16 GB RAM, but WIN 10 is using pagefile way too much.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Molda_22

Molda_22

Reputable
Mar 20, 2015
66
2
4,535
Hi,
i know this is discussed a lot, but when i try searching for answer on the internet, each page has completely contradicting solutions so i am lost and i would really appreciate if someone here would be able to help me. (I will post my specs down below)

My PC us using way too much pagefile virtual memory even though i have 16 GB RAM that is very far away from beiing used fully even with very demanding games being played etc.
Recently it event went as far that the game crashed and said that memory was exceeded or something like that.
I checked MSI Afterburner and CPU, GPU and RAM usage was perfectly OK (RAM usage was 4 GB at max) but the pagefile usage was over the roof and maxed out around 9 GB and when the crash occured it was around 9800 MB.
How come my windows is using so much pagefile when i have a lots of RAM free and it even caused a crash.
I checked the pagefile settings and there is another weird thing, because it looks like that WIN 10 has set a default pagefile size to 3 GB. So why is the actual usage of pagefile 9-10 GBs when playing a game?

There are two different camps of people from what i have read on the internet - one camp says that if you have lots of RAM and is not used fully, you should turn off the pagefile and your problems will dissapear and everything will be faster.
But the other group says that this is a bad thing and that you should not disable the pagefile and either let the default settings or set it to twice the size of your RAM
(And there is third group that says set it to very low size like 1 GB. But what is the point of that when my default windows size of the pagefile is 3 GB yet the actual pagefile usage is lot bigger)

Also i should mention that i have my system on SSD and the pagefile is set there too. (some people say that pagefile should be on another drive and that having pagefile on SSD will kill because of excessive writing but other people say that todays SSD no longer have longetivity problems and that you can leave pagefile there without problems)

Thanks to everyone for answers.
HERE ARE MY SPECS:
CPU: Intel Xeon 1231v3
GPU: MSI Nvidia GTX 970
MB: Gigabyte H97-D3H
CASE: Fractal Define R5
RAM: Crucial 16 GB
PSU: Seasonic M12ii-620 EVO
SSD: Crucial MX100 256 GB (SYSTEM AND PAGEFILE IS HERE)
HDD: WD Blue 1 TB
MONITOR: Samsung S24D390HL
OS: WIN 10 Profesional 64 bit
 
  • Like
Reactions: manera2020
Solution
USAFRet
Don't disable it, just turn the size way down.
I have 16GB RAM, and a pagefile of 1GB min/max. Zero issues in several years of it like this.
Sort by date Sort by votes
Molda_22

Molda_22

Reputable
Mar 20, 2015
66
2
4,535
Sorry, but when the crash happened i didn't get any screenshot of it. But no matter what i game i play, the pagefile usage is very high and the RAM usage is very low (or you could say standart) But if i have 16 GB of RAM, shouldn't it be used more instead of huge pagefile that is clearly causing slow downs or crashes even?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Molda_22

Molda_22

Reputable
Mar 20, 2015
66
2
4,535
So i should leave the size of the pagefile determined by the system? Or should i set it to specific lower amount which is often recommended and that should acording to those theories force PC to use more RAM and little bit less of pagefile. (which is what i want, because memory should not be a bottleneck for me when i have like 10-12 GB of RAM still free even when i start demanding games. but for some reason PC is trying to use huge amounts of pagefile virtual memory instead of my RAM which is free and faster)
And should i move the pagefile to my second data hard drive or leave it on the system SSD? (again, some people say you should definitely do that, some say no. Confusing to me)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Molda_22

Molda_22

Reputable
Mar 20, 2015
66
2
4,535
So i tried what you suggested and when idle (only firefox is open) the pagefile is moving roughly around 2500 - 2700 MB for now. (Before it was around 3500 - 4000 MB on idle). Now when i started the game, the pagefile was around 7000-8000 MB (before it was 8000-9000 MB)
I don't know what to think about it. As long as there is no performance problem i suppose i don't really need to care about it, but when the game crashed complaining something about exceeding memory and MSI Afterburner showed huge pagefile usage above the max limit, this is when i noticed it and I don't want it to repeat or geting worse.
I know that pagefile is important, but what i don't understand is why it is used so much when i have big 16 GB RAM, which should take care of everything.
So i will keep pagefile on, i will keep it on my system SSD, but the question is - should i try and set some manual values of the pagefile size or should i just leave everything as it is?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Molda_22

Molda_22

Reputable
Mar 20, 2015
66
2
4,535


Ok, thanks a lot, i will try this and hopefully it will get better. And regarding the placement of pagefile? Should i keep it on the system SSD? or move it to second data drive? Thanks

 
Upvote 0 Downvote
USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
171,769
18,132
184,590


Just leave it on the SSD.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
L

Lost_Lens

Prominent
Feb 21, 2017
2
0
510


Hey dude, dunno if you're still seeing this but, you shouldn't keep the page file on an SSD as far as I know because constant writes reduce SSD's life span.

 
Upvote -1 Downvote
USAFRet

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Mar 16, 2013
171,769
18,132
184,590


I wish people would stop propagating this fallacy.
That is absolutely not a concern.

1. Given 16GB RAM (as the OP states), pagefile usage is minimal, if at all.
2. Actual write cycles to any SSD sold in the last 5 years far outstrip any typical consumer use case. It will become obsolete due to size years before it dies from too many write cycles.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom