I recently bought a new midrange PC with DDR5-6000 memory and reused the same C: drive from my previous system. On the old PC, I could run Ableton Live and Minecraft at the same time with 32 GB of DDR4-3200 without problems. On the new system, both memory sticks are detected and running at their rated 6000 speed with XMP enabled, but Windows appears to be using significantly more RAM. I even received a high-memory-usage warning while opening another Minecraft instance. Could this simply be Windows or some newly installed software using memory differently, or should I check for a hardware, BIOS, or software issue?
3 Answers
It would help to see a Task Manager screenshot showing the total memory, the amount in use, standby or cached memory, and the top processes. Also verify that the sticks are installed in the recommended motherboard slots, update the BIOS and chipset drivers, and test with background applications disabled. A warning caused by one program steadily consuming memory would be more concerning than normal cached RAM usage.
A software memory leak is another possibility, especially if one application keeps growing while you use it. Newer versions of development tools, launchers, audio software, or game clients can occasionally have bugs that consume huge amounts of RAM. Watch the memory column over time and see whether a single process keeps increasing instead of Windows simply using available memory for cache.
Because you reused the old system drive, the new installation may not really be equivalent to the old setup. Different Windows versions, drivers, startup programs, utilities bundled with the motherboard, or updated applications could all change memory usage. Check Task Manager for an unusually large process and consider doing a clean Windows installation if the drive was moved over without reinstalling.
That can happen with some software versions, so comparing the processes and application versions between the two PCs is more useful than comparing the overall percentage alone.