wetdentist Posted September 23, 2021 Share Posted September 23, 2021 i just got 3 Crucial mx500 SATA3 1 TB drives to replace the 3 HDDs that i've been using since 2014, and i have a couple questions regarding the Pagefile. my system has 16 gigs of RAM, and an AMD FX-6300 (6 cores, 3.5 Ghz) & Windows 10 Home. in a perfect world, i would get a more powerful PC with more RAM capabilities, but 16 gigs is where my motherboard maxes out at & i can't afford a new PC at this juncture in this market. how big should my page file be? and should i keep the page file on one of the existing HDDs (where the only thing on the drive would be the page file)? thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antler Posted September 23, 2021 Share Posted September 23, 2021 1 hour ago, wetdentist said: how big should my page file be? and should i keep the page file on one of the existing HDDs (where the only thing on the drive would be the page file)? If you really want to manage it yourself, I think I read that it should be 2.5 times the size of your RAM (it was a while ago, so could be completely wrong on this.) I think overall, it's best if you just let Windows manage it for you. Assuming you're using an SSDs for your Windows partition/drive, it will want to put it on the same drive (if it's managing it for you). Ideally it should go on your fastest drive, as the page file is what your computer will use in place of memory if you run out - put it on a slower drive and things are going to start feeling horribly slow when it's being used. However, whether it will use the page file is another question, and will depend on what you're doing. If you're loading lots of large sample libraries, you're more likely to run into memory problems; if you're dealing mostly with recorded audio, you shouldn't have too many problems. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Roseberry Posted September 23, 2021 Share Posted September 23, 2021 You won't gain anything by managing the VM Swapfile manually. You don't want Windows to start using the VM Swapfile (in lieu of enough physical RAM). Even if it's on a SSD, it's terribly slow compared to physical RAM. This will kill performance... 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wetdentist Posted September 24, 2021 Author Share Posted September 24, 2021 thank you both for the insights! i was wondering about keeping the page file off of an SSD (and on an HDD) because it seems like it could shorten an SSD's lifespan with all that activity, but maybe that is not a thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
antler Posted September 24, 2021 Share Posted September 24, 2021 16 hours ago, wetdentist said: it could shorten an SSD's lifespan with all that activity Yes, but the aim is to not need to use it (your performance will end up being bad, as Jim mentioned). If you find all your RAM being used up, it might be an idea to bounce some tracks down to disk. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wetdentist Posted September 26, 2021 Author Share Posted September 26, 2021 i freeze and bounce very often Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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