Spinasaurus, i5 [email protected], GTX580

Peterpoose

Peterpoose

Peterpoose

Associate
Joined
21 Apr 2010
Posts
315
Location
London
Hi folks,

I have the Spinasaurus built by OC, with an added GTX580 and SSD.

I use the PC to game and at the moment ripping 600 Blu Rays to a 42tb NAS.

Lately when gaming I get a message saying to close my game as I am low on memory. I figured it was my drives as they were pretty full. I removed a lot of crap from them but I am still getting this message.

Therefore I assume I need more RAM. I currently have 4gb.

Any suggestions for good RAM?

8gb or 16gb?

Budget isn't an issue.

Cheers
 
The best thing to do is diagnose the cause of the problem rather than fix the symptoms. Have a look at what is running on the PC, how much memory is being used and whether you really need it there. TaskManager can help here.

Are you running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of the operating system? If it's the former then you can't add more RAM as it won't be recognised by the OS.

If you do need and can use more RAM then the best thing is another 4GB of what you have already. Otherwise take it out and buy 8GB of something similar.

I'm still struggling to understand why you thought you had a storage problem when the message said 'memory'......
 
Snapshot said:
The best thing to do is diagnose the cause of the problem rather than fix the symptoms. Have a look at what is running on the PC, how much memory is being used and whether you really need it there. TaskManager can help here.

Are you running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of the operating system? If it's the former then you can't add more RAM as it won't be recognised by the OS.

If you do need and can use more RAM then the best thing is another 4GB of what you have already. Otherwise take it out and buy 8GB of something similar.

I'm still struggling to understand why you thought you had a storage problem when the message said 'memory'......
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply.

I have Windows 7 64.

Well I am not technically minded at all, hence why I got OC to build the PC.

I was getting a message at first saying windows doesn't have enough memory to run colours etc and the drive windows was on was nearly full, that's why I assumed maybe that was the cause.

All I had open was SWTOR the new star wars MMO and maybe a few webpages. Also sometimes during these being open I am transfering from my PC hardrive to my NAS Blu Rays 1 at a time. I will mention that until my gigabit switch and cat 6 cable arrives I am transfering via wifi lol like 6 hours a blu ray!

I was told that adding to existing RAM can make more problems than it is worth and to just buy a whole new batch?

Cheers
 
Okay, that's a good start but now we need some more screenshots to see what's using the memory. So, load up all the applications you're likely to use at the same time.
Click on the Processes tab then click on the 'Show processes from all users' box at the bottom.
Finally click on the 'Mem usage' label to order the processes by memory. You'll probably need to do this last step twice to get the big players at the top.
Then take another screenshot.

It doesn't really look like you're running out of physical memory so it might be that your paging file is badly configured and we'll check that in the next lesson. ;)

Adding more RAM that's the same as the existing stuff should never be a problem. Ideally you should always have matched sets but in the real world you can get away with quite a lot with mis-matched sets.
 
Hi Mate,

Thanks for the reply. It just happened twice again while playing SWTOR and this was without transfering anything to my NAS "Please close Star Wars the Old Republic as your computer is too low on memory".



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
 
What is your current RAM? If you can, try to buy another 4gb module of that RAM, and follow your motherboard's manual if you can to get the most out of dual-channel memory.

If you need some RAM suggestions, Corsair Vengeance, Crucial Ballistix, and G.Skill RipjawsX (1600MHz for all) are very nice kits, they go for around £50 for 2x4GB modules.
 
Peterpoose said:
Will these fit- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-300-CS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

into my - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-176-OE

have a GTX580 in there and its quite big
Click to expand...

It's not the graphics card that affects it, it's normally the CPU Heatsink. Do you have the one that came with the processor, or a larger/different one?
Edit: just looking at the thing, it says its a h2 flo cooler. If it's fairly small, it should fit.
 
Yes, that RAM should fit as the cooler doesn't overhang the CPU socket.

Going back to diagnosis, your screenprint shows you're using 79% of physical memory which shouldn't be causing a problem but it's up to you whether you want to dig deeper to find the cause of the problem.
 
Snapshot said:
Yes, that RAM should fit as the cooler doesn't overhang the CPU socket.

Going back to diagnosis, your screenprint shows you're using 79% of physical memory which shouldn't be causing a problem but it's up to you whether you want to dig deeper to find the cause of the problem.
Click to expand...

How can I get to the root of the problem? I assume sticking more ram in should sort it?

Thanks again
 
Your Commit ratio on one of the screenshots points to a possible problem. Commit capacity is determined by the availability of physical and virtual memory (virtual being page file).

I'd guess your page file is not configured in an optimal way (small fixed size etc.) or the drive it is on is so full and/or fragmented that windows cannot use the page file effectively.

Open your Start Menu
Right Click on Computer and Select Properties
Select Advanced System Settings (Top Left)
Select Advanced Tab
In Performance Section, select Settings
Select Advanced Tab
Take Screenshot
Select Change
Take Screenshot

Also check how much free space you have on your various local hard drives and let us know along with the two screenshots.
 
Last edited:
As someone has just started a very similar thread about running out of RAM with SWTOR it looks like it's a greedy application. More RAM will probably fix it but it would still be a good idea to fix the commit ratio issue that sidethink spotted and I suspected. Your virtual memory screenshot shows what I consider to be a very poorly set up pagefile. I was taught (by Microsoft) that the best setting is to have the minimum and maximum sizes the same so the space required is reserved on the disk which reduces the chance of the pagefile being fragmented.
The best solution would be to remove the pagefile from C: and set one up on D: then reboot and defragment C:. Next, set a pagefile with a minimum size of 4096 and maximum of 4096 on C: and remove the one on D:. Reboot again and you're done.
The quick'n'dirty fix is just to set the min & max to 4096 on C: but the file may be fragmented. Probably not such a problem on an SSD so worth a try. A couple of minutes doing this could save you the cost of new RAM....
 
Snapshot said:
As someone has just started a very similar thread about running out of RAM with SWTOR it looks like it's a greedy application. More RAM will probably fix it but it would still be a good idea to fix the commit ratio issue that sidethink spotted and I suspected. Your virtual memory screenshot shows what I consider to be a very poorly set up pagefile. I was taught (by Microsoft) that the best setting is to have the minimum and maximum sizes the same so the space required is reserved on the disk which reduces the chance of the pagefile being fragmented.
The best solution would be to remove the pagefile from C: and set one up on D: then reboot and defragment C:. Next, set a pagefile with a minimum size of 4096 and maximum of 4096 on C: and remove the one on D:. Reboot again and you're done.
The quick'n'dirty fix is just to set the min & max to 4096 on C: but the file may be fragmented. Probably not such a problem on an SSD so worth a try. A couple of minutes doing this could save you the cost of new RAM....
Click to expand...

Hey mate, thanks for the help. Where can I find the pagefiles in C and D?
 
Ok I googled and hopefully have changed the correct stuff lol

I only so far changed the SSD (c) drive to what you said and see how that fares.

Cheers
 
I'm not clear on what the best advice is for paging file optimization on a smallish SSD. I've tinkered around with page file settings on servers, using much the same advice as that offered by Snapshot above.

However, on my personal machines I always just let Windows manage the settings and keep plenty of free space on the volume with the page file. I cant remember ever getting any 'out of memory' or 'resources low' type messages in Windows 7.

I played SWTOR with 4GB of RAM on my old machine before upgrading to a new 2500k build with 8GB - both set to 'automatically manage page file size for all drives' without any issues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom