Should I get more RAM?


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Sup Neowin ;).  To make the long story short, should I get more RAM? I'm currently experiencing serious slowdowns: Firefox showing the spinner to load a tab, programs taking a while to show up, threads are blocked (as sometimes I load a site and a video that was playing back stops), and other types of slowdowns. I have a Dell XPS 7590, i7 9750H, GTX 1650, and 16 GB of DDR4 memory. I'm having serious performance issues, as my memory gets close to the 14.9 - 16 GB of usage. I'm currently running Docker on Windows (generally 3 simultaneous Node, Python containers). I also use Firefox, VS Code, and Chrome (Edge or Chrome) simultaneously.

 

Here are my Task Manager and Resource Monitor respectively.

 

image.png.e317000d2fba47dce317e062d52f824c.png

 

image.png.47edfbf5319b37eeb8accb5656ea6997.png

 

Any suggestions? Thanks :)

I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly, if it's a program that's currently sucking everything in.

 

 

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9 hours ago, Jose_49 said:

Sup Neowin ;).  To make the long story short, should I get more RAM? I'm currently experiencing serious slowdowns: Firefox showing the spinner to load a tab, programs taking a while to show up, threads are blocked (as sometimes I load a site and a video that was playing back stops), and other types of slowdowns. I have a Dell XPS 7590, i7 9750H, GTX 1650, and 16 GB of DDR4 memory. I'm having serious performance issues, as my memory gets close to the 14.9 - 16 GB of usage. I'm currently running Docker on Windows (generally 3 simultaneous Node, Python containers). I also use Firefox, VS Code, and Chrome (Edge or Chrome) simultaneously.

 

Here are my Task Manager and Resource Monitor respectively.

 

image.png.e317000d2fba47dce317e062d52f824c.png

 

image.png.47edfbf5319b37eeb8accb5656ea6997.png

 

Any suggestions? Thanks :)

I haven't been able to pinpoint exactly, if it's a program that's currently sucking everything in.

 

 

I can pinpoint it just from your first screenshot. Wow. Close some tabs? 😂

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If you do all those things simultaneously, then yes, you need more than 16 GB.

 

The only thing that caught my eye is MsMpEng.exe (Windows Defender) having about 2 GB of memory commit, although maybe that's normal for such workloads.

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If your slots aren't full, there's never any harm in throwing in another bunch of RAM. I usually go with a minimum of 32GB these days. My work dev laptop has 64GB in :D

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If you can afford it, if your laptop can support it and opening many tabs and using VS Code in the way you do requires that much RAM and more then i would say grab more RAM. It's only going to help, you can do the above to minimum memory and i completely agree with this approach. It really comes down to work style / work flow.

 

I manage the memory i have (24GB) closing certain apps to make room for others etc.. i could grab more memory myself but i find that me managing the RAM is not a problem at the moment. 

 

Of course bear in mind generally the more RAM you purchase, the more you will use it, so after perhaps a year you may be back asking how to manage 32GB RAM :D

 

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Adding ore RAM certainly will not hurt the machine. 

 

I'd also check for malware.  

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2 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

I can pinpoint it just from your first screenshot. Wow. Close some tabs? 😂

That's what I thought originally too, but look at this  - I have one Chrome browser open with one tab:

image.png.b36dfd69ab8ae39fd1f26cab2a1ab7db.pngWhat a colossal piece of bloated crap Chrome is.

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2 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

I can pinpoint it just from your first screenshot. Wow. Close some tabs? 😂

Hahha, I promise they aren't that many... They do pile up from time to time as I forget to close them. 

 

There are times in which I experience a Memory Leak (it could be from an extension, and I seriously don't have that many, skyrocketing Firefox to a whopping 6 - 7.9 GB of RAM used :o ).

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2 hours ago, eddman said:

If you do all those things simultaneously, then yes, you need more than 16 GB.

 

The only thing that caught my eye is MsMpEng.exe (Windows Defender) having about 2 GB of memory commit, although maybe that's normal for such workloads.

That's something that I'm surprised as well. Dropbox apparently is another culprit... It sucks when passive applications end up sucking it this much. 

2 hours ago, spikey_richie said:

If your slots aren't full, there's never any harm in throwing in another bunch of RAM. I usually go with a minimum of 32GB these days. My work dev laptop has 64GB in :D

 

2 hours ago, REM2000 said:

If you can afford it, if your laptop can support it and opening many tabs and using VS Code in the way you do requires that much RAM and more then i would say grab more RAM. It's only going to help, you can do the above to minimum memory and i completely agree with this approach. It really comes down to work style / work flow.

 

I manage the memory i have (24GB) closing certain apps to make room for others etc.. i could grab more memory myself but i find that me managing the RAM is not a problem at the moment. 

 

Of course bear in mind generally the more RAM you purchase, the more you will use it, so after perhaps a year you may be back asking how to manage 32GB RAM :D

 

 

2 hours ago, Daniel F. said:

Yeah 32gb is always good if you have the slots and money available 

 

Heheheh it's funny. I would need to replace the 2 x 8GB sticks for 2 x 16GB. I never thought I would end up needing more, as 16GB has served me well during all these years (7 years to be precise) and have never reached the limit in the past. Guess this workload demands for more, it seems. 

 

I'll try to use Process Lasso as recommended above and see how the milage goes. If not, then I'll guess I'll get 2 x 16GB sticks.

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3 hours ago, eddman said:

If you do all those things simultaneously, then yes, you need more than 16 GB.

 

The only thing that caught my eye is MsMpEng.exe (Windows Defender) having about 2 GB of memory commit, although maybe that's normal for such workloads.

That’s a good point—-your slow downs might not even be ram related @Jose_49. If you are working with node modules in any capacity, you need to exclude them from Defender else it will drag your computer down big time scanning thousands upon thousands of files. 

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1 hour ago, devHead said:

That's what I thought originally too, but look at this  - I have one Chrome browser open with one tab:

image.png.b36dfd69ab8ae39fd1f26cab2a1ab7db.pngWhat a colossal piece of bloated crap Chrome is.

 

Wow, that's unbelievable!! Not really, seeing as it's Chrome, but still. Don't use Chrome so would have never seen that.

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3 hours ago, Jose_49 said:

That's something that I'm surprised as well. Dropbox apparently is another culprit... It sucks when passive applications end up sucking it this much. 

 

 

 

Heheheh it's funny. I would need to replace the 2 x 8GB sticks for 2 x 16GB. I never thought I would end up needing more, as 16GB has served me well during all these years (7 years to be precise) and have never reached the limit in the past. Guess this workload demands for more, it seems. 

 

I'll try to use Process Lasso as recommended above and see how the milage goes. If not, then I'll guess I'll get 2 x 16GB sticks.

tell me about it, i put my machine up to 24GB i thought that was plenty of capacity, sitting here now thinking of getting a new MB to be able to upgrade to 64GB lol

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2 hours ago, REM2000 said:

tell me about it, i put my machine up to 24GB i thought that was plenty of capacity, sitting here now thinking of getting a new MB to be able to upgrade to 64GB lol

Y'all are lightweights.

 

image.png.97b5ce7c9743ebae2369d25ec2fd8842.png

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7 hours ago, devHead said:

That's what I thought originally too, but look at this  - I have one Chrome browser open with one tab:

image.png.b36dfd69ab8ae39fd1f26cab2a1ab7db.pngWhat a colossal piece of bloated crap Chrome is.

That's chrome and all the extensions you have installed most likely. If you kill a random one of those chrome.exe's you'll see some of your extensions crash.

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6 hours ago, cork1958 said:

 

Wow, that's unbelievable!! Not really, seeing as it's Chrome, but still. Don't use Chrome so would have never seen that.

Yeah, I use it only for work.  

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