All Discussions > Steam Forums > Hardware and Operating Systems > Topic Details
Fuyuhiko Feb 7, 2018 @ 5:26pm
Question about RAM
Just a simple question, because i dont understand much about PCs :)
When steam is downloading a game or updating a game in the background.... does that use RAM?
maybe a better question is if downloads require RAM usage. thanks, and sorry for the dumb question.
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Showing 1-5 of 5 comments
Jinn-Gon Qui Feb 7, 2018 @ 5:32pm 
No, it doesn't - technically. Because Steam is a program or a software that you're currently running in the background it does use your memory in order to work. The more you run programs, slowly your memory will be used.
#1
Sólstafir Feb 7, 2018 @ 5:51pm 
RAM is temporary Working Memory. It's your Hard Drive/Solid State Drive that's actually used to download and store games.
#2
Carlsberg Feb 7, 2018 @ 6:46pm 
I may be wrong but i believe the ram is used during download to store a file as it comes in, its not written to disk until its complete. The os may then break it up as its written depending on how the file system is because it may not fit in one continuous sequence of blocks. (re disk fragmentation).
#3
Big Boom Boom Feb 7, 2018 @ 7:01pm 
Originally posted by Carlsberg:
I may be wrong but i believe the ram is used during download to store a file as it comes in, its not written to disk until its complete. The os may then break it up as its written depending on how the file system is because it may not fit in one continuous sequence of blocks. (re disk fragmentation).

No.
#4
Bad 💀 Motha Feb 8, 2018 @ 4:16am 
When Steam downloads, it first marks out the space require on local disk first; i.e. "preallocating" this makes a mark on the disk as already used (so its a revered space for the data to fill into place); the only things that go through RAM are the live data being downloaded in pieces at any given time.

Steam however will use alot of ram, due to how its software works. Because of mostly how Windows works and treats RAM, whatever Steam does will be treated as "Cache"; so yes when a game is finished downloaded, looking is Task Manager, "Free" will probably be close to 0 if you are short on RAM anyways, like say 4 or 8 GB of RAM. But it's not entirely used up, just that its in the cached area is all. To free up that RAM, properly Exit Steam Client when done downloading a game and relaunch it.
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All Discussions > Steam Forums > Hardware and Operating Systems > Topic Details
Date Posted: Feb 7, 2018 @ 5:26pm
Posts: 5
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