Windows 11 just started to chew up RAM. ~15 GB unaccounted for.

Right, okay. Either on the file summary tab or the physical pages tab, if you only look at files, you will see... files. If you want to ignore everything else that's in the pages tab, then that's up to you. Doesn't make you any less wrong.

OP's question has been answered (I think), and I'm growing weary of you thinking RAM only has files in it apparently. Good luck.

pseymour said:

nd I'm growing weary of you thinking RAM only has files in it apparently. Good luck.

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Correct i am telling people online that Standby contains a list of cached files from disk. Introduced in win8, under the term "unused memory is wasted memory". So they started caching frequently used files to RAM. Thats the Standby function.
The rest of the RAM "In use and Modified" are the memory parts that applications uses. So no i don't think of RAM is full of files. It contains more.
But people spreading to much misinformation, that Standby contains active program data. But that is false statement.

Don't forget to hit F5 in Rammap as it does not autorefresh and otherwise shows the old data after closing an app....

One other consideration: While I don't know the behavior of your specific program(s), I can say that some programs will use more memory if it is available, generally for improved performance. If other programs need more RAM than (hopefully) the program using a lot of memory will give up the extra memory that it is using.

In fact, Windows itself behaves that way as well. Some components will take advantage of systems with larger amounts of RAM and then back off if the memory is needed for other tasks.

Bottom line: Do we know for a fact that this is really abnormal behavior? That's not a call that I can make, just a possibility to consider.

TairikuOkami said:

You can use System Informer for more detail analysis.
It also allows to clean unused memory for comparison.

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Is there a way to have System Informer clean the unused memory automatically or periodically?

Almighty1 said:

Is there a way to have System Informer clean the unused memory automatically or periodically?

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No that option is only for troubleshooting, you want MemReduct Or WiseMemoryOptimizer.

TairikuOkami said:

No that option is only for troubleshooting, you want MemReduct Or WiseMemoryOptimizer.

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Thanks, didn't even know about that in System Informer or Process Hacker.... I had a file called FreeStandbyMemory.bat that I downloaded many years ago but didn't remember what it was for and never used it. What's the real difference between MemReduct Or WiseMemoryOptimizer?

Almighty1 said:

What's the real difference between MemReduct Or WiseMemoryOptimizer?

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I have not really used any, Wise is regularly updated, optimization apps include some sort of mem cleaner.

TairikuOkami said:

No that option is only for troubleshooting, you want MemReduct Or WiseMemoryOptimizer.

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Thanks for these, i tested Memreduct, and it went from 32% to 14%, that was good, thanks