Memory Leak ongoing?

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Hi guys, I remember seeing that thread (which is now locked) a while ago talking about a memory leak affecting certain PCs.

Ever since, I’ve been keeping an eye on mine – including checking via task manager – and my laptop definitely has that memory leak issue. I uninstalled and re-installed WoW, to no luck.

I’m hoping that you guys can walk me through the steps. I grew up using iMacs pretty much exclusively (my dad hated PCs), and I can do basic-to-intermediate troubleshooting on iMacs no problem. But PCs? It’s still a very new thing to me! I know basic computer skills when it comes to Windows. I can follow steps… I just need them to be very thorough and clear!

I do have my laptop’s specs (I’ll list them below). With the memory leak thing, my task manager tells me that I regularly hit between 60% to 70% when questing in Voidstorm. I haven’t really checked with any other zones because I’ve completed the quests in them. I rarely even hit 2% with the CPU because I have my graphics toggled to the lowest settings, as well as it being on Direct 12 and manually set to choose the NVIDIA graphics card.

When it comes to Silvermoon? I hit 85% memory very quickly. So I usually get out of Silvermoon ASAP and then entirely log off WoW before logging back on to continue questing in Voidstorm.

And yes, WoW (along with Starcraft 2) is the only game that’s installed on Drive C. My other games are installed on Drive D. I only use my PC laptop for gaming (only gaming. I’m actually typing this post on my MacBook Pro!). So it’s definitely not an issue of my memory being full.

It’s been frustrating, honestly. I want to run Delves, heroics, and more! But my laptop just overheats so quickly with that memory leak. So I’m hoping that more tech-savvy people can help me out…

Laptop Specs
Lenovo Legion 5 Gaming Laptop, Intel Core i7-10750H Processor @ 2.60 GHz, 8GB DDR4, 512GB SSD, NVIDIA GTX 1650Ti

I’m fully up to date on everything, I think. Both OS and drivers. EDIT: Yes, I check the optional updates every few months too, which means BIOS is up to date too.

EDIT: I don’t have this memory leak issue with Starcraft 2, nor any of my other Steam games. This is specific to WoW.

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Not sure if you’re confusing the terms to describe what’s going on, or you’re experiencing something entirely different.

'If you are overheating, that is not related to memory. That would be related to improper cooling for the hardware.

→ Steps to check for overheating

The above point is more important, but I’ll touch on this, too. With so little memory, you likely can’t run most other apps at the same time as WoW. It’s normal for WoW to use 4 to 6GB, and Windows OS needs most of the rest.

Finally, if you’re using Discord, GPU software, OBS, or Game Bar, these apps all have an option to record clips in the background, which can lead to performance issues.

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My laptop only heats up when the memory usage hits 70%-plus, according to my task manager. Like, I checked that there’s no dust build up in my laptop. I checked it with my other games – none of them even crack the 50% memory usage, despite using the CPU significantly more… and the laptop doesn’t get as hot with these games. (Starcraft 2, Jurassic World Evolution 3, the works.)

And I got my specs wrong… I had a massive brain fart and got it mixed up with my older MacBook Pro.

The ACTUAL specs is this… (for storage):

It shows that my SSD (Drive C) is currently 286 GB used out of 475 GB.

My D Drive has over 1 TB worth of data.

Sorry about that brain fart! :flushed_face:

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So is it warm or actually overheating? If it was overheating, the laptop would shut itself down to prevent damage to the physical components. If you’re just describing that it runs hotter when you play WoW, welcome to PC gaming.

With proper cooling, you should be able to use all of your memory with no issue.

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I use a cooling pad, and whenever the laptop gets hot enough to hurt my hands, I turn it off. I don’t want to risk pushing it to the point of crashing.

But, here’s the thing. It’s only WoW that does this. Even when I lower the graphics from roughly 5 (medium) to the lowest possible, it still heats up quickly and task manager shows me that memory usage would be hitting 85%, whereas the CPU usage barely hits 2%!

I don’t use addons. I don’t run any other programs.

By comparison, I run games like StarCraft 2, Jurassic World Evolution 3, SWTOR, Civilization 6, State of Decay 2, Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor… all at medium to high graphics (usually medium). I check my task manager with these games — the CPU usage tends to range from 15% to 35%, while the memory usage usually hovers around 35% to 50%. And my laptop doesn’t get hot enough to actually make my hands hurt.

This is why I’m wondering whether something is wrong with memory and WoW.

EDIT: and this primarily happens in Midnight zones. I’ve run around in Orgrimmar and low-level zones with minimal issues.

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To me it sounds like something is wrong with your cooling. Maybe one of the fans inside the case is running too slow or not at all. WoW can’t force your hardware to run “hotter,” it just uses what’s available to it. If running makes the hardware too hot, then that’s a cooling issue.

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Fine, I’ll take in my laptop to a computer store to get it checked out.

But I won’t lie — it genuinely doesn’t make sense to me that only one game triggers this possible cooling issue while the others don’t. How is that even possible?

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All games utilize hardware differently. WoW, in particular, strains the CPU more than most.

With 8GB of RAM, I’d fully expect WoW to use 60-70%+ of it. I’ve looked a few times on my computer to see how much RAM WoW is using, in each of the Midnight zones, as well as in Silvermoon. It’s always in the 5-6.5GB range. But I’ve got 64GB of RAM, so it’s not going to bother anything.

I’d agree that it sounds like a cooling issue. It could be a failed/failing fan. It might be that the thermal paste needs to be redone on your CPU, GPU, or both. It could be all of the above.

It might be helpful to run something like hwmonitor in the background so it logs the temps of all of the components in your computer. That way you can see which one(s) are getting too hot.

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I have heard that before. It’s why I find myself confused because, as I’ve said previously, when I check the usage on my task manager, WoW uses basically zero CPU (in part because I have my graphics set to the lowest), while rocketing to 85%-plus memory in Silvermoon.

But yeah, I’ll schedule an appointment with Geek Squad or something like that.

Thank you for the information about hwmonitor! I’ll check that out.