How to fix Microsoft Teams error consuming a lot of RAM and CPU on Windows 10

Microsoft Teams is an application that supports learning and working online. Due to providing a high level of picture and sound quality, this application makes it difficult for low-end computers to respond. 

In this article, TipsMake will guide you to understand why Microsoft Teams consumes a lot of RAM and CPU and how to solve this problem on Windows 10.

Why is Microsoft Teams consuming so much RAM and CPU?

Here are a few reasons why Microsoft Teams consumes a lot of RAM and CPU on Windows 10 computers:

1. Microsoft Teams is built on the Electron platform. As a result, it regularly loads a large number of libraries. Many people believe this is the reason why Teams needs a lot of RAM.
2. Microsoft Teams uses the Chromium memory management model as part of the Electron platform. It is used by Teams to build user interfaces and texts. Since it is a video calling application with a high level of picture quality, a lot of image rendering tasks need to be handled so Teams requires a lot of CPU power and RAM.
3. In addition, Teams has to run many interactive processes that are compatible with other software, so they have to use a lot of CPU power. The integration feature Microsoft Teams Meeting for Office on Windows 10 is a prime example.

How to reduce RAM and CPU consumption by Microsoft Teams

Here are some solutions to help you reduce RAM and CPU consumption of Microsoft Teams on Windows 10:

1. Disable hardware acceleration in Teams

1. You visit Microsoft Teams then click the account icon then select Settings
2. In the General section , uncheck the option for GPU hardware acceleration
3. Click the Teams icon in the system tray and close the application
4. Restart Teams and check to see if that fixes the problem
5. In some cases, removing Teams as a chat app for Office also helped improve the problem. To do this, go back to the General section in Teams Settings and uncheck the Register Teams as the chat app for Office section.

2. Turn off the Read Receipts feature

You can also reduce the Teams CPU and RAM usage by disabling the Read Receipts feature

1. You visit Microsoft Teams then click the account icon then select Settings
2. Go to the Privacy section and turn off Read receipts
3. Close Teams and restart

3. Clear cache for Teams

Sometimes Microsoft Teams randomly accesses the files stored in the cache folder. To avoid this you need to clear cache for Teams.

1. Press the Windows + R key combination to open the Run window
2. Fill %appdata%in Run and press Enter
3. Access C:UsersUserNameAppDataRoamingMicrosoftTeams
4. Delete files in the following folders: tmp folder, blob_storage, cache, GPUcache, databases and local storage
5. In the IndexedDB directory only delete files with .db extension
6. Close Teams and restart

4. Disable Teams Outlook Add-In

1. Open Outlook and select Options
2. Click Add-In
3. Uncheck the Microsoft Teams Meeting Add-in for Microsoft Office section
4. Save changes and restart Outlook

5. Close apps running in the background

Instead of tuning Teams, you might consider disabling background apps for Teams as much resources as possible.

1. Open Task Manager and go to the Processes tab
2. Right-click on the app you don't need and select End task

6. Adjust picture effects

1. Press the Windows button to open the Start menu then typeadjust performance
2. Click Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows
3. Select Visual Effects
4. Select Adjust for the best performance optio n. The system automatically disables video animations and effects
5. Restart the computer

7. Increase the Page file size

You can manually adjust the Page file value to improve CPU performance.

1. Press the Windows button to open the Start menu then typeSystemPropertiesAdvanced
2. Click Settings in the Performance section
3. Next click on Advanced
4. Under Virtual Memory click and the Change button
5. Uncheck the box Automatically managing paging file size for all drives
6. Choose Custom Size and set the Page file manually
7. 16GB is the best value

Click Set then click Apply / OK to save changes then restart Teams to see if the problem gets fixed. 

8. Uninstall and reinstall Microsoft Teams

If none of these solutions helped you, then make sure you try uninstalling and reinstalling Microsoft Teams. Go to Settings> App & features then find Microsoft Teams and hit Uninstall .

I wish you success and invite you to read more great tips of Microsoft Teams:

Micah Soto

Update 07 January 2021