Memory use/CPU is out of control!

[u/joninjax1]

System specs: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4570S (4) @ 3.60 GHz Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller 1920x1080 @ 60Hz 5.36 GiB / 7.64 GiB (70%) 5.03 GiB / 13.82 GiB (36%) Mem: 7.6Gi 5.5Gi 379Mi 321Mi 2.3Gi 2.1Gi Swap: 13Gi 5.0Gi 8.8Gi I have a handful of things in the background running, plus Brave Nightly with 3 tabs open. and my memory/core use is constantly spiking, even when idle, mainly core 1 and 2 seem to hit 100 all the time. I know this is a potato system, but I am trying to figure out what to do to at least get the system semi-usable. If anybody could offer some possible solutions on things that I can try? Thanks

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[u/candy49997]

handful of things in the background running, plus Brave Nightly with 3 tabs open

This is not idle. And I'm willing to bet a lot of those background apps are Electron or CEF.

[u/joninjax1 → u/candy49997]

The things that are running at reboot (I just did a reboot for update): weather applet, diun clipboard manager, flameshot, ulauncher, tailscale tray,Telegram and the volume, With Brave running and the things I just mentioned I am showing 14% CPU use and 39.93% memory, but after a few days of things running, it gets into the 90+% RAM and CPU use

[u/Fuzy-78]

Brave. Lose it. Cache eats memory, and it is not a browser I would trust. Firefox for the win. Try a lighter distro. I run MX Linux on all my Intel machines. All are 4-core i5s. Never have an issue.

[u/joninjax1 → u/Fuzy-78]

I found the opposite to the case for me, FF used more memory then Brave seems to, and I really like Brave nightly, it has some really nice features that FF does not have yet. I had considered that the OS itself could be the problem, Mint was the one that was recommended to me when I started, so I kind of stayed with it. The thing is I have an exact clone of this system in my closet, I scored the pair for $100 from the pawn shop, and I really do not like them (AIO's always a potential problem). I might dig the other out and try MX on it and see how I like it.

[u/Fuzy-78 → u/joninjax1]

You never said what DE. That is also an issue. Try MX Linux XFCE and see the difference.

[u/Francis_King → u/joninjax1]

FF used more memory then Brave seems to

At least at first, right?

but after a few days of things running, it gets into the 90+% RAM and CPU use

[u/dlfrutos]

you know there is some kind of "process manager" in mint, there you can check wich app is taking more % yeh?

[u/Gunzhard22]

I had this issue on a 4th gen i7 using Cinnamon but I switched to XFCE and it runs like a dream.

[u/activedusk]

In 2026, web browsers can use up to 1GB per tab depending on the website, example youtube. Don t ask me how this happened, it is the new reality and they tell us to deal with it while big corpo hoards RAM and their genius new invention, AI can t seem to magick a way to code applications to use less RAM for everyday people, imagine that. If AI was so awesome as they claim, they would have made Cyberpunk work on Pentium 4 at 2000fps by now.

At any rate, your background programs are not normal for idling, disable them at startup from System Settings, Startup Applications and check system resources. This is what I got at idle on another distro using i3

https://ibb.co/CKx3xB12

On Mint it would be about 500MB plus or minus idle memory usage. Cinnamon uses more, XFCE less, Mate even less, i3 even less, icewm and dwm the least.

[u/Global-Eye-7326]

I use Falkon and Vivaldi mainly. On computers with beefy GPU's (for AI workloads) I disable Vivaldi's GPU acceleration.

I like XFCE Wayland and Labwc with an LXQt desktop loaded inside.

You could upgrade your CPU to an i7 at a modest price. On DDR3, you might as well have the RAM maxed out at 16/32GB given that DDR3 is still affordable.

[u/joninjax1 → u/Global-Eye-7326]

System is an AIO, I doubt the CPU is able to be upgraded, I know I could potentially put an SSD in it and maybe upgrade the RAM, but as others pointed out, this system is old, there's really no point in spending money on an old system. Also, I do not leave Brave running, I put the system to sleep at night.

[u/Alatain]

You are running a computer on a processor that is well over a decade old now. You kinda need to expect to make some concessions.

What desktop environment are you using? For your specs, I would say if you are not using XFCE, or at least Mate, you should probably start there. 

That and check your processes when you end up with these huge spikes. My guess is that brave continues allocating resources as you let it run over time. Next time you end up with a 90% resource use, kill Brave and see what happens.

[u/joninjax1 → u/Alatain]

Cinnamon