It's a newer Lenovo vpro, not because I wanted that, but because it's what I got. It came with 16g of reputable ram, then I added 8g ~1 year ago for $20, the exact same module which is now $120. Orher than a bad ram chip, what else would be the culprit?

I have 64gb in my linux machine and have managed to hardlock it a bunch of times exhausting the ram. Couldn't even REISUB a couple of times. The OOM killer stuff in Linux just doesn't work anymore by what I can gather.

Buying more ram is no longer an option, so I added a 128gb swap partition on nvme. I incorrectly assumed with 64gb I didn't even need swap. No crashes since.

If you don't want to move partitions around, you can add a swap file. ChatGPT or whatever can give instructions.

You're almost certainly on to something and I'll be doing something similar. That must be the crux. Thank you!

You should consider some sort of swap on ram like zswap rather than thrashing your nvme.

Thanks, yep I do have zram installed, but I'm working with mostly incompressible AI models so it really didn't help. I set it to cap at 8GB so random stuff can take advantage and I guess it helps a tiny bit, but not much.

I have a free m.2 slot and may get a cheap optane drive and use that as SWAP. I've read they're not as fast as marketed for this, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about about wearing out my SSD.

Not parent, but noted. Thanks!

:)