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Groups > alt.comp.os.windows-11 > #18462

Re: memory usage vs fan usage

From Paul <nospam@needed.invalid>
Newsgroups alt.comp.os.windows-11
Subject Re: memory usage vs fan usage
Date 2025-04-17 12:09 -0400
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <vtr93h$10brs$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References <m6cgr0Fa4thU1@mid.individual.net>

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On Thu, 4/17/2025 10:16 AM, Andy Burns wrote:
> Both of my laptops have sufficient RAM for what they do
> (Win11 Home=16GB, Win11 Pro=32GB) home machine for "home stuff", pro machine for "work stuff"
> 
> Neither has to do much paging, perhaps peak at 100 faults/sec during loading large apps, then calms down to single digits or zero afterwards
> 
> It always annoys me that as the amount of memory used (by total committed) increases, so does the chance/speed the fans are spinning, if the fan use was proportional to paging I'd kind of understand.
> 
> Memory chips don't know if part of them is allocated to a process or not, right?  Other than maybe some garbage collection, nothing goes around flipping bits for fun, right?
> 
> So how does being allocated, even when sitting idle, influence cooling required?
> 
> Anyway, I've always been a bit suspicious of the MemoryCompression service, so I'm experimenting with it turned off for a bit.
> (powershell disable-mmagent -mc)
> 
> And it's the first time in years I have firefox and thunderbird both running with no fans in use ... not conclusive yet, but interesting ...

Makes sense, but the first question you have to ask, is why
the Memory Compressor is sucking cycles, on machines which
are not down to their last byte of memory.

On W10, between 250MB in use all the way up to 1GB in use,
the compressor goes from "railed" at the how end, to barely
doing anything at all on a machine equipped with 1GB of RAM.
I did some tests in a VM, to see how it behaves. This was
back when the Memory Compressor was visible in Task Manager.

You have 16GB or 32GB, and the Memory Compressor should be
taking a snooze in such a case. Only when the memory use is
at 90-95%, should the compressor be picking up again.

On Linux, something called "swappiness" defines some of
the memory management behavior. Linux distros, some of
them start to swap at half full, others allow the OS
to get within 50MB of exhaustion, before doing
something about it. Does Windows perhaps have a similar
policy ?

I used Process Explorer to watch the Memory Compressor, then
ran my malloc64.exe test program (home-brew code), and the
Memory Compressor only started to consume cycles near the
very end of the run. There was no sign of any changed
behavior that would account for your memory compressor
to be running. When you're down to 250MB of memory left,
you should start to see a response.

   Paul

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Thread

memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-17 15:16 +0100
  Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-17 12:09 -0400
    Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-17 19:57 +0100
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-18 03:15 -0400
  Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-17 11:59 -0500
    Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-17 19:40 +0100
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2025-04-19 12:04 +0000
        Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-19 13:36 +0100
          Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-19 09:25 -0400
          Re: memory usage vs fan usage Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2025-04-19 14:54 +0000
            Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-19 16:16 +0100
            Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-24 08:17 +0100
              Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-24 05:14 -0500
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-24 11:30 +0100
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-24 09:08 -0400
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-24 20:59 -0500
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-25 07:40 +0100
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-25 19:13 +0100
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-25 22:29 -0500
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-26 10:31 +0100
                Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-26 15:05 -0500
        Re: memory usage vs fan usage "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-19 14:36 +0200
          Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-19 13:56 +0100
          Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-19 09:28 -0400
  Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-17 15:07 -0500
    Re: memory usage vs fan usage "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-17 22:25 +0200
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-17 19:30 -0500
        Re: memory usage vs fan usage "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-18 14:09 +0200
          Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-18 11:13 -0500
            Re: memory usage vs fan usage "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-18 21:33 +0200
    Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-17 22:12 +0100
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2025-04-17 20:07 -0500
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-18 05:24 -0400
        Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-18 12:08 +0100
          Re: memory usage vs fan usage Frank Slootweg <this@ddress.is.invalid> - 2025-04-18 18:09 +0000
            Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-18 19:36 +0100
  Re: memory usage vs fan usage "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-17 22:29 +0200
    Re: memory usage vs fan usage Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2025-04-17 22:17 +0100
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-04-18 02:19 +0200
      Re: memory usage vs fan usage Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> - 2025-04-18 05:52 -0400

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