Question available physical memory changing while computer is running and much much less than total physical memory.

[lukeelstrott]

I am using corsair vengeance ddr3 ram, and Gigabyte z97x sli-cf motherboard on Win 10. unplugging and pluggin the ram back in temporarily fixes the problem. it will register up to 11.9 gb in available memory, but it doesnt last and later that night it will be back down to 7, now its the lowest its ever been at 4. I have already tried selecting maximum memory in system configuration, it does nothing.

 

[SkyNetRising]

it will register up to 11.9 gb in available memory, but it doesnt last and later that night it will be back down to 7, now its the lowest its ever been at 4.
I have already tried selecting maximum memory in system configuration, it does nothing.

Available memory = Total memory - Used memory.

The longer you use your pc, the more memory gets used (software modules running in background, disk caching). And therefore available memory (unused memory) decreases.
That's how it's supposed to work. It's normal.

 

[BFG-9000]

Furthermore, unused memory is wasted memory. So the OS will try to use up any unused memory in low-priority tasks such as the mentioned disk caching. This will not prevent you from running any memory-intensive programs because the cache will simply be dropped if the memory is actually needed for something else--after all it's a duplicate of what is already on the disk so doesn't need to be copied anywhere first before being wiped