Almost 10GB RAM used when IDLE on a 1 month old iMac!

[Steve.P.JobsFan]

Hey, everyone!

I have a one month old iMac (it turned one month old yesterday - happy birthday, iMac!; Specs in signature!) and it seems to be eating memory like the apocalypse is in 3 seconds. I have a 12GB RAM config. Basically, I kept the stock 4GB, and added 8GB DDR3 1333 MHz modules, specifically two 4GB sticks. I opened Activity Monitor just to see how it was running, to notice I'm using 9.70 GIGABYTES of RAM when it is doing NOTHING. The only apps open as of this writing, are Safari and Activity Monitor. I only have one page open in Safari, specifically the Post New Thread window. How the $%@# can I be using almost TEN GIGABYTES of RAM, on IDLE!?!?!? This makes no sense to me! Can I get an explanation, please? Any help would be appreciated!

 

[zeemeerman2]

Inactive ram.
Please refer to the yellow part to know how much of the actual ram it's using..

Inactieve ram means cache. Like when you close your browser, it becomes inactive ram. It's not used by your browser, and can easily be used by any other application, but if you decide to start your browser once again, it's much faster to start up, since it's in the inactive ram.

Hope this helps.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
from

Using Activity Monitor to show you CPU and RAM usage​

 

[Steve.P.JobsFan]

Inactive ram.
Please refer to the yellow part to know how much of the actual ram it's using..

Inactieve ram means cache. Like when you close your browser, it becomes inactive ram. It's not used by your browser, and can easily be used by any other application, but if you decide to start your browser once again, it's much faster to start up, since it's in the inactive ram.

Hope this helps.

Well don't I feel like a 'tard! So, it puts the application under Inactive RAM, like iOS does with apps, right? Thanks for your help! You too, simsala!

 

[Graeme43]

What I did was change the color of the thing so it was simplified

 

[Jeremy M.]

What I did was change the color of the thing so it was simplified

How did you do that? Sounds like a good idea!

EDIT: :facepalm: It's so simple, yet I have never noticed... lol