Mac Pro Using Lots of RAM Idle

[jakesaunders27]

Hi All,
Just wondering why my Mac Pro is using nearly 7GB RAM sitting idle? Anyone know why? I have Safari, Mail and Activity monitor open along with Caffine & Dropbox in the background.

Thanks

 

[theSeb]

What do you mean by sitting idle? It's being used. Probably as "file cache", or other stuff. That's what an operating system should do - use available memory to make things faster and then release it when it is actually needed by an application. If this keeps you up at night, then open the terminal and type

sudo purge

 

[jakesaunders27]

What do you mean by sitting idle? It's being used. Probably for caching files. That's what an operating system should do - use available memory to make things faster and then release it when it is actually needed by an application. If this keeps you up at night, then open the terminal and type "purge".

Yeah I have no problem with it using so much RAM as I have plenty more but just wondering.

 

[theSeb]

Yeah I have no problem with it using so much RAM as I have plenty more but just wondering.

The subject of memory management is not something that I want to try and explain in a short post after a couple of vodkas. 🙂

 

[jakesaunders27]

The subject of memory management is not something that I want to try and explain in a short post after a couple of vodkas. 🙂

Haha!

 

[theSeb]

Here is a simple explanation from Apple about how to read the Activity Monitor in Mavericks

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890

 

[h9826790]

That's completely normal. The OS is decided to fully utilise your hardware.

 

[AidenShaw]

Word-smithing might be in order

That's completely normal. The OS is decided to fully utilise your hardware.

Some systems don't count file caches and other releasable memory as "in use", so that the available memory counter shows a more realistic value.

My system right now has 1.7 GiB of "free" memory and 19.5 GiB in the cache - for 21.2 GiB "available".

 

[jakesaunders27]

Thanks for all your responses guys