Windows 10: Sufficient RAM for OS...or is it a more is better situation?

Nothing is wrong with the computer, you don't have enough things running flash. I have Edge opened with 6 tabs except Chrome, flash itself uses 1GB alone, I have 100 tabs opened in Google Chrome which consists of 15+ facebook tabs, 2-3 Google Mail tabs with a mailbox that has 300,000 emails.

 

I have more tabs opened because I'm going through a backlog of stuff in both email and facebook from the last 6 years.... I get 2,000 emails daily and facebook notifications are about 500 a day. It's not facebook causing it. Remember Adobe Flash is a serious memory/resource hog and it doesn't help when Google Chrome no longer supports the external NPAPI plug-in. I also have Bluestacks player running in the background.

 

Alright, I see. Man, that sure is a lot of RAM.

 

Windows has never been good at memory management. The same hardware with 4GB of ram can handle 5,000+ users running *BSD or Linux. This is a ASUS ROG Gaming notebook so it can go up to 32GB. I guess if things did not use resources like that, notebooks won't be supporting 64GB these days. LOL.

 

I've recently switched to Firefox for all of my Internet browsing activity, for that reason. I am keen to upgrade my system before it fails, as I feel it is likely to do. I am already having issues where the screen will go white for minutes at a time, and the machine becomes unresponsive.

I am appreciative of all your advice and support.

 

I'm happy with 24 gigs.

 

Windows in an OS built on virtual memory. Aside from system-level processes (and some other exceptions), processes in Windows do not use RAM directly. They have no direct control over RAM whatsoever. Processes store their code and data in virtual memory. RAM only serves as temporary staging area, to which virtual memory pages are "projected to", when a specific process need to physically access these pages. Memory pages are loaded into RAM when they are needed and pushed out from RAM into swapfile when they are no longer needed.

This means two things:

1) Yes, more RAM is almost always better. More RAM means that more memory pages will be able to co-exist in RAM without being pushed out to swapfile. More processes can be run simultaneously (without pushing each other out). And memory-heavy processes can run more efficiently (without pushing their own data out).

2) Instantaneous RAM usage means absolutely nothing in an OS based on virtual memory. In a well-designed OS the entire 100% of RAM is always used for something. Unused RAM is wasted RAM - that is the golden rule that defines it all.

The only case when instantaneous RAM usage value might make sense is when you are running an OS with swapping completely disabled (standard mode for Android, can be set up in Windows as well).

For that reason, if you look at the current RAM usage value somewhere, say, in task manager and see that RAM usage is nearly 100%, it does not necessarily mean that your system is short on RAM. It simply means that the OS is taking the full advantage of the available RAM, exactly as any properly designed OS should.

The real sign of being short on memory is when your system begins swap thrashing under your typical usage conditions. You see your system swap thrashing - you need more RAM. If you experience no observable swap thrashing - your RAM is perfectly sufficient for your purposes.