Worried about Maxing out my laptop ram.

[BNWilliams007]

Hello, I'm volunteering to do a live stream at an event in a few days. I'll be live streaming on YouTube for 8 hours however I am concerned that I may use up all of my laptop ram. I currently have 4GB of ram in addition to two SSD drives and a 500GB hard drive. The program that I will be using to live stream is OBS. Whenever I run a test-stream and have YouTube open and some other programs my ram usage is at about 64-72% but I'll also be using a sound mixer and video cameras connected to my laptop as well at the event but I do not know if this will raise my ram usage or not. Worst case scenario, what would happen if I were to use 100% of my ram in the middle of the live-stream? Would my computer crash? If I need to buy more ram, how can I see what type of ram, speed, and voltage etc. I have? I opened my PC and took a picture of my ram but it doesn't display the ram speed so I don't understand what specific ram stick I would need to buy if I need the upgrade.

Here are some pics of my pc specs and ram:

http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b602/SonicKeyblade007/PC%20Specs_zpsixtjur3d.jpg
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b602/SonicKeyblade007/Storage_zpsggcs2u6n.jpg
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b602/SonicKeyblade007/task%20manager_zpsu4ztkoex.jpg
http://i1294.photobucket.com/albums/b602/SonicKeyblade007/IMG_1214_zpsypjdm4bm.jpg

Thank you for your time.

 

[Snipergod87]

When you RAM fills up it will start using the pagefile on the hard drive as virtual RAM, this will prevent crashing but it will reduce performance until the real RAM is freed up, if Windows is installed on a SSD the than the performance will not be as bad. (The pagefile is by default on C:\ but can be moved to another drive)

You have 2x 2GB DDR3-1066 (denoted by the 2GB PC3-8500s)

 

[BNWilliams007]

Thank you for your response. You mentioned that if windows is installed on an SSD that the performance hit will not be as bad. Does the performance hit depend on the size of the SSD? Right now I have windows installed on my laptop's default 83GB mini SSD but I have a larger 256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD installed as well for programs. Is there I way I can tell my computer to install the virtual ram on my Samsung SSD if that will decrease my performance hit?

 

[Snipergod87]

You can choose to put it on another drive or have it split on both of them. While I do not feel it is necessary in you use case, If you go to advanced system settings (type that into start menu), click on Performance, Advanced, Change it should be default be set to Automatically manage which 99% of the time is fine. If you want to put a page file on the Samsung SSD you can uncheck that, click D: and click System managed size and click set. At this point you will have 2 pages files one on C and one on D, if you want to remove C you can click on C: and click No Paging File and set, OK out of there and reboot.

Again I do not feel this is necessary.

 

[BNWilliams007]

Thank you, but just out of curiosity, why do you think it's not necessary?

 

[Snipergod87]

Performance should be ample enough as it stands. Windows pretty much always uses the page file in some limited manner despite the current RAM usage, once your RAM hit 80-90% it will more heavily use the pagefile.

 

[BNWilliams007]

I was able to live stream at my event last night with no issues regarding ram, Thank you so much for all of your feedback.