Steam Eating RAM

[Eila Deker]

Does anybody else have notice that Steam is eating RAM like crazy since a few days it used to be 300-500mb now it goes to 2gb after 30min

[Haruspex]

It goes up and down depending on what it's doing. It's perfectly fine unless you have extremely limited RAM. Like, 2 GB. Nobody running even a marginally modern system should be that limited anyway.

[Eila Deker]

Originally posted by Haruspex:

It goes up and down depending on what it's doing. It's perfectly fine unless you have extremely limited RAM. Like, 2 GB. Nobody running even a marginally modern system should be that limited anyway.

the thing is i just have it open and it goes beyond 2GB after an hour so it feels like a Memory Leak

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

ram doesnt reset at any point and it creeps up and up and up....
non tech solution - restart steam if its affecting performance

valve/steam people are getting paid to not fix stuff...

[Kargor]

Not for me, no.

C:\Users\Christian>tasklist | find /I "steam"
steam.exe                     8236 Console                    1     92.624 K
steamwebhelper.exe            9988 Console                    1    128.932 K
steamwebhelper.exe           10024 Console                    1     13.468 K
SteamService.exe             10100 Services                   0     12.456 K
steamwebhelper.exe           10140 Console                    1     95.484 K
steamwebhelper.exe            9380 Console                    1     25.832 K
steamwebhelper.exe            7444 Console                    1     16.804 K
steamwebhelper.exe            9824 Console                    1    230.776 K
steamwebhelper.exe            8992 Console                    1     37.432 K

[JJ]

\Steam\userdata\[AccountID]\config\librarycache\achievement_progress.json

Check file size. You might have to delete it and let steam create new...

[Haruspex]

Originally posted by Eila Deker:

the thing is i just have it open and it goes beyond 2GB after an hour so it feels like a Memory Leak

Originally posted by ragefifty50:

ram doesnt reset at any point and it creeps up and up and up....

I've seen this a few times, but I've never experienced it. If it was a memory leak, I think we would be seeing several reports of people experiencing crashes and other problems due to their machine running out of memory. I've never seen any such report that's been verified.

I suppose it is possible that there's some kind of memory problem under some kind of specific system configurations, but nothing confirmed, and certainly not widespread.

Fact is, Steam is at it's core a web browser, and it uses about the same amount of memory as any other modern web browser as far as I can tell. Right now for me Steam itself is using about 79 MB. The client service is using 4.4 MB. The web helper tasks are all using a combined 633 MB. Meanwhile I have Brave running and using 860 MB.

I've seen it use more. Over two gigabytes. I've seen it use less. But I've never actually experienced a situation where it gobbled up my RAM and refused to give it back, thus creating problems in nearly 20 years, across several different machines.

I'm personally of the opinion that some people watch Taskmanager and get completely unnecessary anxiety over watching the numbers, rather than there being an actual problem.

[( ( < < <🤖> > > ) )]

i dont turn my computer off
and if i dont restart steam from time to time... it just
creeps up and up when not in a game... and it
doesnt reset when you open other programs either....

at the moment its using 683mb while not playing a game...

i have added to many post regarding this creep up

i am not doing anything special.. and my games and programs
do run well... regardless... if you turn of your computer and
steam daily you wont notice anything...

i still feel there should be a limit we can set... rather than a shut down..

[76561199652807642]

Tell me about it. I keep buying new RAM sticks and Steam just keeps eating all of them. I've bought a big box of them but it isn't going to last forever, I'm going to run out of money if they don't fix it soon.

[Eila Deker]

Originally posted by Haruspex:

Originally posted by Eila Deker:

the thing is i just have it open and it goes beyond 2GB after an hour so it feels like a Memory Leak

Originally posted by ragefifty50:

ram doesnt reset at any point and it creeps up and up and up....

I've seen this a few times, but I've never experienced it. If it was a memory leak, I think we would be seeing several reports of people experiencing crashes and other problems due to their machine running out of memory. I've never seen any such report that's been verified.

I suppose it is possible that there's some kind of memory problem under some kind of specific system configurations, but nothing confirmed, and certainly not widespread.

Fact is, Steam is at it's core a web browser, and it uses about the same amount of memory as any other modern web browser as far as I can tell. Right now for me Steam itself is using about 79 MB. The client service is using 4.4 MB. The web helper tasks are all using a combined 633 MB. Meanwhile I have Brave running and using 860 MB.

I've seen it use more. Over two gigabytes. I've seen it use less. But I've never actually experienced a situation where it gobbled up my RAM and refused to give it back, thus creating problems in nearly 20 years, across several different machines.

I'm personally of the opinion that some people watch Taskmanager and get completely unnecessary anxiety over watching the numbers, rather than there being an actual problem.

well its not anxiety its me being annoyed that it eats so much ram after such a short time it made EFT crash a few times because of it

[Axø]

You can mimize it's impact sorta of by steam>settings>library and check low band, disable community content shown in the library.

The other is start steam in small mode. This only will show the library and names of the games. Store, activity and the rest will be hidden or turn off in this mode. View>small mode

But still it will consume a little bit of resources

[MonkehMaster]

OP are you running the steam client in stable branch or beta branch?

beta branch has already been patched to fix this issue.

if you are still on stable and the client hasnt received the memory leak fix, then move to beta to stop the leak, or wait on stable till they release the fix and while doing so, you can delete the "achievements_progress.json" file causing the webhelper to leak memory, it will be regenerated, but will keep ballooning in size, so keep an eye on it and delete when necessary.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053/view/4200244327586332598

Fixed issue loading and saving the app achievement cache file which in some cases caused excessive memory usage in steamwebhelper.

this is your only 2 fixes for the memory leak, nothing to do with settings, or anything else that others are mentioning.

[bidulless]

Originally posted by Eila Deker:

Originally posted by Haruspex:

I've seen this a few times, but I've never experienced it. If it was a memory leak, I think we would be seeing several reports of people experiencing crashes and other problems due to their machine running out of memory. I've never seen any such report that's been verified.

I suppose it is possible that there's some kind of memory problem under some kind of specific system configurations, but nothing confirmed, and certainly not widespread.

Fact is, Steam is at it's core a web browser, and it uses about the same amount of memory as any other modern web browser as far as I can tell. Right now for me Steam itself is using about 79 MB. The client service is using 4.4 MB. The web helper tasks are all using a combined 633 MB. Meanwhile I have Brave running and using 860 MB.

I've seen it use more. Over two gigabytes. I've seen it use less. But I've never actually experienced a situation where it gobbled up my RAM and refused to give it back, thus creating problems in nearly 20 years, across several different machines.

I'm personally of the opinion that some people watch Taskmanager and get completely unnecessary anxiety over watching the numbers, rather than there being an actual problem.

well its not anxiety its me being annoyed that it eats so much ram after such a short time it made EFT crash a few times because of it

hello

If your steam client is consumming an abnormal amount of ram , then you have a problem about some corrupted files inside your steam client.
Normal consumption and memory usage varying the way you have setup your steam parameters but should never goes above 1GO for nothing.
I can sugest you to clean the cache under the steam parameters setup or/and check the file size achievement_progress.json inside folder \steam\userdata\<usernumber>\config\librarycache.If the file is too big, just delete it while steam does not run.
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/4200244327586332599

[kitty]

Originally posted by Eila Deker:

Does anybody else have notice that Steam is eating RAM like crazy since a few days it used to be 300-500mb now it goes to 2gb after 30min

I noticed it many years ago, it's called memory leak. you can search forums (here and Linux forums) to see the scope of the problem.

[Eila Deker]

Originally posted by MonkehMaster:

OP are you running the steam client in stable branch or beta branch?

beta branch has already been patched to fix this issue.

if you are still on stable and the client hasnt received the memory leak fix, then move to beta to stop the leak, or wait on stable till they release the fix and while doing so, you can delete the "achievements_progress.json" file causing the webhelper to leak memory, it will be regenerated, but will keep ballooning in size, so keep an eye on it and delete when necessary.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053/view/4200244327586332598

Fixed issue loading and saving the app achievement cache file which in some cases caused excessive memory usage in steamwebhelper.

this is your only 2 fixes for the memory leak, nothing to do with settings, or anything else that others are mentioning.

thx for the tip i tried beta but still had the problem also tried the other fixes but nothing worked

[MonkehMaster]

Originally posted by Eila Deker:

Originally posted by MonkehMaster:

OP are you running the steam client in stable branch or beta branch?

beta branch has already been patched to fix this issue.

if you are still on stable and the client hasnt received the memory leak fix, then move to beta to stop the leak, or wait on stable till they release the fix and while doing so, you can delete the "achievements_progress.json" file causing the webhelper to leak memory, it will be regenerated, but will keep ballooning in size, so keep an eye on it and delete when necessary.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053/view/4200244327586332598



this is your only 2 fixes for the memory leak, nothing to do with settings, or anything else that others are mentioning.

thx for the tip i tried beta but still had the problem also tried the other fixes but nothing worked

did you check the size of that "achievements_progress.json" file, before switching to beta?

the sinlge time i noticed the bug, i had steam using 5GB of ram and it caused the client to crash, then not long after the beta updated and fixed the leak.

also, if you look at the "webhelpers" you will notice, its only 1 that is using all the ram.