Question RAM usage high while PC is idle ?

[ChalkyLW]

Recently I noticed my RAM useage is very high on my PC. I'm not sure how long it has been like this, but I don't really have anything open and 11gb of RAM seems really high when I don't really have anything demanding running? I think it might be causing me issues when I'm gaming since most of my RAM is being taken up.

I used to have 16GB of ram a number of years ago and it was never this high.

https://imgur.com/a/CsE9jeP

https://imgur.com/Awq7p4d

I've tried to add some images hopefully I have done that right.

Was thinking of doing a complete system restore as a last resort.

Does anyone have any advice please?

Edit 1: PC Specs

I built this PC myself about 4 years ago

OS - Windows 10 Home 64 Bit
CPU - AMD 5800X3D (was brought new, about 2 years old now)
GBU - Nvidia 3080 Founders Edition (was brought new, about 4 years old now)
RAM - DDR4 2x 16GB Corsair Vengence 3200MHZ (was brought new about 4 years old now)
Motherboard - Gigabyte X570 Gaming X (AM4) (was brought new about 4 years old now)
M.2 SSD 1 - 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1TB (was brought new about 4 years old now)
M.2 SSD 2 - 1TB Samsung SSD 980 1TB (was brought new about 2 years old now)
Power Supply - Corsair RM750, RM Series, 80 Plus Gold Certified (was brought new about 4 years old now)

Capacity of SSD 1 - 237GB free of the 930GB
Capacity of SSD 2 - 155GB free of the 930GB

I try leave 100GB free in each at least

Connected Peripherals:

Webcam
Hyperx Quadcast Mic
Logitech Superlight Mouse
Logitech G915 TKL Keyboard
Logitech Speakers
HyperX Cloud 2 Wireless Headset
1x acer 1080p 60hz monitor (second monitor)
1x Alienwear 1440p 240hz monitor (main monitor)

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

List of all connected peripherals.

Look in Resource Monitory/History for what resources are being used and what is using any given resource.

Another tool that may prove helpful is Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).

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

And use "dism" and "sfc /scannow" to look for, find, and fix corrupted or buggy Windows files.

 

[USAFRet]

You have 22 tabs open in MS Edge, and 6 Discord instances.
What are all those tabs doing?

 

[CountMike]

Recently I noticed my RAM useage is very high on my PC. I'm not sure how long it has been like this, but I don't really have anything open and 11gb of RAM seems really high when I don't really have anything demanding running? I think it might be causing me issues when I'm gaming since most of my RAM is being taken up.

I used to have 16GB of ram a number of years ago and it was never this high.

https://imgur.com/a/CsE9jeP

https://imgur.com/Awq7p4d

I've tried to add some images hopefully I have done that right.

Was thinking of doing a complete system restore as a last resort.

Does anyone have any advice please?

22 tabs in Edge, and 6 Discord instances running is nowhere close to idle and " I don't really have anything open".
There's a lot running in the background which also shows in CPU usage.
It's still not much of concern as windows 10 and 11 use memory dynamically and will release some when it gets tight. Even in your case, 20GB free is quite enough and holding programs i RAM makes them open and run faster.
I would be more concerned with CPU and GPU usage which would lower performance in doing anything else like gaming for instance.

 

[ChalkyLW]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Include PSU: make, model, wattage, age, condition (original to build, new, refurbished, used)?

Disk drive(s): make, model, capacity, how full?

List of all connected peripherals.

Look in Resource Monitory/History for what resources are being used and what is using any given resource.

Another tool that may prove helpful is Process Explorer (Microsoft, free).

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

And use "dism" and "sfc /scannow" to look for, find, and fix corrupted or buggy Windows files.

Thanks for your reply

I've updated the post with my full PC Specs and peripherals, hopefully will be of more use my appologies.

I opened resource history and from what I can't spot anything large which is different from my task manager

https://imgur.com/a/BmSbFSe

I used the sfc/scannow and it did repair some corrputed files so hopefully that helps.

 

[ChalkyLW]

You have 22 tabs open in MS Edge, and 6 Discord instances.
What are all those tabs doing?

Thanks for the reply

I had a look in my task manager, not sure really. This morning when I logged on it said there was 19 instances up to 900mb but when I open up the breakdown of this, it shows 19 instances, couple tabs which I have open, extensions and other MS processes which I think run in the background. Perhaps time to move to another browser!

The discord instances, the main discord app from what I can tell takes up about 90% of the RAM usage, the other instances take up about 10%, it just says "discord" so I have no idea what it is. There is one chat open too.

 

[ChalkyLW]

22 tabs in Edge, and 6 Discord instances running is nowhere close to idle and " I don't really have anything open".
There's a lot running in the background which also shows in CPU usage.
It's still not much of concern as windows 10 and 11 use memory dynamically and will release some when it gets tight. Even in your case, 20GB free is quite enough and holding programs i RAM makes them open and run faster.
I would be more concerned with CPU and GPU usage which would lower performance in doing anything else like gaming for instance.

Thanks for the reply.

I have updated my PC specs in the OP.

What has led me down this path is that in CS2 my game ocassionally freezes/stutters and i've tried fixing it for months. I noticed my memory useage was quite high even with CS2 only taking up about 3GB so now wondering if that is somehow the cause.

I sometimes got long freezes while playing LoL as well, can't say I've experienced it on other games.

Appreciate that it might be a GPU/CPU problem but reluctant to change it because I spent a lot on it and they are expensive! So trying other things first before I result to that.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Appreciate that it might be a GPU/CPU problem but reluctant to change it because I spent a lot on it and they are expensive!

You can add GPU column in Task Manager - Processes section.
That will tell you, what process is causing gpu usage.

47% gpu usage without any game running in background is suspicious.
This may indicate some cryptominer malware infection.

Run Malwarebytes Anti-malware, to get rid of such infections.

 

[CountMike]

Thanks for the reply.

I have updated my PC specs in the OP.

What has led me down this path is that in CS2 my game ocassionally freezes/stutters and i've tried fixing it for months. I noticed my memory useage was quite high even with CS2 only taking up about 3GB so now wondering if that is somehow the cause.

I sometimes got long freezes while playing LoL as well, can't say I've experienced it on other games.

Appreciate that it might be a GPU/CPU problem but reluctant to change it because I spent a lot on it and they are expensive! So trying other things first before I result to that.

Until it gets close to engaging full RAM and there is enough of free memory, it shouldn't be the cause of any slowdowns or problems.