Your computer’s overall performance depends on many factors, such as processor speed, type of storage (HDD vs SSD) and also the amount of RAM you have.
RAM is important, and if you find that your applications freeze too often or run slowly, a lack of RAM could be one of the reasons.
Why is RAM important?
RAM memory is where the computer stores the data that is used by the currently running applications. Applications themselves are also stored in RAM at runtime.
The more RAM you have, the more processes you can run in the background. It also makes it easy to switch tasks, which is important if you have a lot of applications open and need to move from one to another.
If you notice that your computer has suddenly become a little slow, it might be a sign that your computer has run out of RAM and is making use of the hard drive, which is much slower, like a RAM expansion.
One of the ways to solve this problem is to simply add more RAM, but if you don’t want to spend money, there are a few ways to help you free up RAM.
restart your computer
The fastest way to free up RAM on your computer is just restartas the RAM will be completely emptied and will only load the operating system and other startup applications.
From here, you can start launching apps and see how it affects your computer to find out which apps might be responsible for taking up more RAM.
Although it sounds cliché, turning it off and on generally works well if the problem is occasional.
Update apps
Another possible reason some apps may be consuming more RAM than they should be is because they have a bug. So it’s a good idea to keep apps up to date if the developer releases patches.
Sample application pending update
Change browser or disable extensions
O browsers They are one of the most RAM consuming applications. Google’s Chrome has earned a reputation for using a lot of RAM, so if you’re trying to free up some RAM, you can try switching to a different browser.
Microsoft Edge might be a good alternative as it is now based on the same Chromium platform as Chrome, so you should be able to get the same experience and use the same Chrome extensions.
Speaking of extensions, there is the possibility of the browser extensions you are using They may be causing unnecessary RAM consumption, especially those that run constantly while the browser is active.
You can try disabling your extensions one by one or pressing Control + Esc if using Chrome to see each extension’s RAM consumption.
Chrome Task Manager
close high power applications
Since your computer runs many programs and system processes in the background, some of them may be using a lot of RAM. Not all of these applications may be needed, so eliminating them and preventing them from working can be a way to quickly free up some RAM.
Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open the Task Manager and under the Memory column you should see how much memory is being used in total and how much each application is using individually.
You can click on the application or process and click End Task in the lower right corner of the window to remove it. This is sort of a workaround because as soon as you restart the application the RAM usage will increase again.
Windows task manager
If these are applications that run during computer startup, you can easily disable them:
- Select the “Start” tab of the Task Manager
- Click on the “Startup impact” column to sort the programs from those you use the most to those you use the least.
- Right click to disable unnecessary programs.
There may also be applications running in the background. In this case, to stop these applications, you must:
- go to settings
- Click on the «Privacy» category
- Select “Background apps” from the side menu
- Turn off apps you don’t want to use
Reduce visual effects
To save memory, you can disable animations for apps and icons that use storage for unnecessary effects.
To access your computer’s visual effects
- Search for “Performance” and click “Adjust Windows appearance and performance”
- Switch to “Adjust for best performance”.
Remove malware
Another possible reason why your computer appears to be slow could be due to malware running in the background that you are not aware of.
To be safe, you should run a malware scanner. Hopefully, it won’t find anything, but spending a few minutes scanning your computer and keeping it clean isn’t a bad idea.