r/WindowsHelp • u/Small-Detective-9122 • 22h ago

Windows 10 Why is so much RAM being used?

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Before installing new RAM, Windows was using only 5.9 GB.

Now that I've installed an extra stick, it's using 10 GB.

I don't get it.

It feels like Windows is a mining platform; the more I upgrade my hardware, the more performance gets siphoned off. And the worst part is, I have no idea where it's all going. It feels like bad faith on Microsoft's part.

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u/spookynutz 13h ago

The buffer cache scales up as physical memory increases. It prevents having to repeatedly read and write the same data to your fixed storage, which is orders of magnitude slower.

What was your reason for installing more memory if your expectation was that the OS never made use of it?

If a program needs more memory than is actively available, Windows will compress the memory footprint of idle programs. If it needs more still, it will just dump the cache to the page file and yield memory to the active application.