How to reduce memory utilization on your PC

One of the most frequent reasons for computer performing slowly is lack of computer memory (RAM). Windows operating system and each application require certain amount of memory to operate. And if they don't have enough memory they start using hard drive to swap information there and since hard drives work 100 times slower than RAM it takes significantly more time and slows down the computer. There are multiple ways on how you can address this problem.

Get more memory

This could be the easiest one but even it has some tricks. First of all you need to make sure that you have enough empty slots in your PC motherboard to fit new memory chips. After that you need to figure out which RAM units will be compatible with your current memory. This includes figuring out speed and type of RAM.

Look for applications consuming memory

To see which applications take the most memory you need to start Windows Task Manager and go to the processes tab. In this tab you need to sort processes by memory by clicking on the title of the memory column. This will show you applications which consume the most memory. This may give you an idea which application consume the most memory and it may be a good idea to close them before launching another application. A good example could be games - on computers with limited RAM it makes sense to close all applications before starting the game since it will increase amount of free RAM available for the game.

Get SSD hard drive

Even though it is not a cure for all memory problems getting SSD hard drive and installing operating system there could significantly improve boot times of your machine and increase overall performance. When computer is running low on RAM it will start writing data to hard drive and in case of SSD this will be much faster than hard-drive.