64GB RAM...40GB+ RAM "Unused"....Fan running almost constantly!...

[jman995x]

Hello,

I have an iMac that is relatively new.
I installed 64GB of RAM.
A lot of time I'll have anywhere from 30GB - 50GB of "Available" RAM....yet my iMac's Fan is working almost non-stop.

I can understand if I'm doing video editing, and have a whole bunch of RAM-intensive apps/processes running and thus have limited RAM, and really putting the computer through its paces...but with maybe 15-20 Chrome tabs open, and not much else...for the computer to be blowing more hot air than Congress makes no sense to me.

Is it just a matter of Chrome being a resource hog?

Thoughts? Things I can check when this happens?

 

[MacInWin]

RAM has very little to do with heat generation. CPU/GPU usage is the greatest factor. Open Activity Monitor, look under the CPU tab to see what is driving your CPU to high levels. Having 15-20 tabs open will certainly drive both CPU and GPU as they continually have to update those tabs, so I'm not surprised at that result. If you really want to know where the heat is coming from get something like iStat Menu and look at all of the heat sources.

 

[ferrarr]

Check Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities) and see what it reports for ram usage.

Yes, if it doesn't happen with Chrome open, then it is the tabs causing it to take off. You could test it by opening those same tabs in Safari?

 

[jman995x]

RAM has very little to do with heat generation. CPU/GPU usage is the greatest factor. Open Activity Monitor, look under the CPU tab to see what is driving your CPU to high levels. Having 15-20 tabs open will certainly drive both CPU and GPU as they continually have to update those tabs, so I'm not surprised at that result. If you really want to know where the heat is coming from get something like iStat Menu and look at all of the heat sources.

Okay, just installed iStat menus and will monitor next time this happens.

As for Activity Monitor...I just opened that up, and while I have 21 Chrome tabs open (none of them playing movies or anything, ie: static), Activity Monitor is showing 68 Google Chrome (Renderer) activities. Is that normal?

 

[jman995x]

Check Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities) and see what it reports for ram usage.

Yes, if it doesn't happen with Chrome open, then it is the tabs causing it to take off. You could test it by opening those same tabs in Safari?

Ok, re: opening up the tabs in Safari to see if that makes the iMac sweat the same amount.

 

[jman995x]

Thanks to both of you, btw, for the help.

 

[MacInWin]

As for Activity Monitor...I just opened that up, and while I have 21 Chrome tabs open (none of them playing movies or anything, ie: static), Activity Monitor is showing 68 Google Chrome (Renderer) activities. Is that normal?

Don't know if that's normal and it's not really germane. You could have 1000 activities all at 0% CPU and it would trigger nothing. What you are looking for are the heavy hitters. You can sort the display under the CPU button by clicking on the "% CPU" header. Clicking again will reverse the sort. You want the high % at the top of the list. Look to see what's using a lot of the CPU. You can do the same with % GPU as well. Once you know what is using up the CPU you can decide what to do about it.

 

[MacInWin]

Also, the fact that the tabs are idle does mean they are actually idle. The advertising on the pages will be constantly updating, particularly if they have video or graphics embedded. You may not be looking at them, but they are constantly running.

 

[ferrarr]

Take the time to ad content blockers to Chrome.

 

[MacInWin]

Good idea, Bob, but Chrome has built in Flash. That's a resource hog that blockers won't block.

 

[pigoo3]

Sometimes a good place to start is reboot the computer. Then only reopen what you need open at that moment.

- Nick

 

[ferrarr]

Good idea, Bob, but Chrome has built in Flash. That's a resource hog that blockers won't block.

Really? Even if they say they block Flash? They do make Flash blockers.

 

[MacInWin]

Really? Even if they say they block Flash? They do make Flash blockers.

I'll admit I have not tried it, as I don't use Chrome, but Chrome has Flash baked in, so it's not a separate add on. I don't see how a blocker would block an internal function. Be interesting to test, I suppose.

 

[chscag]

Really? Even if they say they block Flash? They do make Flash blockers.

Although Flash is built into Chrome, very few web sites use Flash. I don't believe you can block the built in Flash that Chrome uses as it does not work the same way as an ordinary Flash installation.

As Jake stated, all those Chrome tabs he has running in the background is what's frying the eggs.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Flash block works fine to block the content from running, no reason to go into all the specifics, but know that it works.