- Windows detected the latest version of Discord and other Chromium- and Electron-based applications with high RAM usage
- RAM usage increases from 1GB to 4GB on Discord, both in and out of voice chat
- This comes at a time when RAM kit prices are extremely high
It’s no secret at the moment that the PC hardware market is in a volatile state, with RAM kit prices skyrocketing like never before due to the current AI bubble, which is why the Windows 11 problem is much more visible now.
As reported Latest versions of WindowsDiscord and other Windows 11 apps using the Electron framework consume significant amounts of RAM, with Discord increasing significantly from 1GB to 4GB. This is because these apps use the Chromium browser instance and Node.js (a JavaScript runtime) for desktop app functionality, which apparently causes memory leaks.
As a regular Discord user, I’ve noticed several instances where RAM usage exceeds 1GB and steadily increases the longer it’s open and active. While it’s not uncommon for apps to take up a large amount of system memory, this becomes problematic when playing games or using other resource-hungry apps.
Like Windows Latest, I tested it by joining a server and accessing voice chat to broadcast; Before voice chat streaming was enabled, Discord’s RAM usage was 780MB, and when I started streaming it could go up to 1.4GB after a few minutes (screenshot below).
This makes sense, especially when playing high definition content like 1080p or 1440p. The most frustrating aspect, however, was that the 1.4GB RAM usage didn’t decrease even after I stopped streaming (and even after I quit voice chat entirely), but instead continuously fluctuated between 1.2GB and 1.4GB, which was only resolved by a hard restart of Discord.
This now adds a more detailed explanation of why game performance may be worse than normal when Discord is running in the background, with immediate improvements visible when the app is completely closed.
While users with 32GB or 64GB of RAM won’t find this a big deal, it’s still a chunk of RAM that can affect functionality and speed, and could be a bigger problem for users with only 8GB or 16GB of RAM, and with RAM kit prices higher than normal due to the rise of AI, this is the worst time for system memory to take up apps.
Analysis: This is just another addition to the current RAM problems
This is something Microsoft’s Windows 11 suffers from: background processes actively affect players’ gaming performance, and bloatware makes users frustrated by the OS’s lack of usability, but apps like Discord make the problem worse, and the current memory footprint only makes matters worse.
While I’m personally waiting for Discord to add native support for SteamOS with a dedicated game mode app, it seems like fixing this memory leak (which it appears to be) should be a priority.
As this AI boom continues, the RAM pricing issues will only get worse from here, and unless fixes can be put in place for Discord and other Chromium-based apps that use more memory than necessary, it will frustrate more users.
