[SOLVED] Constant high ram use

[BananaMatt]

Hello everyone,
For the last few days I have been having significant issues with my PC's speed, and have been experiencing significant (often 5-15 second long) stutters randomly in games. I'm unsure whether these stutter occur at a consistent time or not, but it is possible. After messing with my ingame settings (I've been mainly playing "Escape from Tarkov", a very RAM and CPU heavy game), presuming that was the issue, despite the fact that I have 16gbs of ram, an i5-8400 and a GTX 1070; I had an instinct to check task manager. It showed me constant 85-98% memory usage, even with literally nothing but Chrome and a few background processes running. Checking resource monitor showed me similarly odd results. Nothing in particular using up ram, yet still somehow reaching 15gb at the lowest. I've tried all the usual "high ram usage" fixes, such as Windows defender's high use, disabling windows superfetch (though my OS is installed on an SSD, while other data such as games is on a 2tb HDD), and so on. Unfortunate the issue persists, and from my searching I am yet to locate anyone with the same problem.

 

[Deleted member 2720853]

Run a Malwarebytes Free custom scan, select all drives to be scanned and report back with results.

Is your RAM running in dual channel mode (2x 8gb sticks) or single channel (1x16 GB)?

What is the make and model of your memory, and memory speed?

 

[BananaMatt]

Run a Malwarebytes Free custom scan, select all drives to be scanned and report back with results.

Is your RAM running in dual channel mode (2x 8gb sticks) or single channel (1x16 GB)?

What is the make and model of your memory, and memory speed?

Hey, I'm still running the scan, could take another hour or so but I have a dual channel kit of G.Skill's Trident Z RGB. I'm not entirely sure of the RAM's intended speed, but I do know that I am able to run it slightly overclocked at around 2400mhz. I would presume that means the original speed is 2133, but it may just be 2400 and I remember incorrectly about overclocking, or perhaps the bios settings were reset at a point or another.

EDIT: I ran the malware scan, deleted the few (4 or 5) files it considered "malware", and unfortunately still no luck.

 

[Colif]

What are specs of the PC?
It could be a driver memory leak.
Does PC start at 85% usage or does it slowly grow to that much over time? Does it shrink if you do a restart?

 

[BananaMatt]

What are specs of the PC?
It could be a driver memory leak.
Does PC start at 85% usage or does it slowly grow to that much over time? Does it shrink if you do a restart?

Hey,
I'm not sure if you'd need all of my PC specs, but might as well list them; CPU: i5-8400, RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB (unsure of the speed, but as mentioned in my previous reply it's approx. 2400mhz.), Mobo: Asus ROG Maximus X Hero, GPU: Asus ROG Strix GTX 1070 OC, Storage: Kingston A400 240gb (as my C: drive) & WD Blue 2tb (for general storage), PSU: Corsair Rm650x.
I think that's all.
From what I've seen, the PC seems to start at high CPU/Memory usage when booting (obviously), but quickly lowers to approximately 25-35% CPU, and ~40% RAM. I'm not entirely sure at the time frame of when it begins to slow, but it seems to do so over a few hours (maybe less?). I have considered the possibility of a Memory leak, but frankly I'm not knowledgeable enough about what that exactly is, or how to fix it... though I'll do a bit of investigation now that you mention it. Another thing I have noticed, though I am unsure if it is correlated or not, is that when trying to restart my PC, Windows gets stuck in the "restarting" screen. I always have to manually use the power switch on the PSU to restart.

 

[Colif]

Sounds about right for a leak. Obvious first step is upgrade drivers - you don't have any of the obvious drivers on motherboard that I can point at and say that one... so its more a story of replace as many of you can. There are other steps but this is most obvious. (and easiest)

Go here and see if you have newest BIOs and Motherboard drivers - https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-X-HERO/HelpDesk_Download/
you don't need VGA drivers

If you not sure what drivers are installed, download this - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html
all it does is shows what drivers are installed.
When you run it, go to View tab and set it to hide any Microsoft drivers

Now its either creation date or Creation date that should tell you the driver date. Compare against Asus website (they may not be exact). You can drag & drop the rows in there so I have moved creation date right next to Driver name (I had forgotten and couldn't figure out where it was)

if you want, take a screenshot showing from (and including driver name) to (and including) creation date and II see what I can find (upload to imgur again)

Many of the drivers on Asus website are from this year so its possible one of them will fix it.
Updating BIOS might fix it, depends which one you have now. See if drivers fix it first.

this could help with restarting thing -
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

 

[BananaMatt]

Sounds about right for a leak. Obvious first step is upgrade drivers - you don't have any of the obvious drivers on motherboard that I can point at and say that one... so its more a story of replace as many of you can. There are other steps but this is most obvious. (and easiest)

Go here and see if you have newest BIOs and Motherboard drivers - https://www.asus.com/au/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-X-HERO/HelpDesk_Download/
you don't need VGA drivers

If you not sure what drivers are installed, download this - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html
all it does is shows what drivers are installed.
When you run it, go to View tab and set it to hide any Microsoft drivers

Now its either creation date or Creation date that should tell you the driver date. Compare against Asus website (they may not be exact). You can drag & drop the rows in there so I have moved creation date right next to Driver name (I had forgotten and couldn't figure out where it was)

if you want, take a screenshot showing from (and including driver name) to (and including) creation date and II see what I can find (upload to imgur again)

Many of the drivers on Asus website are from this year so its possible one of them will fix it.
Updating BIOS might fix it, depends which one you have now. See if drivers fix it first.

this could help with restarting thing -
right click start button
choose powershell (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter
once its completed, copy/paste this command into same window:
Repair-WindowsImage -Online -RestoreHealth and press enter
SFC fixes system files, second command cleans image files, re run SFC if it failed to fix all files and restart PC

Damn, I don't know how to express how thankful I am... literally the first time in days now that simply using my computer isn't a frustrating process. It seriously feels like a brand new system, CPU and RAM usages haven't gone over 50% even while gaming! Who would've known that a few driver updates, and a bios version update (I decided to do that too, since I felt like I might aswell at this point) would make such a massive difference. Again, thanks, I really appreciate it!