[Higgins909]

I don't know what it is, but every time I get near 10gb ram usage I get windows complaining to me. I have 16 gb ram. Only recently do I wonder if it's related to my psu. Last night I was playing some arma3 and my game froze, I think my gpu crashed because I was down to only 1 monitor (2 monitors) and it was very low resolution. Many programs crashed, obs and arma3. Was able to hear my friend in ts3 the who time and talk. Went to press the start button to shutdown and it would like click but not click and I finally got it to shutdown.

When I went to start it back up it was at the windows login screen. Everything was there but the user to log in. That whole area was just grey, no login area in sight. I hit the power icon in the bottom right and it starts to do the loading swirl thing in the center of screen where login user normally is. Thing is, it never shutdown so I had to hold the power button on the tower. I realized my 2 120mm aux fans were still on and I turned them off and started the computer back up. I got it working then.

Another thing I kinda doubt is related to my psu, but my computer always wakes from sleep at 1-6am. Can't seem to figure it out. Back to my psu. I think the psu fan is failing, I did notice my computer was warmer then usual, although right now it's pretty cool.

Any input is welcome.

Thanks,
Higgins909

 

[TwoCables]

If you're still using that 680W APEVIA PSU, then that's the culprit. Get rid of that thing before it kills your computer. Why are you using such an extremely low-quality PSU? It will be the death of your computer if you keep using it, I guarantee it.

 

[EvoBeardy]

Which version of Windows and by complaining, do you mean; "Do you want to set Windows Colour to basic" or whatever that pain in the arse prompt is?
If Win7, and if yes to the prompt, it's typical when using multiple monitors as it's to something to do with Aero using resources IIRC. You can enable Classic mode or Disable the secondary Monitor from running when the games/applications are being used by going to their respective .exe, hitting properties>Compatibility tab and checking Disable Desktop Composition.

If just general usage with multiple browsers/tabs and programs that aren't games, it could well be your RAM, so I'd run a memtest, it could also be your Virtual RAM allocation.

As TC said though, a primary culprit for all things wrong, even if not now most certainly later, will be the PSU if a very poor quality unit. Whether it's one of the things I mentioned or not, I'd most certainly focus on getting that rectified.

If you could fill out your rig details, as we don't know what system components you have, we could maybe be able to better assist.

Your waking issue could be the PSU also, it could also be the power button on your case. I've found dust to be a culprit for similar issues. Could also just be the power button failing. If it's a daily or nearest-to frequent occurrence, then I'd suggest you take out the front-panel connectors to rule out the case switch.

Best of luck.

 

[Higgins909]

I think I set a new build on my profile.

I7 4790k
hyper 212
MSI H81M-P33 m-atx
2x8gb g skill Ripjaws X series 1600mhz
Corsair CX430M
DIY N8-W case (didn't see this in time to add to my build)
WD green 1tb
Crucial m4 128GB ssd
Xion zxp-gf120 WT fans 120mm
MSI RX480 4gb (Paid like $140 now its like $400 ***)

 

[TwoCables]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Higgins909

I think I set a new build on my profile.

I7 4790k
hyper 212
MSI H81M-P33 m-atx
2x8gb g skill Ripjaws X series 1600mhz
Corsair CX430M
DIY N8-W case (didn't see this in time to add to my build)
WD green 1tb
Crucial m4 128GB ssd
Xion zxp-gf120 WT fans 120mm
MSI RX480 4gb (Paid like $140 now its like $400 ***)

K that PSU is fine (not great, not good, but fine).

Do you have your Page File enabled?

 

[Higgins909]

The psu fan has been making some bad noise on and off. I have a 256MB initial size and 512MB max size on my 1tb, for my page file. I used to have no page file but tried to add a small one to see if it helped and it still gives me the popup of windows running low on memory, close X program to free up memory. Heck, I actually can't play Forza Horizon 3 without it crashing because of this. My friend only has 12GB ram and runs fine. But was thinking my psu was finally going after it crashing and then not booting properly.

 

[TwoCables]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Higgins909

The psu fan has been making some bad noise on and off. I have a 256MB initial size and 512MB max size on my 1tb, for my page file. I used to have no page file but tried to add a small one to see if it helped and it still gives me the popup of windows running low on memory, close X program to free up memory. Heck, I actually can't play Forza Horizon 3 without it crashing because of this. My friend only has 12GB ram and runs fine. But was thinking my psu was finally going after it crashing and then not booting properly.

You still need to increase the size of the Page File. Windows and some programs and games use it no matter how much memory you have installed. 256 MB initial and 512 MB max is nowhere near big enough. You should have a minimum of 1 GB (1024 MB). Set it to 1024 MB initial and max and go from there. If that doesn't help, make it 2048 MB. If that doesn't help, make it 3072 MB. Keep increasing it until the problem goes away (it will once the Page File is big enough). You don't have to be exact to increments of 1024 MB, but 1024 MB is 1 GB and round numbers are easy to think about.

 

[JustinThyme]

Not enough RAM.
Sounds like your kernel corrupted with fast startup enabled. Fast startup is hibernation by another name. It dumps the kernel and drivers from Ram to hiberfil.sys then reloads it on start up. Ifs it's corrupted guess what? You get garbage reloaded. When you do the hard shutdown that forces a cold boot so no hiberfil.sys involved, you get a fresh load of the kernel and drivers.

If nothing else at least make a larger paging file and disable fast boot. Yes it will make boot time a little longer but you get a fresh load every time instead of reloading corrupted files.

Your page file should be at least 2048 MB unless you have at least 32GB of RAM. I have it disabled on all my machines so I'm not slowed down on reading and writing to a drive but then again all my machines have at least 64GB RAM

 

[scracy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustinThyme

Not enough RAM.
Sounds like your kernel corrupted with fast startup enabled. Fast startup is hibernation by another name. It dumps the kernel and drivers from Ram to hiberfil.sys then reloads it on start up. Ifs it's corrupted guess what? You get garbage reloaded. When you do the hard shutdown that forces a cold boot so no hiberfil.sys involved, you get a fresh load of the kernel and drivers.

If nothing else at least make a larger paging file and disable fast boot. Yes it will make boot time a little longer but you get a fresh load every time instead of reloading corrupted files.

Funny that you mentioned that fast boot issue, some time ago I got blue screens due to drivers failing to load properly, disabled fast boot and no more blue screens

 

[TwoCables]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustinThyme

Not enough RAM.
Sounds like your kernel corrupted with fast startup enabled. Fast startup is hibernation by another name. It dumps the kernel and drivers from Ram to hiberfil.sys then reloads it on start up. Ifs it's corrupted guess what? You get garbage reloaded. When you do the hard shutdown that forces a cold boot so no hiberfil.sys involved, you get a fresh load of the kernel and drivers.

If nothing else at least make a larger paging file and disable fast boot. Yes it will make boot time a little longer but you get a fresh load every time instead of reloading corrupted files.

Your page file should be at least 2048 MB unless you have at least 32GB of RAM. I have it disabled on all my machines so I'm not slowed down on reading and writing to a drive but then again all my machines have at least 64GB RAM

You should never disable the Page File. I intentionally Googled "why you should disable the page file" just to drive the point home:

https://www.google.com/search?q=why+you+should+disable+the+page+file

Look at the results. Do you see any good articles teaching that you should disable it? Compare those results to these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=why+you+shouldn%27t+disable+the+page+file

His problem isn't caused by a lack of memory. He has more than enough. His problem is caused by a poorly-configured Page File. I addressed this already. He had a 256 MB initial size and a 512 MB maximum. I'm waiting to see what his results are from making it bigger.

 

[Cyro999]

Quote:

I don't know what it is, but every time I get near 10gb ram usage I get windows complaining to me. I have 16 gb ram.

Yeah, i've had this stuff happen to me and programs actually outright crash with under 50% RAM and VRAM usage reported by the OS

With paging file disabled these problems happen, with it enabled it writes a huge amount of data to the drive that it's on which can impact the lifespan of an SSD or slow down the system with a HDD. Every option seems to suck in some way here

 

[JustinThyme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TwoCables

You should never disable the Page File. I intentionally Googled "why you should disable the page file" just to drive the point home:

https://www.google.com/search?q=why+you+should+disable+the+page+file

Look at the results. Do you see any good articles teaching that you should disable it? Compare those results to these:

https://www.google.com/search?q=why+you+shouldn%27t+disable+the+page+file

His problem isn't caused by a lack of memory. He has more than enough. His problem is caused by a poorly-configured Page File. I addressed this already. He had a 256 MB initial size and a 512 MB maximum. I'm waiting to see what his results are from making it bigger.

I've been running multiple systems for a very long time with no page file. I actually often do the opposite and use ram cache. No I'll effects. If you have sufficient ram you don't need it and this problem won't exist

 

[TwoCables]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JustinThyme

I've been running multiple systems for a very long time with no page file. I actually often do the opposite and use ram cache. No I'll effects. If you have sufficient ram you don't need it and this problem won't exist

Some programs and games require a Page File regardless of how much memory is installed. Windows still uses it as well (again, regardless of how much memory is installed). Therefore, disabling it or setting it too small can result in problems, such as the problems that Higgins909 is experiencing.

It's extremely bad advice to tell someone to disable their Page File without also telling them that they could run into these problems - or worse, telling them that they won't run into any problems. The best advice teaches the user everything they may need to know so that they can decide for themselves what they do with their Page File. Knowing what I know now, I see absolutely no good reason to disable the Page File or even reduce its size - especially considering the average size of hard drives and solid state drives being purchased today. It's absolutely false that the Page File is harmful to solid state drives. See this: http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

For the record, I used to have my Page File disabled. I don't remember when I disabled it, but it was probably in 2009 because that's when I bought my first solid state drive. I disabled it because I was given the bad advice of disabling it for the false reason that it's harmful to solid state drives. I re-enabled it roughly a couple of years ago because I finally ran into low memory problems and learned by asking here on Overclock.net that it was due to having my Page File disabled. I was taught very accurately that some programs and games require it. I came very close to buying 16 GB of memory, but I decided to ask here first and I'm glad I did. After reading a couple of expertly-written articles on this subject, I set my Page File to 1024 MB for both the initial and max size just to start with and the problems went away and so that's what it's been set to ever since. If I end up with any more problems due to having too small of a Page File, then I'll add another 500 MB to start with and go from there.

Now sure, I could easily just let Windows handle the Page File automatically, but that gives me a 12 GB Page File and I am running very low on drive space and I don't have enough money to buy anything like a new solid state drive or a hard drive. Even ~$50 would be a bit of an unwise purchase for me right now. I just don't have much money these days.

Even so, there was a time recently when I had to allow Windows to set the 12 GB Page File because there's a new game that's being developed called "Overload" that ran into a huge memory leak a few months ago that was fixed thanks to what I'm about to tell you. The game would always quit suddenly (like pressing Alt+F4) at about the same time every time I played it. It happened even faster when I left Firefox open in the background, so I asked on the official Overload forum if others were experiencing it and I also asked how much memory they had, and I also asked them to tell me how they had their Page File set. Everyone said that they weren't experiencing this problem (including the devs), and each one of them said they had their Page File set to let Windows handle it automatically. The amount of memory installed per user varied from 2 GB to 32 GB, so the solution became clear to me: I had to increase the size of my Page File.

So while discussing the issue, we discovered that anyone could cause the game to crash exactly like it crashing for me by simply disabling their Page File (a few experimented with a 1 GB Page File to match my settings and they had the same results). Windows was also very inconsistent on telling us that it was running low on memory. Instead, the game would simply quit. The only way to fix this was by letting Windows manage the Page File automatically. Of course, the devs fixed the memory leak and now I can play again with a 1024 MB Page File.

Therefore, I will never allow anyone here on Overclock.net to advise anyone to disable or shrink their Page File without making sure the user is fully informed of what the risks are and how to handle any problems that may surface after disabling or shrinking their Page File. After all, you are responsible for any advice you give.

 

[JustinThyme]

Please provide some proof to back your claim. There is no software that requires a page file, it is not written in any code other than the operating system to over run to virtual memory IF YOU HAVE INSUFFICIENT RAM. Nothing more. It's bad advice to tell people that they have to conform to outdated methods particularly on a tech forum that is about pushing the limit. The entire concept for virtual memory aka page file was conceived when the manufacturing process of sdram was immature and not yet yeilding capacities large enough to handle the workload. Nothing more. All the page filling verbosity of your lazy script won't change the fact the if you have sufficient capacity of hardware to handle the workload of the application you are running you don't need to use a hard drive to fulfill the overrun purpose of the ram. That's like saying you need a cloud server to store content when you have 10 TB of material and a 100TB NAS. Now if you want to continue running smaller quantities of ram when the technology exists to install up to 128GB on any platform so long as your OS is not as outdated as the minuscule hardware that's up to you and yes if you are RUNNING INSUFFIENT RAM you will need to size your virtual memory aka page file aka swap file accordingly. Below is the link for M$ operating systems for which ones address how much sdram. If you are running open source.....well your on your own but the same principle applies and a link explaining that to reduce verbosity here.

http://www.tldp.org/LDP/sag/html/vm-intro.html

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

In the end you are bound by your hardware. Before someone tries to read something that just isn't there I'm in no way saying that you should disable virtual memory just to gain performance. There is the limitation that you must first have SUFFICIENT RAM. So long as you do the use of virtual ram is not necessary and is slower. As I mentioned before the tables have turned on this concept. If you have a large battery of available ram then you can actually do the inverse and run a virtual hard drive so to speak better known as ramcache. In this configuration you do the exact opposite and store prefetch data and drive writes in memory that is 100 time faster than a drive. There is one caveat to this however, memory is volatile and a drive is not. So if you lose power whatever was in the ramcache at the time is forever gone. With that being said I would not recommended this unless you are using a reliable UPS. If you leave your machine running crunching whatever unattended and don't want to lost that data and have an APC UPS there is software that I was on the development team for called powerchute. What this does is you monitor the UPS with the software and when it detects that you are on battery operation all programs are ended and a shutdown sequence initiated.

As always I offer only my perspective on things that I've done both personally and professionally. The choice of whether or not to deploy is up to the individual user based on their particular hardware limitations and usage.

Have a great day, I'm going to play 18 holes at Trumps golf course in Bedminster NJ!