Question Is it normal to have to restart to clear unused ram?

[rscheetah30]

I'm using Windows 11 24H2 and I keep my pc on 24/7. The problem is that after a couple of days, the ram usage swells up from
30-36% to 40-45% and I always use the same apps/games daily, which means I'm having to reboot every couple of days for Windows to go back to normal ram usage.

Is this normal?

My specs:

CPU:FX6300
MB: Asus M5A78L-M LX V2
RAM: 16GB DDR3
GPU: R7 240 2GB
4HDDs + 1 SSD
PSU: Gamemax GP 650

 

[Lutfij]

Was the OS installed from scratch or was this an OS install using the internal upgrade path from Windows 10?

To add, that PSU is not something I'd have hooked up to your PC, let alone have that run for 24/7. I'm sure you can power down the system every few hours for a while to give some respite to your platform but that PSU is questionable at best.

 

[Ralston18]

After the next reboot start using Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe memory use.

The objective being to discover what apps etc. are using memory, how much, how fast etc..

Just keep checking as you work and game.

Could be some background process being launched at start up or later triggered via Task Scheduler.

 

[rscheetah30]

After the next reboot start using Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe memory use.

The objective being to discover what apps etc. are using memory, how much, how fast etc..

Just keep checking as you work and game.

Could be some background process being launched at start up or later triggered via Task Scheduler.

I always use Task Manager to keep an eye on memory use. Besides casual gaming, I always keep the same
apps open, Brave and 4 or 5 Potplayer instances.

Brave and Potplayer are the actual processes that, after a couple of days, start using more ram.

 

[rscheetah30]

Was the OS installed from scratch or was this an OS install using the internal upgrade path from Windows 10?

To add, that PSU is not something I'd have hooked up to your PC, let alone have that run for 24/7. I'm sure you can power down the system every few hours for a while to give some respite to your platform but that PSU is questionable at best.

I installed it from scratch using a pen drive.

 

[SkyNetRising]

the ram usage swells up from 30-36% to 40-45% and
I'm having to reboot every couple of days for Windows to go back to normal ram usage.
Is this normal?

Unused ram is wasted ram.
Windows intelligently uses unused ram for file system caching.
When some app requests additional ram, then portion of file cache gets released to fulfill app ram request.

TLDR - It's normal. You're worrying about nothing.
And no - you do not have to reboot every couple days.

 

[rscheetah30]

Unused ram is wasted ram.
Windows intelligently uses unused ram for file system caching.
When some app requests additional ram, then portion of file cache gets released to fulfill app ram request.

TLDR - It's normal. You're worrying about nothing.
And no - you do not have to reboot every couple days.

But will my ram usage keep going up indefinitely if I don't reboot occasionally?

 

[Ralston18]

This:

"Brave and Potplayer are the actual processes that, after a couple of days, start using more ram."

My thought is that either one or both apps start doing other things in the background. Maybe builds/building some file that is stored when the system is shutdown and then gets reloaded into RAM taking up more RAM space after each use.

No idea what information is being stored in some file or the reasons for doing so. Perhaps at some point one of the processes may "phone home", trigger an update, attempt a backup, data capture/dump - who knows.....

Or it could simply be buggy or corrupted.

What is the source of Brave and Potplayer? Media players - correct?

Could be that they are using more memory just to speed up access to playlists or the music itself.

As above, likely nothing to worry about unless there is some noticeably direct effect on system performance.

One of those "if it ain't broke then don't fix it" situations.

Just continue to watch - I would not expect the RAM use grow infinitely. Windows would start using virtual memory at some point. Again - barring some bug or corruption issues.

Then if there is a specific, tangible problem that can be directly dealt with.

You can also use Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) to track what is happening.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

More details....

 

[rscheetah30]

This:

"Brave and Potplayer are the actual processes that, after a couple of days, start using more ram."

My thought is that either one or both apps start doing other things in the background. Maybe builds/building some file that is stored when the system is shutdown and then gets reloaded into RAM taking up more RAM space after each use.

No idea what information is being stored in some file or the reasons for doing so. Perhaps at some point one of the processes may "phone home", trigger an update, attempt a backup, data capture/dump - who knows.....

Or it could simply be buggy or corrupted.

What is the source of Brave and Potplayer? Media players - correct?

Could be that they are using more memory just to speed up access to playlists or the music itself.

As above, likely nothing to worry about unless there is some noticeably direct effect on system performance.

One of those "if it ain't broke then don't fix it" situations.

Just continue to watch - I would not expect the RAM use grow infinitely. Windows would start using virtual memory at some point. Again - barring some bug or corruption issues.

Then if there is a specific, tangible problem that can be directly dealt with.

You can also use Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) to track what is happening.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

More details....

Brave is a browser and Potplayer a media player. They were both downloaded from their respective official
sites.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Well, you're running Win 11 on an unsupported system. Things may not run well, or as intended for your system because of that.

My system idles with 27% ram usage. Yours isn't that much beyond that. Par for the course.

 

[Ralston18]

Brave Browser ....

I was thinking:

https://brave.com/playlist/

It still remains that unless there is some specific problem ignore the % of RAM usage.

For the record, my system, per Resource Monitor, is sitting at 45% RAM usage. (16GB RAM via 2x8 GB dual kit.)

Went to 46% while typing this post. No problems.

(And you can sort the Memory columns to determine what is using the most RAM if that becomes necessary.)

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Just a little idea - You can use Windows PC Manager to 'boost' your system. It clears your ram of anything that can slow the system down and is not in immediate use. You can also set it to 'Smart Boost' for which you can set the parameters for a ram clear automatically.

It works very well.

 

[johnbl]

yes, it is normal operation. windows will preload programs into what they call standby ram. then if you attempt to run the program it will just be marked as active.

you can download microsoft rammap64.exe and find the empty menu items and delete the standby list and it should clear the ram usages. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

yes, it is normal operation. windows will preload programs into what they call standby ram. then if you attempt to run the program it will just be marked as active.

you can download microsoft rammap64.exe and find the empty menu items and delete the standby list and it should clear the ram usages. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap

Interesting. I haven't seen that before.

 

[johnbl]

Interesting. I haven't seen that before.

I come across this often, when I need to look at a kernel dump. I try to have people empty the standby using rammap before they make a kernel dump to reduce the size of the compressed file. I often find whole games loaded into standby memory. (even if you have not used them for months)