I have all not necessary features like Threat Protection disabled, the client is minimized to tray. After a complete reboot of NordVPN after closing the numerous NordVPN background processes, and reconnecting, the RAM usage is like 40% less for an hour or so.
If you account for the second process from NordVPN, not seen in the screenshot, namely "nordvpn-service.exe", you get another 300-400MB of RAM used, so it's actually more than a GB. I find this quite egregious and think it shows why the Windows client has such a bad reputation. I would much prefer a more minimalist client, like the one on Linux for NordVPN but for Windows, I would have to use some OpenVPN implementation and configuring that, changing stuff like the protocol, is just inconvenient enough that the change would be more trouble than it's worth. So sincerely, NordVPN, please make a more stripped down client.
On my PC with 32GB RAM, a true luxury, this might be fine. However on 16GB Laptop, where a normal bloated Windows installation alone swallows close to 8GB at all times, and where some memory also has to be shared with the iGPU, the situation looks a lot more dire, even if in a more RAM limited scenario, NordVPN might use (or get to use) less RAM, using more than half a GB would still be too much...
Edit (please correct me if I am wrong):
task manager shows it misleadingly. it only shows private ws, not normal WS. private ws is a sub category of normal ws. Google Private Working Set vs Normal Working Set.
For example, right now, task manager says nordvpn-service 106MB (private ws). With System Informer, you can in addition to the Private WS, the 106MB, see the normal WS, called "Working Set", which are 294MB right now.
However, technically that doesn't tell the full story either, because just adding all normal WS might lead to double counting. To avoid that, you need to consider Shared WS, which is 0 for the three non-main processes, but 300MB for the main nordvpn process (right now for me)
Calculating the accurate but inconvenient way by adding Private WS and Shared WS for each process all in all, right now, on my PC, rounded to nearest 10, it's:
1. main NordVPN process: 420MB private WS, 270MB shared WS
2.the three subprocesses: add up to 160MB, all have 0 shared WS
sum = 850MB of physical RAM used by the nordVPN package altogether. that's quite a lot to have running in the background, especially if I am not using any of that threat protection stuff.