SteelSeries Sonar, which I use for my microphone, has recently started consuming more than 25GB of memory over time. On one occasion while playing a game, total usage appeared to reach around 50GB. When this happens, Windows becomes sluggish, audio starts lagging, and the Windows audio service can crash without recovering.
I also noticed Node.js Runtime using more than 1GB of memory during one incident. I use Stream Deck, which may rely on Node.js, so I'm wondering whether the two issues could be related. Ending the Node.js process caused it to restart at roughly 50MB, while restarting Sonar also temporarily fixed the problem.
As a workaround, I created a background PowerShell process through Task Scheduler that monitors Sonar's memory usage and restarts it if it exceeds 2GB. That prevented a full audio crash, although there was a brief audio glitch when Sonar restarted.
I'm running Windows on a system with 64GB of RAM, an i9-14900KS, and an RTX 5090. Has anyone else experienced a Sonar or related SteelSeries software memory leak, particularly alongside Stream Deck or Node.js Runtime? I plan to contact SteelSeries support, but I'd appreciate any troubleshooting ideas or more permanent solutions.
2 Answers
I haven’t seen this behavior personally, even on a very similar high-end system, but it’s worth watching Sonar’s memory usage over time to see whether a specific feature, game, or device triggers the growth.
You may not need Sonar for the hardware itself. The SteelSeries devices should generally continue working without it, so temporarily uninstalling or disabling Sonar could help confirm whether it’s the source of the leak rather than trying to keep restarting it.
I use Sonar because I prefer its microphone processing and noise reduction over Wave Link. I could recreate the setup there, but Sonar currently gives me better results, so I’m hoping to identify the underlying issue first.