New(ish) PC Problem - high memory usage

[Nail Soup]

I have a new PC, purchased primarily to support my DAW. Lenovo ThinkCentre.

I noticed some strange noises during recording/playback and eventually I think that it is due to the PC's high memory usgae

 

Here it is without the DAW, not doing anything other than  few web pages:

 

Here it is wit hthe DAW playing a simple song of 6 or 7 tracks and not loads of effects:

 

I've only had the PC less than 6 months and not used it heavily.

Is this normal?

Norton is giving me a warning about Memory usage and suggesting that I subscribe to Norton™ Utilities Ultimate ( Help make your Windows™ PC run like new again) for about £30 per year?

 

Any suggestions?

Edited March 11, 2022 by Nail Soup
Changed price to £30

[lurksalot]

Watching with interest , but mine tended to glitch when random windows processes fired up , annoyed me intensely , I am using the month to set up a new machine 😁

[velvetkevorkian]

How much physical RAM does the machine have? 95% usage in normal use does seem high.

 

I'd start by uninstalling Norton tbh, total waste of space. Try closing Edge while recording, maybe?

[Nail Soup]

Just now, lurksalot said:

Watching with interest , but mine tended to glitch when random windows processes fired up , annoyed me intensely , I am using the month to set up a new machine 😁

Good luck! Its quite a job reinstalling all the apps etc.

[Nail Soup]

1 minute ago, velvetkevorkian said:

How much physical RAM does the machine have? 95% usage in normal use does seem high.

 

I'd start by uninstalling Norton tbh, total waste of space. Try closing Edge while recording, maybe?

Whoops forgot to mention that crucial info - it’s 8gb

[Nail Soup]

We have Norton as the family multi pc solution…. Is it really that bad?

[lurksalot]

1 minute ago, Nail Soup said:

Good luck! Its quite a job reinstalling all the apps etc.

I know , but I am at the point that the pain of using the current machine is draining the enjoyment, so I reckon the pain of setting up a new machine will put it all right again soon 😁

[lurksalot]

2 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

Whoops forgot to mention that crucial info - it’s 8gb

ooh mine is 6Gb and I am upgrading to 32 with a 2TB SSD

it might not improve my singing , but hey , who knows 🤷‍♂️
 

 

 

 

🎤🎤🎤

[Bassassin]

I bought a PC specifically to build a recording setup around - I found a useful guide about optimising Windows (I assume you're running 10, not 11) for music:

 

https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/pc-optimization-guide-for-windows-10/

 

Interesting (if long & a bit dated now) SOS article:

 

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/windows-10-musicians

 

As my PC's not for anything other than recording, it's permanently offline unless I need to download or update anything relevant.

 

[TheLowDown]

I would definitely close Edge if doing anything heavy. Edge browser uses an open source version of the Chrome engine, and which has always been a dog for RAM usage. I would probably advise a minimum of 16GB RAM on Windows for music processing which tends to be quite resource hungry, although you may get away with 8GB if you're frugal.

 

[stevie]

It looks like your PC isn't seeing all your memory. 470MB isn't particularly high usage. So the DAW isn't the cause of your problem. You can see how much memory your system is seeing under System/About (or search in the search bar for memory). Or, from the Task Manager (which you displayed above) click the Performance tab and you'll see the total amount of memory available to the system. You could also try the Windows Memory Diagnostic - do a search for it in the search bar on your PC. 16GB would be better, but you still shouldn't be using 95% of 8GB without any large programs running.

 

One of your memory sticks might be duff (or not properly inserted) and you might actually only have 4GB available.

Edited March 11, 2022 by stevie

[Dad3353]

Not forgetting that some Windows versions cannot use more than 4Gb of memory anyway, and reserve 1Gb for themselves, leaving 3 Gb for the User. One needs a 64-bit OS to have access to more RAM.
My humble HP8200, i5, bought 'refurbished' has 12Gb, and has never shown any sign of lack of memory. I use it for composition (Reaper...), 3d stuff, video editing and more, often at the same time. A PC with 8Gb is perfectly capable of running most DAW software at the level most of us need. Studios have, and need, more, but for domestic stuff it should be fine. Check, then, that the OS is indeed 64-bit. 

[KingBollock]

If you have to have a browser open in the background, I can recommend Opera GX. It’s meant for “Gamers”, but the best thing about it (other than the ability to control your RGB lighting (mmmm pretty lights…)) is that you can tell it exactly how much RAM and GPU it is allowed to use.

[Nail Soup]

Thanks for the tips!

I'll be working my way through it 😟

[Nail Soup]

Now it seems like Windows manager is using a lot. 

 

there's a lot of stuff which I don't need.... e.g. "your phone". I'll try killing some of that garbage.

[stevie]

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/desktop-window-manager-dwm-exe

[Nail Soup]

10 hours ago, Dad3353 said:

Not forgetting that some Windows versions cannot use more than 4Gb of memory anyway, and reserve 1Gb for themselves, leaving 3 Gb for the User. One needs a 64-bit OS to have access to more RAM.
My humble HP8200, i5, bought 'refurbished' has 12Gb, and has never shown any sign of lack of memory. I use it for composition (Reaper...), 3d stuff, video editing and more, often at the same time. A PC with 8Gb is perfectly capable of running most DAW software at the level most of us need. Studios have, and need, more, but for domestic stuff it should be fine. Check, then, that the OS is indeed 64-bit. 

Looks like it is 64-bit:

 

 

But when I look at it in "User" view it seems to consider 3.5gb as 82%

 

But in another view it says almost double the gb but still at around 80%

[Nail Soup]

I deactivated the screensaver, based on one of the links above (thanks!) and seems like Windows manager is running better now.

 

But the more I play, the more I am convinced the PC is not accessing all of the memory.

I have 8GB and right now browser is using about 800MB.... so about 10% right?

But if I change the dsplay to "percent" it comes out as 35%

 

Bit of schoolkid maths says that works out a total memry of about 2..2 MB 

But the other display shows as if 8GB were available:

 

Very confusing.

Edited March 12, 2022 by Nail Soup

[TheLowDown]

Perhaps the percentages shown are of the RAM that is being used rather than of total RAM available(8GB).

[BigRedX]

Two things:

 

1. 8GB is pretty much entry level for normal computer usage these days, I wouldn't consider a machine with less than 16GB for anything other than casual email/web browsing and typing the occasional thing in Word.

 

2. You have a lot of things open at once. Windows is still not as good as that other well-known OS at prioritising audio and MIDI data, so the fewer things that are making use of the RAM and processor the better - especially in light of point 1.

 

When you are using your DAW you shouldn't need to have any other applications open so shut them down. If you do need to look something up on the internet use you phone or another device. And go and buy and install at least another 8GB of RAM.

Edited March 13, 2022 by BigRedX

[Nail Soup]

Thanks for the input @BigRedX, but it still doesn't all add up for me..... but I'm for sure no PC expert.

My old PC, where I did all my recording until recently, had 4GB of memory and I never had a memory issue.

When I got a new PC I doubled the memory to 8GB and it's worse.

I could understand it if I did have lots open at once, but it has high memory usage when I'm not running much... and at a rough summing up all the different memory used by the different processes in  it doesn't come to anywhere near 8MB.

 

Something seems wrong, like I'm not fully accessing the 8MB I do have, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of that before adding more memory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BigRedX]

1 minute ago, Nail Soup said:

Thanks for the input @BigRedX, but it still doesn't all add up for me..... but I'm for sure no PC expert.

My old PC, where I did all my recording until recently, had 4GB of memory and I never had a memory issue.

When I got a new PC I doubled the memory to 8GB and it's worse.

I could understand it if I did have lots open at once, but it has high memory usage when I'm not running much... and at a rough summing up all the different memory used by the different processes in  it doesn't come to anywhere near 8MB.

 

Something seems wrong, like I'm not fully accessing the 8MB I do have, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of that before adding more memory.

 

Did your previous PC run the same version of Windows and were you using the same version of your DAW?

 

Also have you changed from 32 bit OS and apps to 64 bit?

 

Like it or not, increased computer power usually leads to sloppy OS and application writing since it is no longer necessary make the use of ever processor cycle and optimise every single line of code to make everything run as fast and lean as possible. With some much processing power, memory and storage available for relatively so little money, there is almost no incentive to do this any more. It's a fact of computing life that on buying a new machine you will need to at least double the processing power, memory and storage to just to stay level with were you were in terms of performance on your old one.

 

Is Studio One loading in lots of plug-ins that you don't need? Can you create an empty song with nothing in it. Has the memory usage increased massively? Then add the sorts of tracks you would normally one at a time and see if there is a point at which the memory usage suddenly shoots right up.

 

Also I'd check that your memory usage list is complete and all the active processes are shown. Do all the percentage figures add up to 100%?

 

[lowdown]

Here is my older Windows i7 with 32 gig of RAM (with no DAW loaded). 

The figures start to look a lot more promising RAM percentage wise.

Also, take into account that W10 needs around 2 gigs to operate, so the OP has only 6 gigs available before background tasks and Internet security kicks in (assuming it's a x64 system).

 

In my case, it seems after windows 10 RAM access, 2 more gigs are used on other stuff running. So for me, 4 gigs is taken up before I start using my DAW.

The OP seems to have over 6 gig taken up before DAW use. I think he needs to go up to 16 gigs. (assuming there is not a problem going on)

 

I can quite easily run 50 Instrument tracks loaded with large sample libraries before I have to start freezing tracks, and that is running my Audio interface at 64 samples.

Of course for mixing, I take it up to 1024 samples. This is running Nuendo 11x, although, I do have Studio One 5.5.1 as well, but that doesn't run anywhere near as well for track counts and smoothness.

I usually only access the internet for updates/upgrades etc. I've turned it on just to show it's RAM usage. I have a Laptop and phone for all Internet tasks.

 

I have tuned my PC for Audio using all the tips that seem to be available (which meant turning off various things) and the tips/suggestions do make a difference to my system, so it's worth looking into.

Saying that, my son works in Audio as well, and he has the latest generation i7 and the newest RAM spec available (64 gig). He doesn't turn anything off - It's all running sweet.

Depends on the age and spec of your system, I suppose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[velvetkevorkian]

I did wonder if you're maybe trying to run too low a latency? What interface are you using, and what latency is it running at?

[Nail Soup]

7 minutes ago, velvetkevorkian said:

I did wonder if you're maybe trying to run too low a latency? What interface are you using, and what latency is it running at?

It's a small two channel Pre-Sonus Audiobox

It says:

• input latency is 13.1 ms / 578 samples
• output latency is 11.6 ms / 512 samples