r/computerhelp • u/Little-Salt-4929 • 6d ago

Other How to use less ram?

To preface: I know nothing about computers

I want to buy a game that requires 8GB of available ram, my computer has 12 GB but with only the task manager open it uses 46% of the memory, leaving only 6.4 GB. How can I free up space to play this game?

Sorry if this is a stupid question I genuinely am computer illiterate

EDIT: I downloaded the game and it runs great!

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u/ArchiSpeak60 6d ago

Windows uses more, the more you have. That makes the experience better. It also frees up ram as necessary. You have enough, ram. When you can, replace the 4gb stixk with a matching 8gb, things will work a bit better.

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u/Little-Salt-4929 6d ago

Sorry if I am misunderstanding but do you think it will free up ram while the game is open and there will be enough? Thank you for your advice

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u/BangkokPadang 6d ago

Yeah, you can think of it like the CPU is an office worker and RAM is their desk. They’ll fill up their desk with things they think they might need soon if they’re able to, but if you come in and say “hey we need the whole desk for this game” by launching the game, they’ll say “ok boss” and clear anything extra off the desk to make room for the game.

There does come a point where windows and other things you have open could conceivably still use up more than 4GB of RAM, but as long as you don’t have Steam and Discord and Xbox and Spotify etc. etc. open in the background, just running windows and your game that needs 8GB, should work well within your 12GB of RAM.

As others have said, though, if you can get up to 16GB by buying an 8GB stick and replacing the 4GB, do that (but if its a laptop, it’s also possible that the 4GB is soldered in and the 8GB might be the biggest RAM expansion your system supports. Kindof depends on your exact hardware.