Which version of Windows 10, to use just mainly for a Plex dedicated
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Yep, leave RAM management to Windows 
Either Home or Pro would be fine for this purpose. Unless you want to RDP into your Plex box from time to time, I would save the money and go with Home.
See, I see it differently here, and perhaps because this is a tech site, but I prefer Pro as you have more control over the OS. And the way the OP is talking about streamlining the OS, Pro would be the better choice. But, yeah, Home is "cheaper".
With that, were all guessing anyway as the OP never answered the question as to what version of Windows 10 they have.
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Hi sorry forgot to mention it is Windows 10 Home 64 bit. my bad..
and would like to thank everyone's input
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These systems are just fine on their own managing RAM.
I can't speak for Linux but I disagree on Mac OS, iOS, AppleTV OS, Android, and Windows 10 (the only version I've ever used).
Mac OS -- Four years ago I was an Apple only user. Then I had an iMac that was 3 years old. It had 8GBs of RAM. Everyone told me how AWESOME MacOS managed RAM. I heard it so much I believed it. Then I installed an app that told me how much RAM was available. After a few hours of use that RAM was maxed out. It was easy to tell because everything slowed down. When I used a RAM optimizer (instead of rebooting) it would speed back up some... but not all of the RAM came back. Eventually, late in the day, I'd reboot -- and that freed ALL the RAM up.
iOS -- My last iPhone was 6. It worked decent at release but when iOS updated it became garbage. It was constantly slowing down, taking forever to take a photo, you name it. Very little storage for virtual memory. 1GB of RAM.
All the Appleheads said, "1 GB is all you need thanks to Apple's brilliant memory management." WRONG. Things got so bad that Apple revealed a simple 'fix'. The Easiest Methods to Instantly Free Up RAM on Your iPhone and iPad to Improve Performance Why would you need to free up RAM if Apple magically handles RAM perfectly?
Resetting the phone to factory only fixed the problem for a day. It WAS a nice pretty phone but for ----'s sake I wanted a phone that worked. This nudged me towards --
Android -- and a OnePlus 3 phone. With a mindbending 6GBs or RAM. Guess how many times THAT phone locked up or slowed way down? ZERO. Guess how many times I had to reset that phone to factory in 2 years? ZERO. When I looked at RAM usage -- it was never anywhere near max. I frequently hit the QUIT ALL OPEN APPS button, one Apple won't provide.
AppleTV -- also lacked that quit all button. Once you had a small handful of apps open -- it would start to stutter and act weird. I want you to guess how many GBs of RAM that frustrating top dollar piece of garbage had. Wait for it: .5 GBs. Not even one GB.
SIDEBAR -- RAM isn't THAT expensive. It just ain't.
Windows -- was rather impressive with RAM management. Where my 8GBs of RAM wasn't quite enough for Mac OS, it's just enough providing I close troublemaker apps after I used them. I just checked and I'm using 5.2 out of 8. But all day long I close apps and tabs when not in use. (I tried putting 8 more GBs into this machine but it didn't like it. My next PC will have dual channel 16 no matter what.)
If the above isn't proof enough that RAM usage matters -- let's talk Windows 10.
When I surf in Firefox I sometimes put YouTube in its own window while surfing in another. A while ago I noticed something strange would happen. The 1080p video stream would freeze (while the audio continued) sometimes... particularly when I was surfing in the other window.
Why sometimes? Because sometimes all my RAM and standby RAM are full. Time and again I've been told the standby RAM isn't an issue. That it HELPS the system. Yet... if I used Microsoft's own standby RAM releasing utility (called RAMMap) and release the standby RAM... all of sudden... the 1080p stream resumes and works properly.
This same thing happens when the system pauses or stutters. ALMOST ALWAYS I'll go check out the standby RAM in resource monitor, and sure enough -- it's very high or maxed out. That's why I keep Resource Monitor and RAMMap handy in Start Menu.
I'm not crazy. It's cause and effect.
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Mac OS -- Four years ago I was an Apple only user. Then I had an iMac that was 3 years old. It had 8GBs of RAM. Everyone told me how AWESOME MacOS managed RAM. I heard it so much I believed it. Then I installed an app that told me how much RAM was available. After a few hours of use that RAM was maxed out. It was easy to tell because everything slowed down. When I used a RAM optimizer (instead of rebooting) it would speed back up some... but not all of the RAM came back. Eventually, late in the day, I'd reboot -- and that freed ALL the RAM up.
My primary computing device at home is a MacBook Pro. It's from 2014. It has a Core i5 and 8GB of RAM. I use that computer every day for almost everything. I've never reinstalled the OS, and I almost never have to reboot it. I just close the lid and put it to sleep and open the lid later and wake it up.
I'm not a fan of iOS devices. My wife and daughter have iPhones and wife and son have an iPad, but I have never cared for them myself. But for the most part, they have been just fine for them.
SIDEBAR -- RAM isn't THAT expensive. It just ain't
For the most part, it is not. Unless you are buying something like a MacBook where it's integrated and cannot be easily changed. These devices can be a bit pricey putting more RAM into them.
My Windows 10 desktop that I have now at home has 16GB of RAM, and the gaming desktop we just built for my son has 32GB of RAM.
As far as Windows 10 goes, memory usage can be confusing to understand. It seems many simply want to keep their % of memory used to be as low as possible. But in reality, unused RAM is just wasted RAM. It's better to have data in RAM than to retrieve it from a hard drive.
My desktop has 16GB of RAM, and I have 48% in use. I'm only running Chrome right now (7 tabs open watching a YouTube video and responding to this post), and have a Server 2019 VM running in Virtualbox which i have allocated 4GB of RAM. I only have 240MB compressed, and I still have 8.3GB of free RAM.
If you constantly have a lot of things that are compressed or you are heavily hitting the page file on a slow hard drive, you are going to have some problems. However, if those things aren't happening, you likely aren't going to really benefit from having more RAM.
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Windows -- was rather impressive with RAM management. Where my 8GBs of RAM wasn't quite enough for Mac OS, it's just enough providing I close troublemaker apps after I used them. I just checked and I'm using 5.2 out of 8. But all day long I close apps and tabs when not in use. (I tried putting 8 more GBs into this machine but it didn't like it. My next PC will have dual channel 16 no matter what.)…. [snip]
Your situation with your Asus notebook and 8gig of RAM doesn't necessarily apply to everyone. I've a Asus Ultrabook with 4gig of RAM running Windows 10 and Windows absolutely chokes on it with that amount of RAM. My Lenovo Ultrabook with 16gig of RAM fairs much much better. In either case, I trust Windows to do a better job of managing RAM than any 3rd party app.
BTW both my desktops feature 32gig of RAM and again, and Windows does its thing without hindering my usage. And as a photographer I use both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshops, both of which will eat up RAM.
In the end there's mix of both software and hardware that can affect usage and not all apply to everyone. Anyway we'll agree to disagree as I much prefer to let Windows manage my RAM.
Peace:)
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I had a MacBook Pro from mid-2010 that came with 4GB, only upgrade I did was to 8GB RAM. When it finally died in the midst of installing Mohave [drive controller on the motherboard failed] I pulled the RAM out and put in an HP Notebook and the reformatted 500GB HDD is residing happily in a Toshiba Notebook. The RAM change wasn't a problem, got it from Crucial. The MacBook Pro had an Intel motherboard with an Intel Core I7 CPU in it. Now the older iBook G4 notebooks with the PowerPC CPU are a whole different thing.
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I've a Asus Ultrabook with 4gig of RAM running Windows 10 and Windows absolutely chokes on it with that amount of RAM. My Lenovo Ultrabook with 16gig of RAM fairs much much better.
I believe all you're saying here is a universally understood truth: these days 4GBs isn't quite enough to run Windows 10 well, 8 is pretty good if you don't have a lot of things open, and 16 or more will allow you to just that. Right?
That reality isn't related to this topic --
I trust Windows to do a better job of managing RAM than any 3rd party app.)
The app I'm showing doesn't supersede Windows RAM management. It instead attempts to 'clear' out RAM getting 'stuck'.
(Forgive those technical terms. 
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Another response in this thread implies that 3rd Party Apps are make pretend and bad somehow and don't change much. But I'm using Resource Monitor (by MS) to observe if there's any change. The Optimizer cannot change what Resource Monitor sees. If the app did ABSOLUTELY nothing -- Resource Monitor would report no difference.
And to repeat -- when real ram and standby RAM are maxed out the system slows down. Just like any Mac, iPhone, Droid in the same situation. It's a simple principle to understand. And when you use RAMMap (by MS) it loses the standby RAM and the system returns to normal. That should tell anyone that Windows does NOT completely manage RAM... or it would do this automatically.
Last edited by The Pool Man; 13 Jan 2020 at 23:06.
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We're not changing each other's mind here. We're also not helping the OP by straying wildly off topic.
Let move on. Peace 
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Certainly not saying you won't see a difference in resource monitor. The problem is understanding whether the change you see is a good thing.
This article will be my final say on this subject as well. It explains how memory optimizers work and why you see changes in task manager and resource monitor, but how these changes are detrimental to performance even though it seems like it should help.
Why Memory Optimizers and RAM Boosters Are Worse Than Useless
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Boy I love a good conversation..
Thanks all
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