Fix Microsoft Edge using RAM on Windows 10

Compared to Chrome, Edge is said to consume less RAM and CPU. However, Edge's RAM consumption is still higher than that of other browsers. In this article, TipsMake will guide you how to reduce the RAM consumption of Microsoft Edge on Windows 10.

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If you find your computer is slow or your browser is slow while using Edge, then you should start to find out why. The first thing you need to do is open Task Manager ( Ctrl + Shift + Esc ) and then sort the task by RAM consumption.

1. If you find that another application is consuming a lot of RAM, you should check what it is
2. If Edge consumes RAM, please join us for a more detailed review

Use Edge's Task Manager to check RAM usage

You may not have known that Edge also has a built-in Task Manager. This will tell you how much RAM your open tabs are taking up. This is a useful feature because it lets you know which websites are using a lot of resources.

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While the Edge window is open, press Shift + Esc to open the browser's Task Manager. It will list you all the tasks, including Browser, GPU Process, Network Services, Audio, Video service and RAM usage of each card and extension.

Microsoft Edge even recommends how much RAM each of these processes can use. Below is a list of the maximum amount of RAM a process needs to consume:

1. Browser: 400MB, maybe higher if you have multiple tabs open
2. Rendering process: 500MB, in charge of video streaming, social media news feeds .
3. Subframe Process: 75MB, which may be higher if opening web pages containing complex ads, especially autorun video ads
4. GPU Process: 1.75GB
5. Utility process: 30MB
6. Extension and plug-in process: 150MB

Windows 10 has the feature to always reserve a certain amount of RAM to mobilize when needed. The reserved RAM is called Commit Charge and its capacity depends on the Page Size. When Edge runs, it will ask Windows for the committed RAM space. Windows will respond by providing it via Page Size or Virtual Memory. 

Windows 10's RAM provisioning for Edge is automatic and flexible. So, even if a program requires 3GB of RAM but only uses 500MB, the remainder is counted as idle.

Factors affecting Edge RAM usage

There are many factors that affect the RAM usage of Microsoft Edge. These include:

1. Number of tabs
2. advertisement
3. Browser extension
4. content
5. Screen resolution
6. Window size
7. Number of browser windows

How to reduce the RAM consumption of Microsoft Edge on Windows 10?

In Edge's Task Manager, if you find a tab or extension is consuming a lot of RAM, close the tab or remove that extension. If when you close, the RAM consumption drops significantly, then it's clear that the tab or extension has a problem. You should also compare tab's RAM consumption, processes and extensions with the maximums we mentioned above.

You should also pay attention to the Private working sets on Edge. These tasks are not listed so it will be a subprocess in Browser Process.

For more details about tabs or extensions that are taking up a lot of RAM, we will use the Resource Manager and Task Manager of the browser. 

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Press the Windows button and then type resource managerand click the first search result to open Resource Manager. In the new window that appears, you will find the msedge.exe task and the committed RAM size.

Next, on the Edge browser, press Shift + Esc to open the browser's Task Manager. Right click on the columns and select Process ID, Commit Size, Memory (Private working set), Name, Status, User Name and CPU.

Pay attention to Process ID, it consumes a lot of resources. Next, you switch to Resource Manager, if you find that the Memory (Private working set) of msedge.exe consumes RAM exceeding 80% of the committed level (Commit), you need to close it. In addition, you need to report to Microsoft via the feedback system so that they can find the cause and fix it.

There are other things you can do when Microsoft Edge is consuming too much RAM and CPU

1. Regularly clear the Microsoft Edge browser cache
2. Delete unnecessary extensions, addons and themes
3. Reset Microsoft Edge
4. Use the Modify / Reinstall button in Edge's Settings
5. If that doesn't work, you should completely uninstall Edge and reinstall from scratch

A browser can consume a lot of RAM and CPU resulting in a significantly slow computer. However, it's not entirely the browser's fault. It can happen because a tab, an extension running in the background or a website displaying too many ads . The best way is to check which tab or extension is taking up a lot of resources and close it.

Hopefully this article will be useful to you.

Micah Soto

Update 20 January 2021