Maybe someone here can save me money.

My computer runs out of memory and crashes while having 30 tabs open and syncing to Google Drive and having FreeFile Sync open in the background, etc.

Also, I am using integrated graphics from the i5 CPU, and sometimes one or two of my three monitors goes black when I run out of memory.

Very tiresome.

So, I think I should try 32GB of main memory and see what happens.

 

BUT, I can't buy if I must pay like Bt.6000.00 just for another 16GB of RAM.

I don't want the headache of buying used RAM and then finding out I have been sold bad RAM.

 

So...any help...please?

 

(I am also considering buying a graphics card thinking that this might reduce overhead on the CPU....but maybe it won't.  Not entirely sure.)

 

Well...thanks a lot if you can save me money by providing the best RAM source in Thailand.

I have 15 tabs open on Firefox and Chrome, running 16gb ram and a 2gb graphics card, i5 7300hq cpu. It's at 47% of ram, even with Photoshop running it doesn't go above 60%.

 

Depends on which type of ram you have and what type of i5 cpu. I'm also running 2 SSD drives and DDR4 1200mhz.

Edited May 25, 20206 yr by tribalfusion001

7 minutes ago, tribalfusion001 said:

I have 15 tabs open on Firefox and Chrome, running 16gb ram and a 2gb graphics card, i5 7300hq cpu. It's at 47% of ram, even with Photoshop running it doesn't go above 60%.

 

Depends on which type of ram you have and what type of i5 cpu. I'm also running 2 SSD drives and DDR4 1200mhz.

Google's Backup and Sync application is very resource hungry.  Just that, alone, uses about 25% of the DDR3.

Maybe having three monitors connected to the same computer with many instances of Chrome open might be a factor.

And then I have Acrobat running, and a few other applications.

But, it is really the Google application which uses the most memory.

 

ANYWAY...any ideas where one can get RAM at a very low price?

I bought 16gb of ram for my MacBook from AliExpress , very cheap and works great. 2 weeks delivery from China. Always buy from reputed sellers (those with thousands of items sold).

 

Imho anyway going from 16 to 32 won't change much, probably cpu and the fact that you use multiple screens with no graphic card are a bottleneck.

If you don't require immediate synchronization of your Google drive, just shutdown the application while you're using your computer and then restart it when your computer is less busy.  If there is some file you MUST backup immediately, just open your drive in a browser and drag+drop that file and close that tab when no longer needed.

 

Are you using Windows or Mac?  Do you have spinning drives or SSD?

Edited May 26, 20206 yr by gamb00ler

1 hour ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

BUT, I can't buy if I must pay like Bt.6000.00 just for another 16GB of RAM.

ddr3 is nowhere near that price - https://www.advice.co.th/product/ram-for-pc/pc-ddr3l-1600-

 

i think you are trying to do too much with an under powered system

If you use Windows open the task manager and look which resources are used.

I.e. in this sample you see that 9.5GB of 15.9GB RAM is used. More RAM would not improve anything in that case.

Make sure you look at this when you have all the tabs open, etc.

You can also close individual programs and/or tabs and see how this changes.

Some tabs, i.e. Thai Visa, use a lot more RAM than others.

 

10 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

My computer runs out of memory and crashes while having 30 tabs open and syncing to Google Drive and having FreeFile Sync open in the background, etc.

Also, I am using integrated graphics from the i5 CPU, and sometimes one or two of my three monitors goes black when I run out of memory.

Very tiresome.

So, I think I should try 32GB of main memory and see what happens.

As OMF said in the above post, see how much RAM you are using now with multiple tabs and programs open, if that is less than 75% usage of available RAM (my rule of thumb) then this is not the issue. Of course, more 'reasonably priced' RAM doesn't hurt.

 

Another point raised is what are your drives, HDD or SSD? If you open task manager while you have multiple tabs and programs open, what does your disk usage look like? If running a mechanical drive, using cloud sync programs, I could almost see you up near the 100% mark, slowing/bottle-necking everything up. Changing to SSD will make a huge difference here. And be a lot cheaper than 6,000 baht!

 

 

What generation is your i5? I have an older laptop with a gen 4 i7 processor which would be left for dead with a 10th gen i3; shouldn't ignore the processor gen........

 

And yes, a graphic card will also help. Also helpful to check your startup items in task manager and disable those you don't need.

Thank you for all the above good suggestions.

However, I still require added main memory on this computer, and here is why...

 

a.  Keeping watch on the Task Viewer, I often see that Available Memory drops down to around 2GB or below.

b. After this, I have had one or all three screens stop working. And, when this happens, the screen will first shift to a lower screen resolution, just before it quits altogether.

c.  The reason this is happening is:  Integrated graphics on this computer uses the same RAM that is available to the CPU. When the computer begins to run completely out of available memory, then this also affects the Processor HD Graphics 4600 performance, and it just stops.

d. As I stated above, I have only 16GB of RAM. The HD Graphics uses 2GB of this RAM, leaving the CPU with only 14GB at the start. Not enough, in my case, obviously.

e. I use 3 SSDs and 1x4TB HDD. But, the drives are not a performance bottleneck that I can't live with, and not particularly slow, in fact.

f. Although the computer does have an old CPU, i5-4670K, still the processor is adequate for the requirements.

g. Google Backup and Sync application uses over 50% of CPU capacity. This is probably because this is a new sync of Google Drive which has a 4TB storage allocation. At the moment, there are about 2.7TBytes of data stored on Google Drive in this account.

Therefore, when syncing, all files must be compressed in the cloud and then unpacked on the local PC.  There is therefore a huge amount of computational power required, ie to unpack 2.7TBytes of large and small files, and some directories contain thousands of smaller files.  I am not surprised that this sync has taken so long, and that it might be two weeks before the local PC is updated.  At the moment, there are still over 600,000 files not yet synced, according to the Google taskbar icon

h.  It is true that after the sync completes, then the application can be paused. Still, this may not be required because once the update has completed, there will be less need to unpack so many files.  Most of the data will be going up to the cloud from the PC and not the reverse.

i.  Good suggestion about AliExpress. But I will still try to find a store in Thailand, probably, where I can get RAM.  I noticed that JIB has a kit of Kingston 8GBx2 modules for about Bt.3,300.00.  Still, that is too much money because I am not sure how much longer this ASUS motherborad will last.  If the MB fails, then I will have no use for DDR3 RAM in the future, I guess.  And this is why I had considered using used RAM, but I have no idea where to buy it in Chiang Mai.

j.  Installing a separate graphics card will not solve the memory problem, and the fans on the graphics cards are all noisy and fail easily, just from my experience. I would be happy with a fanless graphics card which is better than the integrated graphics on the CPU, but this computer is not worth spending the money on.

 

So anyway, thank you for the many suggestions.

I will keep looking for cheapter RAM (1600).

On 5/26/2020 at 7:17 AM, gamb00ler said:

If you don't require immediate synchronization of your Google drive, just shutdown the application while you're using your computer and then restart it when your computer is less busy.  If there is some file you MUST backup immediately, just open your drive in a browser and drag+drop that file and close that tab when no longer needed.

Good suggestion, but OP seems determined to ignore all suggestions!

  

7 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

g. Google Backup and Sync application uses over 50% of CPU capacity.

Yah, pause it when you need more CPU for other applications. Yah, it can be paused anytime. Can just run it a night when you're sleeping.

 

7 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

i.  Good suggestion about AliExpress.

Great suggestion in fact. New > old, if you can even find any. Cheap & new at Aliexpress.

 

7 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

j.  Installing a separate graphics card will not solve the memory problem,

Your problem is more than just memory (in more ways than one) and a separate graphics card may well fix it.

 

7 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

and the fans on the graphics cards are all noisy and fail easily

No they aren't. No they don't. You're way out of date.

 

7 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

I would be happy with a fanless graphics card which is better than the integrated graphics on the CPU, but this computer is not worth spending the money on.

Figured out that part. But you see you don't install a new graphics card by gluing it in. If you get a new computer, you can move it to that one. The computer is worth spending money on if it will do the job you want and do it well.

 

 

7 hours ago, JohnBarleycorn said:

. Google Backup and Sync application uses over 50% of CPU capacity. This is probably because this is a new sync of Google Drive which has a 4TB storage allocation. At the moment, there are about 2.7TBytes of data stored on Google Drive in this account.

Therefore, when syncing, all files must be compressed in the cloud and then unpacked on the local PC.  There is therefore a huge amount of computational power required, ie to unpack 2.7TBytes of large and small files, and some directories contain thousands of smaller files.  I am not surprised that this sync has taken so long, and that it might be two weeks before the local PC is updated.  At the moment, there are still over 600,000 files not yet synced, according to the Google taskbar icon

I've used Google Drive and sync products since their introduction.  The only time that files were compressed was when I attempted to send a copy of a MacOS install app to my sister through GD.  The Mac app file is actually a special type of folder containing 100's of small files.  When my sister tried to download it through a shareable link, GD compressed the folder.  From my experience Bkup&Sync doesn't do any compression either up or down.  But, my use is limited to the 15GB free account.  I've only seen compression when using the browser based GD interface or shareable links.

 

Just yesterday, I discovered I didn't have a backup of my 10GB of iTunes music so I used a new GD account with Bkup&Sync.  No indication that there was compression for the dozens of folders and 100's of MP3's during upload.

 

What makes you think Bkup&Sync is doing compression?

 

I'm curious about the FreeFIle sync utility.  Are you using it to sync the same GD data on your home network?

 

 

 

 

3 minutes ago, gamb00ler said:

I'm curious about the FreeFIle sync utility.  Are you using it to sync the same GD data on your home network?

Last time I used FreeFileSync (long time ago) it was a bit of CPU hog. Another suggestion for OP is to lower the priorities of the offending processes.

Did you, OP, think about shutting some of the 30 tabs down, you can only do one thing at once as you are a man and cannot multi-task.