W 10 Home sees 16 Gb, but only uses around 5.5

LeeTramp · 23 Apr 2017

I have a Toshiba Satellite E55 laptop with Windows 10 Home installed. It had 4 Gb of RAM, and was running way to slow. I purchased two identical 8Gb chips, and installed both. The computer sees all 16 Gb (see second image below), but only seems to use up to about 5.5 Gb. I have tried running Netflix streaming videos while rendering a video in a video editing software, and it still maxes out at 6.2 Gb (see first image). I also have two web browsers and an email client open.

I thought with all that I should be using more than 6 Gb, but maybe I don't know enough.

Any thoughts? Am I missing something in my settings, or is my computer using the 16 Gb as effectively as it needs?

W 10 Home sees 16 Gb, but only uses around 5.5-satellite-window-10-ram-rendering-streaming.png

W 10 Home sees 16 Gb, but only uses around 5.5-satellite-window-10-setup.png

W 10 Home sees 16 Gb, but only uses around 5.5-satellite-window-10-ram.png

dalchina · 23 Apr 2017

Hi, You've nothing to worry about. Memory management is sophisticated. Perhaps be worried if your RAM usage approaches, say, 70-80%, especially as you have 16GB. Some of your RAM is probably associated with your graphics card, or potentially so. RAM is swapped with your page file (of which you're using very little), so simply looking at RAM usage tells you only part of the story.

Just leave the page file settings as default, unless an expert.

If your second screenshot is when nominally idle, I'd prefer to see your CPU use lower, and disk use virtually 0.