How can you check when you run out of RAM on windows 10?

Satearn

Distinguished
Dec 18, 2015
174
3
18,695
When your max RAM is 4 on a laptop, it never goes over that number in task manager.

I heard that when you go over 4, the disk takes up the slack and it slows down your PC.

How do I know when I run out and hit the "ram overflow" to disk?

Is there a tool to find out or a certain tab on Task manager?

Thanks,
 
Solution
It’s not as simple as looking to see 100% RAM usage which from something I read I believe is impossible as the system would crash if it ever hit 100%. Recent example for me. A pc used for managing some complex spreadsheets had 8gb of RAM and RAM usage never went over 6.8gb. To recalculate the spreadsheet took several minutes and there was significant HDD usage.

Upgraded that pc to 16gb even though it never got close to 100% usage of 8gb. It now uses just under 9gb but reacalculates in about 1 minute with much less HDD activity. I never timed it but I would guess it takes 1/3 of the time it used too.
It’s not as simple as looking to see 100% RAM usage which from something I read I believe is impossible as the system would crash if it ever hit 100%. Recent example for me. A pc used for managing some complex spreadsheets had 8gb of RAM and RAM usage never went over 6.8gb. To recalculate the spreadsheet took several minutes and there was significant HDD usage.

Upgraded that pc to 16gb even though it never got close to 100% usage of 8gb. It now uses just under 9gb but reacalculates in about 1 minute with much less HDD activity. I never timed it but I would guess it takes 1/3 of the time it used too.
 
Solution
Significant HDD usage is because of RAM data being stored in Virtual Memory on disk. Anything that doesn't fit in free RAM gets written temporarily in Virtual Memory on disk and if it's large enough or left on auto size can produce just temporary slowdown or short delays because of disk speed. Even fastest SSDs are way slower than any RAM let alone slower HDDs.
 


Thanks , I don't game at all, for me what matters is productivity, that answers my questions, getting more ram.

I have 16 on desktop and and will crank it to 8 on laptop, that should work as I estimate laptop uses 3-4 average, so 8 should be good enough, for heavy work I use desktop, on notebook I don' t push it too hard on battery anyways.