How To Know If My CPU Is Overloaded

Check out the How To Trade It podcast with Casey Stubbs titled Preventing “Slippage.” Casey and EddieZ discuss how to know if your CPU is overloaded. Listen to this segment or read the transcript below.

Casey: 

Yeah, I’m gonna try to cut down. This ties into another question, you mentioned it a little bit, but I have a great system. We talked about it ahead of time, however, I abuse it. I will have like 20 chrome tabs open, no, 20 browsers open and then each one will have like 30 tabs. Then I’ve got like four or five trading platforms. Then I got my Zoom just like you said. And the next thing you know, simple tasks on my PC are starting to slow down. And I’m like, I can’t even get into the trading menu because it’s locking up and I’m thinking this trading platform’s junk, but really, I’m just abusing my platform. I have to get a little, it probably the answer for me is in a better computer, the answer is to have a little more discipline on what I’m running.  

EddieZ:

There’s a way you can monitor that if you’re not familiar. If you click the start button and type in task manager. I’m on Windows 11, but this works all the way down to XP and you open a window called Task Manager. That might a have couple of different views. Do you see tabs at the top: processes, performance? If you look at the columns, there’s a column for CPU and there’s a column for memory.

My memory right now says 14%. If you have a ton of browsers open and tons of tabs open, that thing is going to show like 70%, 80%, and 90% of the memory. When you open, if I had to guess right now, the number one user in that column, if you look under apps, the one using the biggest percentage is probably Chrome right now on your computer. 

Casey: 

Yeah.

EddieZ:

Chrome can be a big hog. There’s a lot of tracking going on in the background and you know, if you have ads coming in, it’s reloading all the ads into all those browsers. You want to close as many of those as possible, especially the tabs, more tabs you have open. A tab is really just a whole other browser open. That will help you a lot. You can monitor how much of your memory you’re using. That’s probably what’s slowing you down. You’re getting up towards the top of the memory or you’re abusing your CPU too much.

Casey:

If I just watch that and downgrade it a little bit, close some stuff.

EddieZ:

Yeah. It will tell you. You’ll see it in task manager. At the top of those columns, it can sort by memory and it can sort by CPU usage. Just like in an Excel spreadsheet. If you click the top of the memory, it’ll show you which programs are using the most memory. For me, it’s Chrome also. If you shut down a couple of tabs, you’ll see that number start to drop. Then see what happens with your computer as you start approaching the top of the memory, like you get over 80%, your computer is trying to write data to the hard drive to make up new space. That’s where you start to get locked up and that’s where you’re going to have your problem. How much Ram do you have in there?

Casey:

I just closed it. How would I find that? I just closed the task manager.

EddieZ:

Go back to your system information window.

Casey:

Okay. I’m there now. I had it open still.

EddieZ:

Okay, it’s like the 25th line down under time zone. It says install physical memory.

Casey:

I have 32.

EddieZ:

That’s plenty. That’s a lot. This machine I’m running has 64. I would recommend at least 32 GB of RAM if you consider yourself a power user like you are. Absolutely these days, 32 is what you need. But still, you can use that up pretty quickly if you have tons of browsers open. You have Zoom. You have a video feed coming in. Anything with a video feed is going to use a lot. And then your trading application is going to use a ton as well.