Running out of memory: Any fixes?

I just picked up a new laptop and I'm already hitting a wall. Just running Chrome with a few tabs open eats up over 70% of my RAM! If I dare to open Firefox at the same time, the whole system crawls and my disk usage starts spiking like crazy. I'm trying to figure out the best fix—should I grab a 128 GB SSD upgrade or just pop in another 4 GB of memory? What do you guys think is the better move here?

My current laptop feels almost as sluggish as the old relic I replaced, a seven-year-old HP ProBook 4710s 😵

What kind of memory usage are you seeing in Task Manager for Chrome versus Firefox? And what’s the total RAM hit looking like on your end at the moment?

So, which version of Windows did you end up going with?

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If I run Chrome and Firefox at the same time, my memory usage hits about 90%. Firefox alone is grabbing roughly 900 MB. I'm running Windows 10.

Here’s the Task Manager view right after a fresh Windows boot:


Just with Chrome open:


And both Chrome and Firefox together:

Why on earth does Chrome have so many processes running? How many tabs do you even have open?

You also really ought to take a look at how many extensions you’ve got hanging around—they can constantly be running useless processes in the background without you even realizing it... Just hit those three little dots in the top right corner, go to tools, then extensions, and just prune away anything you don't actually need.

While you're at it, maybe try using some kind of cleaning or optimization tool... if you want my two cents, I'd suggest this one https://www.iobit.com/en/advancedsystemcarefree.php

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I used to run about 12 tabs at once, but after cleaning out my extensions down to just 5, I’m sitting here with only 2 tabs open and still seeing 8 Chrome processes. Even worse? Firefox is eating up nearly 80% of my RAM!

I think I’m definitely running low on memory here! But I’ve been wondering: what's the best way to speed things up? Should I swap my current drive for a 128 GB SSD running Windows, add another 4 gigs of RAM, or just go all out and do both? Personally, I’m leaning toward doing both at once!

An SSD isn't going to fix your problems if the system is still stuttering—it’ll just move data around faster, which doesn't really solve the underlying lag...

You need to start looking at your RAM,

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Kenneth Reyes said:I used to have 12 tabs open, then I nuked some extensions and now I’m down to just 5 extensions and 2 tabs, but I’ve still got 8 Google Chrome processes running. Plus, using Mozilla Firefox eats up almost 80% of my memory.

Maybe the issue is actually "you"? Like, what are you even doing with 12 tabs open in Google Chrome that makes you need to fire up Mozilla Firefox too? And on a laptop, no less?

If you really need all that for work, then upgrading your RAM is definitely your first move...