If you need to know how to check CPU and RAM usage on Windows, it takes about five seconds. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager, read the CPU and Memory columns on the Processes tab, then click Performance for live graphs of both. The tool is built into Windows 10 and Windows 11, so nothing needs installing.
Below are three methods. Task Manager covers ninety percent of cases, Resource Monitor explains the load that no single app seems to own, and Command Prompt or PowerShell gives you a repeatable snapshot you can drop into a troubleshooting routine.
Table of Contents
What You Need
No third-party software, no downloads, no admin rights for the main method. Task Manager ships with every supported version of Windows, including Windows 10 builds and Windows 11 on both laptops and desktops.
A few practical notes before you start:
- Windows 11 vs Windows 10: the layout is nearly identical in both, but Windows 11 puts Processes first and shows CPU, Memory, Disk and Network as separate coloured columns at the top. Older tutorials built for Windows 7 still open on Windows 10, so check which one you are looking at.
- Administrator access: you do not need it for Task Manager. You do need it for some Resource Monitor detail on protected processes, and for certain remote PowerShell checks.
- A baseline reading: check your usage while nothing heavy is open first, so you know what idle looks like on your machine. Cached memory makes the RAM number at idle far higher than most people expect.
Step-by-Step: How to Check CPU and RAM Usage on Windows
Check Usage in Task Manager
On Windows 11, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc. If Task Manager opens compact, click More details at the bottom to expand the full column view. On Windows 10, the same shortcut works, but right-click anywhere in the Task Manager border and choose Switch to compact view or its reverse if the tabs are missing.
On the Processes tab you get a live list. The last three rows of the summary grid show CPU, Memory and Disk usage as percentages, updated about once per second. Those three numbers answer the question on their own.
Now sort the list to find the culprit:
- Click the CPU column header once to sort high to low. The top row is whatever is working the processor hardest right now.
- Click Memory to sort by RAM. Each row shows memory in gigabytes.
- Watch for five to ten seconds rather than one instant. A process that spikes and drops is usually normal background work.
- To close something, select the row and click End task at the top right.
To stop it coming back, go to the Startup apps tab (Windows 11) or Startup tab (Windows 10) and disable the same program. The Background apps section in the settings sidebar handles the ones Task Manager does not list there.
Now click the Performance tab for the live graphs. This is the part most how-tos skip, and it is where the useful numbers live.
In the CPU pane on the right, the graph you care about is Utility, not Speed. Speed is clock rate in GHz. Utility is how much of the processor is actually being used. A laptop sitting at 2.4 GHz doing nothing is at 3% utility, not 100%.
Underneath the graph, Processes is the count of running processes and Threads the count of threads, which is the better indicator of how much work a machine is actually doing. Under Memory, In use is real application data and Available is what Windows keeps in reserve, mostly as cached file data. Committed shows how much the system has promised to reserve against the page file.
There is one more reading here that solves a very common puzzle. The CPU graph can be switched from Total to 8 cores (or however many you have). If total utility reads 15% and the machine still stutters, check the per-core view: a single core pinned at 100% while the rest idle will cause lag that the headline number hides completely.
Check Usage in Resource Monitor
Resource Monitor shows CPU, memory, disk and network activity for every running process at once, which makes it the right tool when Task Manager shows high usage but no obvious offender.
Open it two ways. The quickest is Win+R, type resmon, press Enter. The other is to open Task Manager first, click Performance, then the Resource Monitor link at the bottom left.
The top strip has four expandable sections:
- CPU shows total processor time broken into CPU usage, virtual memory, faults, and per-core utilisation, plus the processes ranked by handle and thread count.
- Memory shows hard faults, which is the useful one. A process generating thousands of hard faults per second is paging to disk because it has run out of memory.
- Disk shows total and queue length. Active time near 100% with a queue length climbing above about 2 means the drive is the bottleneck, not the CPU.
- Network shows send and receive throughput per process, handy for spotting a backup or update that is eating your connection.
The advantage over Task Manager is attribution: disk and network load always attach to a named process. The cost is that it is a heavier window, so I would not leave it open while gaming.
Check Usage with Command Prompt
Command Prompt and PowerShell cannot stream a live graph, but they give you a number you can copy into a note, compare across a reboot, or run on another machine over the network. That makes them genuinely useful in a troubleshooting routine rather than a daily glance.
Press Win+R, type cmd, press Enter, then run a total processor sample every five seconds:
typeperf "Processor(_Total)% Processor Time" -si 5Each line is one sample. Press Ctrl+C to stop. In PowerShell the equivalent, which also reports free memory, is:
Get-Counter 'Processor(_Total)% Processor Time','MemoryAvailable MBytes' -SampleInterval 2To list the ten heaviest processes by RAM instead of a single figure:
Get-Process | Sort-Object WorkingSet64 -Descending | Select-Object -First 10 Name,Id,@{Name='RAM_MB';Expression={[math]::Round($_.WorkingSet64/1MB)}}The same block runs against a remote machine, which is how IT staff check a user’s PC without sitting at it:
Invoke-Command -ComputerName DESKTOP-ABC -ScriptBlock { Get-Process | Sort-Object WorkingSet64 -Descending | Select-Object -First 5 Name,Id }Know the limits before you rely on it. Percentages here are sampled at the moment you run the command, so a short burst is easy to miss, the output has no per-process CPU breakdown, and older `wmic cpu get loadpercentage` commands report values rounded to whole percentages and are being retired in current Windows builds. Use the GUI for reading and these for measuring.
What Normal CPU and RAM Usage Looks Like
This is where most alarm goes off unnecessarily. Windows fills unused RAM with cached file data on purpose, so the memory number at idle is not a score out of ten.
- Idle, just after boot: CPU 1 to 5%, RAM 40 to 55% on a 16GB machine. Windows has cached apps and files. Entirely normal.
- Idle after 20 minutes: CPU 2 to 8%, RAM 55 to 70% on 16GB. Still normal, because that cached memory is doing its job.
- Browser with 20 tabs, plus Teams and a video call: CPU 15 to 40%, RAM 70 to 85%. Busy, and normal. Watch which tab is decoding video.
- Gaming: CPU 60 to 95%, RAM 75 to 90%. Expected, because the processor is doing what you asked it to.
- Sustained 90% CPU with nothing open: something is wrong. Sort Processes, then switch to the per-core view.
- Sustained high RAM with hard faults climbing: real memory pressure. Check the fault counts in Resource Monitor.
Rough rule of thumb: under 60% RAM is comfortable, 60 to 80% is fine as long as it stays there, and above 90% sustained means the machine is paging to disk and everything will feel slow.
Common Mistakes
Confusing CPU speed with CPU usage. A processor sitting at its rated clock speed is not working hard. Task Manager’s Performance tab separates Speed in GHz from Utility in percent, and only Utility predicts lag. Fix: read Utility and the Processes count.
Treating 70% RAM as a fault. Cached memory is RAM being spent on something useful, and Windows reclaims it the moment an app asks. Multiple answers on Microsoft’s own community forum describe 50% at idle on a 16GB machine as entirely expected. Fix: watch the Available figure and the trend, not the headline percentage.
Looking only at the total CPU number. One saturated core on an eight-core chip shows as about 12% total while a single-threaded game or badly threaded app stutters. Fix: switch the CPU graph to per-core view on the Performance tab and find the flat-topped square.
Sorting the list and immediately acting. Task Manager redraws once per second, and the top row changes constantly. Fix: sort by CPU or Memory, then watch ten seconds and see whether the same name keeps the top row.
Ending a system process. System, Desktop Window Manager, Antimalware Service Executable and Windows Search Indexer routinely spike after a boot or an install, and ending them causes reboots or breaks search. Fix: let them finish. If the Indexer repeats the same spike every day, exclude the folder it is chewing on in Indexing Options.
Ignoring the case where nothing looks guilty. Sustained high CPU with no visible process usually means the work is happening below Task Manager: interrupts, a driver, a paging loop, or antivirus scanning. Fix: open Resource Monitor and look at the per-core graph and hard fault counts, then compare with a clean boot to isolate a startup driver or a newly installed program.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check my CPU and RAM usage?
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open Task Manager. On the Processes tab, the last rows of the summary grid show live CPU, Memory and Disk percentages for the whole machine, and each row below shows the same figures for one app. Click any column header to sort high to low and find the biggest consumer. Click Performance for live graphs over time.
Is 70% RAM usage a lot?
Not on a modern Windows machine. Windows deliberately fills spare RAM with cached file and app data, so 60 to 80% at idle is routine, especially on 16GB. What matters is the trend and the Available figure underneath the graph. Sustained 90% plus, with hard faults climbing in Resource Monitor, means real memory pressure and page file thrashing.
How is 100% of my CPU being used?
Usually one of four things: a legitimate app such as a game, a compile or a video encode; a background job like Windows Search Indexing or a virus scan; a driver spinning or interrupt storming; or a single-threaded app pinning one core so total reads 100%. Sort Processes by CPU, then switch the Performance CPU graph to per-core view. If nothing is named, compare against a clean boot.
How do I see what’s eating my RAM?
Open Task Manager with Ctrl+Shift+Esc, go to the Processes tab and click the Memory column to sort by RAM used in gigabytes. Watch for ten seconds, because the top row changes as tabs and apps cache. To reclaim it, close what you do not need, or use End task for anything frozen. For startup offenders, disable the program on the Startup apps tab.
How to check CPU in cmd?
Open Command Prompt with Win+R, type cmd and press Enter, then run typeperf u0022u005cProcessor(_Total)u005c% Processor Timeu0022 -si 5. It prints one total processor sample every five seconds until you press Ctrl+C. In PowerShell, Get-Counter with the same counter plus Available MBytes gives you processor load and free memory in the same output.
Why do Task Manager and Resource Monitor show different numbers?
They sample at slightly different moments and weight counters differently. Task Manager shows a fast snapshot of processor time per process, while Resource Monitor aggregates activity over a longer window and adds disk, network and fault counters the Processes tab does not have. Neither is wrong. Use Task Manager to identify the app and Resource Monitor to see what it is actually doing.
Conclusion
Start with Task Manager, because knowing how to check CPU and RAM usage on Windows is a five-second job once you know the shortcut. Read the total CPU, Memory and Disk percentages in the bottom-right grid, then sort Processes by CPU and by Memory to name the biggest consumer.
Watch for ten seconds before acting, and if the numbers look wrong, check the Memory Available figure and the per-core CPU view before you close anything. Reach for Resource Monitor only when the totals are high and no single app accounts for them. Updated for 2026.