What size should my pagefile be?

NoRomanBatmansAllowed · May 13, 2017

Hey guys,

I'm running a 120GB SSD right now, so I'm trying to free up some space (for peace of mind).

It seems like my pagefile is currently at 8.3 GB, though I have heard stories about pagefiles expanding to fill up hundreds of GBs.

What size should I limit it to, if I have 8GB RAM, 6600k, 1070, and a 120GB SSD? (I've got other hard drives in build, but C drive is at ~65% capacity used)

vorticalbox · May 13, 2017

rule of thumb is ram capacity * 1.5.

You know you can put the page file on a different drive?

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/77692-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-10-a.html

set c to none and then another drive to system managed and restart.

mariushm · May 13, 2017

Below 4 GB, it should be at least 4-6 GB.

Below 8 GB, it should be 100% or ~ 125% of the memory you have.

At 8 GB, a safe minimum value would be 2-4 GB

At more than 12 GB you can probably set a very small minimum size (let's say 256 MB).

I don't recommend disabling page file completely. If you have a lot of memory, the page file will simply not be used, but some algorithms inside Windows change their behavior and use some "safer and slower code paths" if they don't have the safety net of page file to fall back to in extreme situations. So having a page file, even if small, is a good idea.

I used to recommend setting the minimum and maximum to the same value which means the page file will be fixed on the hard drive and - on a mechanical drive - it can be moved at the start of a hard drive using a good defragmenting software (I prefer O&O Defrag) which means you'll have smallest latency possible when reading and writing to page files. It's particularly useful if you have less than 4 GB because then page file would be used often.

With SSDs however, it makes no difference where the page file is physically positioned on the drive as you have same latency and speed no matter where the file is read from.

Also these days, I tend to recommend setting a minimum size to something like 2-4 GB and some high maximum size like 8-12 GB. The page file will be created at the small size but if some application crashes or uses a lot of memory, the page file will be expanded. After a reboot, the page file will be again reduced to the smallest size set.

With the minimum and maximum values set to same values, sometimes when an application crashes or a game uses too much memory, Windows could minimize the game and say "hey dude, you have only 10% of memory free and i used all the page file, so close some applications to make some room otherwise i'll have to close applications myself soon so your game won't crash" ...

I used to game on one monitor and watch youtube videos on the second monitor and Firefox leaked memory ending up using 6-10 GB of memory and that popup would show up and if I ignored it for a few minutes, Windows would close Firefox to free memory for the game.

LogicalDrm · May 14, 2017

Pagefile size won't go over the wax size you set. You are thinking of hibernation file. You should move most of pagefile to HDD. You can move all, or leave small backup to SSD. Like 256mb. Thats how mine is set.