Memory maxing out at random on gaming PC - please help!

[Kyndred]

Hello everyone,

Sometimes at random, my RAM will max out and the computer become unusable. As far as I can tell, there is nothing really running at this point that should take up so much memory.

Steps I've taken:
-Ran antivirus software; found nothing
-Checked all processes; nothing really takes up an odd amount of memory
-Researched topic; tried multiple workarounds; no results (not a windows media player problem as far as I can tell)
-As of today, all of my drivers are updated.

System Specs:
-MB: ASRock 990FX Killer
-16 GB RAM
-OS: Windows 10 64 Bit
-Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8320 Eight-Core Processor 3.50 GHz
-Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti
-Antivirus: McAfee

When the problem happens:
-Most often during gameplay. I play SWTOR and Blade and Soul. However, these games should in no way be straining my computer, nor do their processes appear to be the cause of the problem in the task manager list.
-I did notice in the most recent meltdown that when I opened task manager, SWTOR was showing 3 different processes somehow. I don't know if it is relevant.
-Sometimes this problem happens during my work in Photoshop, although not as often.
-At times, this problem occurs completely out of the blue even when the computer has been idle for a couple of hours. I turn off and restart my computer every evening.

I hate to use the term "memory leak" because I don't really understand how that works or what it means, but could something of that nature be happening? Does it make a difference if I play in windowed or full screen mode?

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Please be patient/gentle with me. I'm not a total computer ignoramus, but I may need more breakdown than most people on this site.

 

[Lutfij]

1| get rid of the McAfee antivirus.

2| Have you made sure your BIOS is up to date?

3| Memory leak happens with the corruption of your OS. It's been seen on Windows 8 and has returned with Windows 10. The best solution is to try and run repair install or reinstall your OS.

4| Yes the way you've described it, it IS a memory leak issue. The issue can compound to you seeing high CPU and HDD usage as well.

 

[PureCarbine]

I had a very similar issue to what you had and it does sound like a memory leak issue. My non-paged pool was taking up all my memory, check to see what your non-paged pool is and see if thats what is taking up your memory, if it is their are solutions online to fixing this that involves a simple registry change. This worked for me and i no longer have the issue.