Windows scales RAM usage up/down depending upon the amount of installed RAM. If more RAM is available greater number of frequently used apps are cached for near instant response. When 20GB RAM was installed in my laptop RAM usage varied between 7-8GB with no user apps running in the background. After the 16GB module became defective only 4GB was available and Windows scaled RAM usage down to 2-2.2GB. When I added another 4GB module RAM usage scaled up to ~4GB. Caching apps has a very noticeable impact on app launching times. Despite a plenty fast NVMe SSD in the 4GB config apps take a second or two to launch as they are frequently evicted from memory.
Edit: LTSC versions use a bit less RAM but they are on a much longer update schedule.
There are some services that can be disabled to free upto 0.5-1GB RAM but it's not worth the effort. 8GB RAM is 2018 was quite inadequate for my purposes but the situation in the last couple of years seems to be much improved.
Windows scales RAM usage up/down depending upon the amount of installed RAM. If more RAM is available greater number of frequently used apps are cached for near instant response. When 20GB RAM was installed in my laptop RAM usage varied between 7-8GB with no user apps running in the background. After the 16GB module became defective only 4GB was available and Windows scaled RAM usage down to 2-2.2GB. When I added another 4GB module RAM usage scaled up to ~4GB. Caching apps has a very noticeable impact on app launching times. Despite a plenty fast NVMe SSD in the 4GB config apps take a second or two to launch as they are frequently evicted from memory.
Edit: LTSC versions use a bit less RAM but they are on a much longer update schedule.
There are some services that can be disabled to free upto 0.5-1GB RAM but it's not worth the effort. 8GB RAM is 2018 was quite inadequate for my purposes but the situation in the last couple of years seems to be much improved.
give screenshot of task manager