Brand New Laptop, Almost all 16GB of RAM in Use

Gedalya

Estimable
Mar 14, 2014
8
0
4,520
I just bought a brand new laptop; and MSI GS70 with an i7, 16GB RAM, 120GB SSD Boot drive et al.. I'm pretty happy with it; however I've recently noticed that shortly after boot as much as 12 or more GB of RAM is in use. This started shortly after I began installing programs and configuring it for use. It uses Windows 8.1. I have viewed the Task Manager looking for a likely culprit consuming the memory but nothing stands out; in fact just looking at what is being used doesn't look like it would sum up to be that much memory use. The applications I've but on the system have included Steam and Origin and neither launches on Windows Start. Norton is installed and warned me that one of the default programs, steelseries.exe was a Memory hog; shutting it down seemed at the time to help with the problem. Has anyone else had this kind of issue? Recommendations on troubleshooting?
 
Solution
I found the solution talking to someone; basically this was a bug in Windows 8. I applied all available OS updates (I had quite a few) and that remedied the issue.

Dblkk

Honorable
Oct 30, 2013
323
0
11,010
well, is your boot drive (ssd) Samsung with rapid enabled? Your right about every little thing in the background taking away your ram. But the largest thing with ssd installed, is that windows will use available ram for caching instead of using the hard drive. It takes whats not being used for ram, but gives it up the moment its needed. Which is why you'll always be around max ram used. If you look at task manager, and performance tab, click memory, the bar will show whats actually being used for what. Example, my 16gb I have 5gb in use, 500mb modified, 10gb in standby, and 600mb of free ram. My memory usage is at 98% 15.9gb used out of 16gb. Yet that 10gb in standby is being used for cache, and will be freed up/written to disk if that ram is ever needed.
 

Gedalya

Estimable
Mar 14, 2014
8
0
4,520


Thanks for the response; this is valuable information. Unfortunately only 2GB is in standby with 14GB showing in use. Also, how can I tell if it is a Samsung with Rapid enabled?
 

Dblkk

Honorable
Oct 30, 2013
323
0
11,010
If its Samsung, and rapid is enabled, you'll have done it. You would've bought the Samsung drive, and Samsungs magician software is something you'd install, and enabling rapid is something you'd do. It doesn't make sense not to as its awesome.

As to in use, yea, im sorry but im at a loss. It would've made perfect sense the way I saw and explained it, but the fact its in use, that's uncommon. And that's not a minor thing, only time I come close to 14gb in use is in the middle of a very heavy rendering session in maya.

It really shouldn't be that hard to figure out whats taking the biggest chunk of memory away.

Can you launch task manager, under the first tab processes, click memory, and itll show/organize the programs by which is using the highest % to the lowest %. Then you should see which is taking a lot!
 

Gedalya

Estimable
Mar 14, 2014
8
0
4,520
I found the solution talking to someone; basically this was a bug in Windows 8. I applied all available OS updates (I had quite a few) and that remedied the issue.
 
Solution