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Peter Jason December 8th 17 12:02 AM

Slowing computer.
 
I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.

My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.

Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?


Andy Burns[_6_] December 8th 17 12:16 AM

Slowing computer.
 
Peter Jason wrote:

my unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.
Will adding more RAM speed things up


Unlikely I'd say, unless you're running something that eats most of that
12GB, you'll have plenty of RAM for caching and the SSD is already fast.

Buffalo[_3_] December 8th 17 12:18 AM

Slowing computer.
 

"Peter Jason" wrote in message
.. .


I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.


My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.


Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?




Are you running 32bit or 64bit Windows 10 ? 32 bit is only able to use
around 3.5 GB of ram.
If you monitor your ram usage and it isn't being all used up, that usually
means more ram won't really help. (Task Manager- rt click on bottom task
bar and left click on Task Manager),
That will bring up the Task Manager, Near the bottom left side, Left click
on 'More details and then Left click on Performance. Do that while the
majority of your programs are running.

Buffalo4


Ken Blake[_5_] December 8th 17 12:20 AM

Slowing computer.
 
On Fri, 08 Dec 2017 10:02:15 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:


I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.

My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.

Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?



It's not a matter of a limit. Whether it will make your computer
faster or not depends on what programs you run, and with some programs
graphics editors, video editors), how big are the files you use with
them. For *most* home users, 12GB is more than enough, and adding more
RAM will do nothing.

Peter Jason December 8th 17 12:54 AM

Slowing computer.
 
On Thu, 07 Dec 2017 16:20:40 -0700, Ken Blake
wrote:

On Fri, 08 Dec 2017 10:02:15 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.

My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.

Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?



It's not a matter of a limit. Whether it will make your computer
faster or not depends on what programs you run, and with some programs
graphics editors, video editors), how big are the files you use with
them. For *most* home users, 12GB is more than enough, and adding more
RAM will do nothing.


It's as I feared. My machine runs Windows10 pro 64bit.
The motherboard...
Ga-x58a-ud7_v.2.0 (2010)
...has almost all PCE & PCEe slots used, feeding HDDs & USB3 cards
(which suppy still more HDDs.)

Should I overhaul things by installing a new motherboard, (which?) or
would a satellite computed be more efficient?

Peter Jason December 8th 17 12:57 AM

Slowing computer.
 
On Thu, 7 Dec 2017 16:18:13 -0700, "Buffalo"
wrote:


"Peter Jason" wrote in message
. ..


I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.


My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.


Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?




Are you running 32bit or 64bit Windows 10 ? 32 bit is only able to use
around 3.5 GB of ram.
If you monitor your ram usage and it isn't being all used up, that usually
means more ram won't really help. (Task Manager- rt click on bottom task
bar and left click on Task Manager),
That will bring up the Task Manager, Near the bottom left side, Left click
on 'More details and then Left click on Performance. Do that while the
majority of your programs are running.


It's reading 4GB at the moment, but I'll keep an eye on it.

Buffalo4


Paul[_32_] December 8th 17 01:07 AM

Slowing computer.
 
Peter Jason wrote:
I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.

My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.

Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?


How have you determined the machine is slowing up ?

At the 12GB level, you're pretty well past the point
where more is going to help. You would have some idea
if you had actual "resource hog" software running, which
actually makes use of that RAM. You could probably get
Firefox to eat it all, but it would take a substantial
number of open tabs. Some joker in a thread I was reading,
claims to have been able to open 4000 tabs on Firefox, but
I think he was pulling our leg.

If this is a problem with Torrents, that kind of software
creates a lot of stale connections that use up routing
tables. This has been known to "tip over" routers.
For example, my piddly little router here, can be
tipped over by *Windows*, and I don't even need torrents
to stress it, it's that bad of a product. I couldn't
believe it one night, when an OS upgrade was coming in,
and the LED on the router started to flash (which
means it's "begging for mercy" - it's not smart enough
to restart on its own).

Does Windows have a connection limit ? Is Windows not
able to age out stale connections fast enough to
prevent table exhaustion ? Dunno. You'd have to look
through some postings on a Torrent software site, to see
if Windows has known problems with this sort of thing.

I could absolutely kill your OS, by running the NeatVideo
plugin in demo mode (a tool for removing noise from
videos), as it leaks pool on purpose, until the OS
freezes up. You could buy more RAM in a pathological
case like that, but all that would do is extend the time
until the OS froze, by a couple hours. Originally, the
designer of NeatVideo, wanted to limit free usage
of his product to around 30 minutes. But using
newer OSes, you can stretch that to around 24 hours
(because the pool is bigger, after WinXP era).
But if you don't stick a fork in the thing before
it's too late, it'll freeze the OS on you, and you
cannot use Task Manager to kill it. I think I was
getting Delayed Write failures before the end. And
I'd waited too long to stop it.

Try and be a bit more specific about your use-case,
as there are some things on computers you cannot
fix with a credit card :-)

Paul

Char Jackson December 8th 17 02:55 AM

Slowing computer.
 
On Thu, 07 Dec 2017 19:07:48 -0500, Paul wrote:

Peter Jason wrote:
I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.

My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.

Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?


How have you determined the machine is slowing up ?

At the 12GB level, you're pretty well past the point
where more is going to help. You would have some idea
if you had actual "resource hog" software running, which
actually makes use of that RAM. You could probably get
Firefox to eat it all, but it would take a substantial
number of open tabs. Some joker in a thread I was reading,
claims to have been able to open 4000 tabs on Firefox, but
I think he was pulling our leg.


I think he was pulling your leg, as well. I currently have about 270
tabs open, and without closing any, I wanted to open a saved session
that would have put me at around 415 tabs. Firefox crashed in seconds.
Restarting it a few times resulted in a quick crash each time. So I
doubt the claim of 4000 tabs.


Peter Jason December 8th 17 05:08 AM

Slowing computer.
 
On Thu, 07 Dec 2017 19:07:48 -0500, Paul
wrote:

Peter Jason wrote:
I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.

My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.

Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?


How have you determined the machine is slowing up ?

At the 12GB level, you're pretty well past the point
where more is going to help. You would have some idea
if you had actual "resource hog" software running, which
actually makes use of that RAM. You could probably get
Firefox to eat it all, but it would take a substantial
number of open tabs. Some joker in a thread I was reading,
claims to have been able to open 4000 tabs on Firefox, but
I think he was pulling our leg.

If this is a problem with Torrents, that kind of software
creates a lot of stale connections that use up routing
tables. This has been known to "tip over" routers.
For example, my piddly little router here, can be
tipped over by *Windows*, and I don't even need torrents
to stress it, it's that bad of a product. I couldn't
believe it one night, when an OS upgrade was coming in,
and the LED on the router started to flash (which
means it's "begging for mercy" - it's not smart enough
to restart on its own).

Does Windows have a connection limit ? Is Windows not
able to age out stale connections fast enough to
prevent table exhaustion ? Dunno. You'd have to look
through some postings on a Torrent software site, to see
if Windows has known problems with this sort of thing.

I could absolutely kill your OS, by running the NeatVideo
plugin in demo mode (a tool for removing noise from
videos), as it leaks pool on purpose, until the OS
freezes up. You could buy more RAM in a pathological
case like that, but all that would do is extend the time
until the OS froze, by a couple hours. Originally, the
designer of NeatVideo, wanted to limit free usage
of his product to around 30 minutes. But using
newer OSes, you can stretch that to around 24 hours
(because the pool is bigger, after WinXP era).
But if you don't stick a fork in the thing before
it's too late, it'll freeze the OS on you, and you
cannot use Task Manager to kill it. I think I was
getting Delayed Write failures before the end. And
I'd waited too long to stop it.

Try and be a bit more specific about your use-case,
as there are some things on computers you cannot
fix with a credit card :-)

Paul




Hi, I have kept it in sight but the RAM hardly varies at all,
flat-lining at 5GB all the time, while the CPU (950 i7 8core)flies up
& dowm from 8% to 40% while sorting images and transcoding movies.
The SSD shows great fluctuations too.



Lucifer Morningstar[_2_] December 8th 17 07:51 AM

Slowing computer.
 
On Thu, 7 Dec 2017 16:18:13 -0700, "Buffalo"
wrote:


"Peter Jason" wrote in message
. ..


I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.


My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.


Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?




Are you running 32bit or 64bit Windows 10 ? 32 bit is only able to use
around 3.5 GB of ram.


Can Windows 10 use PAE?

If you monitor your ram usage and it isn't being all used up, that usually
means more ram won't really help. (Task Manager- rt click on bottom task
bar and left click on Task Manager),
That will bring up the Task Manager, Near the bottom left side, Left click
on 'More details and then Left click on Performance. Do that while the
majority of your programs are running.

Buffalo4


Paul[_32_] December 8th 17 10:19 AM

Slowing computer.
 
Peter Jason wrote:


Hi, I have kept it in sight but the RAM hardly varies at all,
flat-lining at 5GB all the time, while the CPU (950 i7 8core)flies up
& dowm from 8% to 40% while sorting images and transcoding movies.
The SSD shows great fluctuations too.


i7-950 3GHz, 4C 8T, LGA1366, 6x4GB DDR3 max memory (triple channel)
No Quicksync (no internal GPU)

Since your CPU isn't railed, I take it the observed
slowness is in file operations ?

In Task Manager, you'd look at whether individual
programs could account for the RAM usage. Just to
estimate whether the OS has grabbed that RAM, or
it's your programs using it.

The System Write Cache on your system, could only
queue up maybe 1.5GB of writes. I'm not all the
big a fan of the System Write Cache, because I
think it makes the file writing process stutter
some times. But I've resisted the temptation to
find a way to shut it off.

It could be that your image sorting process is
somehow causing the file system to slow down.

And since the RAM isn't actually full, adding
more will make minimal difference.

Even release 16299 of the OS, still hasn't fixed
the Chrome build bug, where the mouse will slow
down enough it will start to stutter during
process forking attempts. But your system isn't
oversubscribed (you're running at 40% CPU), so
that bug really shouldn't be visible in your
circumstances. Keeping the CPU pinned at 100%
for long periods of time, with a lot of program
starts, tends to make that one worse, and even
if you reboot to clean it up, the symptoms come
back after as little as 30 minutes of pinned CPU.

I don't really think I could do much to tune
your system. And in Windows, the File Explorer
seems to have more trouble with large file counts,
than the NTFS file system itself. File Explorer
does stupid stuff with only 50,000 files in a folder,
whereas NTFS can handle a lot more than that without
appearing flaky.

My guess is, your file sorting program has something
to do with this, but I don't know what exactly.

Paul

Paul[_32_] December 8th 17 11:09 AM

Slowing computer.
 
Lucifer Morningstar wrote:
On Thu, 7 Dec 2017 16:18:13 -0700, "Buffalo"
wrote:

"Peter Jason" wrote in message
...
I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.
My unit has an SSD system disk and 12GB RAM.
Will adding more RAM speed things up, or is some limit reached with
extra RAM?



Are you running 32bit or 64bit Windows 10 ? 32 bit is only able to use
around 3.5 GB of ram.


Can Windows 10 use PAE?


Of course. It applies PAE to get NX (page table format quirk).
They need a place to store the NX bit, to protect data
segments from attempts to execute them (malware). The
NX stands for "no execution of this segment", that's the
basic idea. If the program counter wanders into such an
area, there's an access violation or something. Chunks of
memory are basically labeled according to their intended purpose
(data or instructions).

But the OS applies MS memory license of 4GB, so PAE cannot
be used for its intended purpose.

Even though PAE is perfectly willing to map stuff
above 4GB, the MS memory license cuts it off at the knees.

And that's where our 32-bit OS limitation comes from.

A dude here, hacks Vista 32-bit, to run all 8GB of
RAM on the guys machine. Just to show that PAE really
works on Vista+. And this is done by defeating the
memory license barrier.

http://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/w...nse/memory.htm

Paul

Michael Logies December 8th 17 12:58 PM

Slowing computer.
 
You should describe your problem more. What exactly has become slow?

With enough RAM (8 GB are my standard for an end user machine) you
could tweak caching a bit:
Activate Readyboost on your SSD (maximum 32 GB):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost

Play around with Primocache:
https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

Regards

M.

Michael Logies December 8th 17 01:05 PM

Slowing computer.
 
On Fri, 08 Dec 2017 10:54:06 +1100, Peter Jason wrote:

feeding HDDs & USB3 cards (which suppy still more HDDs.)


Is caching in the device manager activated for all disks? Some sorts
of caching will need an UPS (Uninterruptible power supply).

Should I overhaul things by installing a new motherboard, (which?) or
would a satellite computed be more efficient?


Another machine will make your LAN a bottleneck. 1 GBit LAN will max
out at about 100-110 MB/s.

Regards

M.


CRNG December 8th 17 03:15 PM

Slowing computer.
 
On Fri, 08 Dec 2017 10:02:15 +1100, Peter Jason wrote
in

I have many HDDs connected to my computer and it runs 24/7.


How many?
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