is it right off the bat at boot?

whs · 16 Apr 2012

If you look into Resource Monitor > Memory tab, you will see who the big consumers are. The AV programs, Firefox and other browsers, web access, etc. are usually the big spenders.

But maybe you have some programs that start at boot that are needless. Check your startup programs and disable EVERYTHING except the AV program and those that you started yourself (e.g. sidebar, a dock, etc.).

logicearth · 16 Apr 2012

Honestly...I hate people like you. You complain about RAM usage when you have so much, Here I am sitting on 2 GBs...You are not even using half! You might as well remove the other half if you are not going to use it....

A computer fully utilizing your RAM is a fast computer. Why pay all that money if you are not going to use it?

windude99 · 16 Apr 2012

Post a screenshot of your task manager process tab using Windows 7's snipping tool.

pparks1 · 16 Apr 2012

You want your RAM to be in use. As long as it's "available", I'd like to have my RAM at 99.99% usage.

rm24uk · 17 Apr 2012

logicearth bit harsh dont ya think lol i was only checking if i had a problem

whs all non essentials disabled now

fseal normally after i have used it a while

fseal · 17 Apr 2012

As others have said, using the task manager and resource monitor you should be able to see what program is using the ram... "should". If that doesn't show anything you might need to get a better third party tool for analysing ram use, but there is another possibility as well..

I have found that it is possible for some programs to leak memory in such a way that it is not freed when they close on Windows 7. The leaked ram does NOT show up anywhere under the resource monitor and the ram is marked as "in use".

VMWare 7 is a huge problem in that area. The longer it runs, the more memory it eats up. Shutting it down frees the non leaked portions of ram but not the leaked portions.

So you can try figuring out what program is doing it (I.e. FF/VMWare/???) and switch to something else or live with it like I have to with VMware and just reboot once a week to clear it :/