[jaxin326]

Just finished up my new build and for I checked task manager to see how much memory the computer was using just sitting idle and it was around 1.75-1.85 gigs.

My build has the following specs:

Windows 7 home premium 64bit - OS
16 GB G.SKILL Ripjaws Z series - ram
intel i7-2600k 3.4Ghz (3.8 turbo boost) -Cpu
120gb OCZ SSD - Main hard drive
500 gb Western Digital - secondary hard drive
Asus Blue Ray Burner - DVD Drive
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 - MoBo
Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W - PwrSupply
ASUS ENGTX560 DCII OC/2DI/1GD5 - Vid card

The only current things I have installed and are running in the background of the computer are Avast antispyware and maybe Microsoft Windows 2007 (not even sure microsoft 2007 should be using any memory in the background)

Any ideas on why the memory is being used up so much sitting idle. I've heard Windows 7 uses quite a bit but didn't realize it was this much


Thanks

[Advertisements]

There's really no such thing as "idle" - unless, maybe, you boot into Safe Mode, or when talking about the user. When you, the user go idle, Windows starts doing a bunch of "background" tasks, like indexing, scanning for malware, checking for updates, checking for new email, even defragging (if not disabled).

I just looked at mine again and with me at idle, I am using 2.1Gb

Microsoft Windows 2007

No such thing. Did you mean Office 2007?

Yes, Windows 7 uses more resources, but it also uses them MUCH more efficiently than previous versions of Windows.

Bottom line, I don't see anything wrong here. Check your Processes tab and see what is eating up your RAM. If there is one thing that is consuming tons of RAM, that may indicate a problem. But if the RAM is distributed across many processes, that would be normal.

[Digerati]

There's really no such thing as "idle" - unless, maybe, you boot into Safe Mode, or when talking about the user. When you, the user go idle, Windows starts doing a bunch of "background" tasks, like indexing, scanning for malware, checking for updates, checking for new email, even defragging (if not disabled).

I just looked at mine again and with me at idle, I am using 2.1Gb

Microsoft Windows 2007

No such thing. Did you mean Office 2007?

Yes, Windows 7 uses more resources, but it also uses them MUCH more efficiently than previous versions of Windows.

Bottom line, I don't see anything wrong here. Check your Processes tab and see what is eating up your RAM. If there is one thing that is consuming tons of RAM, that may indicate a problem. But if the RAM is distributed across many processes, that would be normal.

[happyrock]

I agree with Digerati
but just for grins use task manager...processes...get screenshot and post it...

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[jaxin326]

Will do once I get back to the computer, yea apologize about saying microsoft windows rather than office. I was just more so curious, because my computer at work runs off of XP with many more processes running and seems to be around 6-800k with nothing open on the desktop.

thanks for the quick responses

Edited by jaxin326, 02 March 2012 - 04:50 PM.

[happyrock]

the biggest is DWM.exe
One of the new features in Windows Vista/7 is the Desktop Window Manager (DWM). It responsible for the graphical effects such as live window previews and a glass-like frame around windows (Aero Glass), without draining your CPU. A DWM-capable graphics card is required to enable the 3D effects, as well as Aero Glass.

don't sweat it...everything's fine...start installing your programs and enjoy the speed of your new system...after you apply the ssd speed tweaks

if all listed below aren't followed the SSD they will wear out faster and work slower

move your documents folder to the hard drive

create a new downloads folder on the hard drive and set all your browsers to download to it


Disabling the page file or Moving the page file from your SSD to a storage hard drive

turn off Hibernation SuperFetch and Defrag
You can disable hibernate by running the command from the Command Prompt:

powercfg /hibernate off


Make sure that TRIM is enabled

if you've already migrated to an SSD, you might not have realized that you're sacrificing performance with misaligned partitions. A regular hard drive usually starts its first partition after 63 empty blocks, while SSDs require 64 blocks of data for optimal performance. This means that sometimes, if your SSD was formatted by something other than Windows' installer, it can be aligned incorrectly and will transfer data much slower than intended


To see if your partitions are aligned correctly, hit the Start menu and type in msinfo32. Enter Msinfo32 and go to Components ... Storage ... Disks. Look for your SSD on the list and find the "Partition Starting Offset" item. If this number is divisible by 4096 (that is, if dividing it by 4096 equals a whole number and not a decimal), your partition is correctly aligned. If not, you need to realign it.

you can't assume windows did it right...it only did 3 out of 4 SSD's on my system

[Digerati]

Note that screen shot says there are 47 processes running but only 15 are being displayed. So clearly, we cannot see all that is going on. However, note the CPU usage is at 0% so the system does go to idle and that is good. And only 10% of Physical Memory is being used too. I have 8Gb (compared to your 16Gb) and I am showing 21% so that seems to match too (though I have 74 processes running).

[happyrock]

I too have 74 process running...put a tic in show processes from all user to see the remaining /missing processes...half dozen svchosts.exe...basically wrappers that run other programs like networking...

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[jaxin326]

Came out at 256.0 when I divided (it shown 1048576).

I was just curious about that, how do I change the location of my internet downloads from being my C drive to my 500gb secondary drive (d drive)?

Thanks for taking a look at the stuff. Seem to know quite a bit...I actually just ran a benchmark thing from my other thread.

If you have time would you take a glance at the rating and the link and see if the computer is performing up to par?


http://www.geekstogo..._1#entry2126939
Thanks

[jaxin326]

my bad, it only shown 51 processes running when i show all users but here's the new one:

Edited by jaxin326, 03 March 2012 - 11:16 AM.

[admin]

I'd suggest you are maybe looking at this from the wrong perspective. You have 16GB of RAM. Rather than being concerned about less then 2GB being used, consider how you can better utilize it.

Other than on-die CPU cache, RAM is the fastest data access your system has. Much faster than an SSD. Modern operating systems are very good at utilizing RAM. They can run with a very small footprint on systems with low RAM, but should utilize RAM to cache data on systems with a lot of RAM. The longer your system runs, and the more you use it, the more RAM it will use. This is not a bad thing. We run a Linux server to power this site, and it will utilize 100% of given RAM over time.

Windows 7 64-bit has a smart pre-cache. For example, if you often load Photoshop after restarting your system, Windows will intelligently pre-cache bits so it loads faster (given enough RAM). You'll also notice programs starting faster the second time. There's no need for the OS to dump everything from memory if there's sufficient RAM.

While it's less common with today's fast hard drive speeds, RAM disks can utilize underutilized RAM, and save wear on SSD only systems.

[happyrock]

I was just curious about that, how do I change the location of my internet downloads from being my C drive to my 500gb secondary drive (d drive)?

I plan on writing up a complete guide on setting up a SSD system but I do not have the time right now so for now use google to research on how to move the documents folder to your hard drive...
as for the downloads...create a new folder on the hard drive and name it NEW DOWNLOADS
then launch firefox and on the top row click on tools...options...general tab...
in the downloads section click on browse find the new folder and click on it...click on OK
NOTE all browsers have a way to select where to download files to

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[jaxin326]

Windows will intelligently pre-cache bits so it loads faster (given enough RAM). You'll also notice programs starting faster the second time. There's no need for the OS to dump everything from memory if there's sufficient RAM.

This is good to know. I'm currently an NC programmer that uses catia V5 software. The company I work for just switched from using xp for a very long time to using windows 7. We haven't fully switched over to the new system yet, but it will be curious to know how much quicker Catia loads from xp to windows 7. When moving larger/more complex parts inside of catia, the computer (xp one) seemed to bog down quite a bit because we had only 8gigs of RAM prior to upgrading our systems to 12 GB. I will be curious to see how well this system works will lots of RAM and running windows 7 rather than xp.

Really appreciate the feedback on this topic, it has been quite informative. I've used geeks to go for about 6 years now for miscellaneous topics here and there and have always had great responses. Really appreciate all that you guys do here.

@ happyrock

Thanks for the info. I guess if I were a bit more intelligent in the matter I could have found that out myself. For some reason I thought it was a default setting with the OS, not the internet.

Thanks

Edited by jaxin326, 04 March 2012 - 10:27 AM.