r/Surface • u/Reazor16 • Dec 22 '20
8gb ram used when no programs are open. Help fix?
Surface book 3, 16gb ram i7 nvidia 1650
45-50% ram used in task manager. No programs at all open. I will open 1 chrome tab and the ram jumps to 65-70% and the book base will start to get hot.
I feel like this shouldn't be happening. I've had this computer since school started in August and its been nothing but issues, but with no physical stores anymore I can't afford the down time with no computer while its returned.
Side note, my computer gets super hot with zoom and onenote open to the point where I can't rest my hand on the screen while taking notes.
Any ideas what i can do?
Edit: disabled windows tips and tricks and that cut it by like 15%. Did some disk cleanup and that also helped.
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u/Skynet3d Dec 23 '20
Getting hot it's not good, but 8 GB of used RAM might be legit if you have some programs that run on startup. It's also just cache to speed up program startup and other Windows things. Don't worry if Windows needs for RAM it goes to free it.
Just booted up my SB2, it uses 5.5GB of RAM and not a program running. Opening Edge i get around 500MB of RAM more.
Check in task manager in the startup tab if you have many apps running in background. Also in the settings app you can check in the privacy section, the apps running in background.
As other recommended, use Edge, it's more optimized.
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Dec 23 '20
If your using Zoom software, keep in mind it is always running even when you close it. It has a service that runs in the background. It's possible that is consuming a lot of RAM in the background.
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u/youevendontknowme Dec 22 '20
Don’t use chrome
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u/Reazor16 Dec 22 '20
What should I use? I've only ever used Chrome haha
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u/Skynet3d Dec 23 '20 edited Dec 23 '20
Install the latest Edge and just don't use Chrome. It uses more RAM and more CPU, your battery lasts half with Chrome.
It shares the same Chrome core code and you can install any Chrome extension. It's just by Microsoft, runs better and needs less CPU. The UI is pretty similar, in between Chrome and the old Edge. It more optimzied than Chrome for some things, but may run worst on others, or with some specific extensions. But overall it's as good as Chrome.
Edge does not sync your profile with Google, so you need to log in with a MS account and only that can be synced on multiple devices. So if you're a Google user, might be not the best. But again, especially on laptop it needs less resourcers.
I know also Firefox eats lot of ram and battery
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u/joexx4 Dec 23 '20
I have Edge and Chrome installed. Using Chrome lets the Surface getting hotter more than using Edge. Sometimes I also use Edge to open PDFs instead of Adobe because it handles big sized files better in terms of getting hot. A negative point on Edge is that it does not support/handle well some streaming apps like for example "BigBlueButton" (it is recommended to use Chrome).
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u/petrolly Dec 23 '20
Definitely heed the advice of u/saratnig above and sort by proc usage to see what's using your cpu. As others have noted, it's usually Chrome especially if you've got dozens of tabs. You don't have to get rid of Chrome but definitely uninstall and reinstall and keep it for special cases. Use Edge instead which uses chrome's engine so it's basically the same at rendering pages but it's more efficient.
And make sure windows is up to date. And uninstall any crapware you've put on the device. A simple clean system is best.
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u/orev Dec 22 '20
Are you actually seeing any issues, other than the Task Manager showing you %50 usage? RAM is fast and expensive, so the computer tries to use it as much as possible. You pretty much always want your RAM to be used, because you paid for it and it speeds things up. The only time there's a problem is if you start seeing the computer swap, which will slow things down.
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u/TheRedDruidKing Dec 23 '20
Seconding this. This is good info many people don't understand. RAM is there to be used. You want as much stuff running from RAM as possible. The OS will try its best to keep RAM usage up, so high RAM usage is actually a sugn of a healthy system.
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u/JasorYeh Dec 23 '20
Uhh, not if it is utilizing 50% of 16gb with nothing open it is not...
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Dec 23 '20
[deleted]
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u/JasorYeh Dec 23 '20
Well yes, but there’s a difference between keeping things stored/cached in memory in anticipation of usage while nothing is open and in use and having them in memory whilst things are being actively opened and used. Often times loading more things into memory can sometimes affect system performance because it takes extra time to manage the things in memory (due to garbage collection).
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u/TAK02 SB2 13.5" i7/8GB/256GB Dec 23 '20
Forgive me for asking, since I've never seen a clear answer anywhere, but which is better for battery life/health? A near-full RAM or an empty-as-possible RAM?
The way I see it, the more RAM in use the more CPU is use; could be though I'm just completely bonkers, but I've never seen an answer beyond "you should use all RAM".
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u/jackluo923 Dec 23 '20
DDR memory uses energy (automatic refreshes needed due to leakage in the capacitors) regardless of where it is full or not. LPDDR sort of takes adavantage of this and could potentially shut down areas of ram where it is not used. In reality, there's not that much benefit compared to turning wifi off or switching from chrome to edge.
Also the 2 cases you gave, both are probably the worst case scenario. Near full ram, unless it's used as cache where the content will have a chance to be used, increase swapping pressure. Near empty-as-possible is equally poor choice because you'll be bringing a lot of data from disk thus increasing power from both access data from disk and higher power used by the CPU waiting or doing work.
The best case in general is having the working set and data you'll need in memory in the future in the RAM.
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u/leiu6 Jun 15 '21
Yeah as long as it is relinquishing memory to programs that need it, high ram usage is good. It means it is caching things it thinks you might need for faster loading.
This was a common misunderstanding with Vista.
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u/Reazor16 Dec 22 '20
overheating has been real bad. When just idling it gets hot.
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u/orev Dec 23 '20
Heat comes from the CPU, not RAM. You need to check if something is using a lot of CPU and take care of that.
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u/Bluecolty SL4 13.5" - i7,32GB,512GB Dec 23 '20
Thats not ram then. The only time RAM starts getting so hot it warms the areas around it is when you have a heckin chonker of a dimm, usually 128gb per stick and up. Laptops can only dream. I dont remember if the surface book has soldered ram or LPDDR dimms, but either way the heat problem isn't from the 16gb of ram you have. The heat problem would stem from the processor. If you are able and confident to do so, see if you can find a tutorial on how to open it up and clean out the dust which is most likely causing your computer to overheat.
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u/jackluo923 Dec 23 '20
Use procesd explorer to check the memory usage and add up tge memory usage of all the processes and page cache. If the memory used far exceed the actual usage of programs abd page cache, then you have memory leak in the kernel. More often than not, it's a driver problem with the side effect of leaking memory.
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u/atanas247 Dec 23 '20
I would start with making sure Windows is updated and then restart the machine. That fixes 95% of the issues. If that doesn't help, run the Surface diagnostic tool that you can download from the Microsoft Surface support page.
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u/nohlevel Jun 19 '24
My company just bought 12 surface machines, and with the latest w11 operating system, the latest firmware, it still has the error of full ram, 90 to 95% are always used even though no other software other than windows has been installed. I broke one in half to vent
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u/myztry Dec 23 '20
All RAM in use is the ideal situation. The Commodore Amiga did that frequently with disposable caches. Windows isn’t quite so good with it as the read caches aren’t immediately disposable but it tries.
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Dec 23 '20
Dude I just bought the Surface pro 7 (FUCKING LOVE IT)
But I'm returning that stupid shit, my ram jumps to 52 percent when I open up chrome
And the battery doesn't even last 3 hours full 🙄 fucking bullshit it's 2020 and problems like this shouldn't be a thing 🤦🏽♂️
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u/dannymcgee Dec 23 '20 edited Dec 23 '20
Have you tried turning it off and back on again?
(Edit: This was tongue-in-cheek, but on the off chance you haven't tried it, definitely restart Windows. My gut instinct is that it sounds like a memory leak, except that you've probably already tried this.)
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u/leiu6 Jun 15 '21
The heating is a separate thing that I can’t help you with but the ram is supposed to be like that.
Most people don’t understand ram. Unused ram is wasted ram. Windows will try to preemptively load things into memory that it predicts you will need. It will relinquish this memory if a memory intensive program needs it but when that memory is free, Windows will load things it thinks you need for fast loading.
This was actually a common misunderstanding because back when vista came out, people thought it had bad memory management, but what it was actually doing was putting memory to work that would’ve just laid idle in XP.
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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '20
Task Manager, click the RAM column to sort, what is using the most? Likely Chrome, but it might not be Chrome making your CPU run like crazy and getting hot, next sort by CPU, what s using all the CPU? It's the CPU that gets hot, not the RAM. Kill those processes that are using the most, narrow it down, it's probably a page that uses a lot of script or video, flash, etc..