Title: CPU vs Memory Usage
Last modified: February 6, 2021

---

# CPU vs Memory Usage

 *  [vorticy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vorticy/)
 * (@vorticy)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cpu-vs-memory-usage/)
 * A back in May 2020 I found that the PHP-FPM processes were consuming 96.5% RAM
   and 3.3% CPU. But today it is flip flopped. CPU is getting near 70% and RAM at
   like 2.6%. Note that all the resources of the server were applied to one website
   that uses Woocommerce and everyone is adding a product to the cart and checking
   out. Here are the configurations.
 * May 2020 Ecommerce Event:
    Visitors: about 800 Ram Usage: 96.5% CPU Usage: 3.3%
   Type: IONOS Dedicated Server L, Centos 7, MariaDB, Plesk, nginx CPU: 4 Core x
   3.5 GHz (E3-1230 v6) RAM: 32 GB SSD: 2 x 480 GB Software RAID 1 PHP-FPM Max Children(
   plesk setting): 350 PHP-FPM Max Requests (plesk setting): 400 PHP-FPM Control:
   Static
 * Feb 2021 Ecommerce Event:
    Visitors: about 650 Ram Usage: 2.6% CPU Usage: 70%
   Type: IONOS Dedicated Server XXL, Centos 8, MariaDB, Plesk, nginx CPU: 8 Core
   x 3.0 GHz (Intel Silver 4123) RAM: 96 GB NVMe: 2 x 1000 GB Hardware RAID 1 PHP-
   FPM Max Children (plesk setting): 1000 PHP-FPM Max Requests (plesk setting): (
   not defined) PHP-FPM Control: On Demand
 * Any thoughts on what is happening? Is WordPress or Woocommerce modify their code
   to help with the earlier memory consumption to only trade it with high CPU usage?
   Or is not defining the Max Requests resulting in much higher children being replaced
   and thus higher CPU load? I’m hoping someone can shed some light here. Thanks
   in advance.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

 *  [RoseHosting](https://wordpress.org/support/users/rosehosting/)
 * (@rosehosting)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cpu-vs-memory-usage/#post-14011150)
 * You can try to install caching plugin along with Memcached or Redis, which should
   reduce the CPU usage on your server.
 *  Thread Starter [vorticy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vorticy/)
 * (@vorticy)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cpu-vs-memory-usage/#post-14011370)
 * In both cases I was using WP Fastest Cache to its fullest extent including image
   optimization. However, I have not enabled nginx cache as it seems it isn’t good
   for my application. [https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/obsidian/administrator-guide/web-servers/apache-and-nginx-web-servers-linux/enabling-nginx-caching.79185/](https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/obsidian/administrator-guide/web-servers/apache-and-nginx-web-servers-linux/enabling-nginx-caching.79185/)
 *  [Dion](https://wordpress.org/support/users/diondesigns/)
 * (@diondesigns)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cpu-vs-memory-usage/#post-14012562)
 * This has nothing to do with WordPress; you should consider hiring someone to 
   fix your problem, or perhaps ask on stackexchange or serverfault.
 * I’ll point you in the right direction. Your PHP-FPM configurations in both 2020
   and 2021 are totally wrong for your site usage and for the amount of memory installed.
 *  Thread Starter [vorticy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vorticy/)
 * (@vorticy)
 * [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cpu-vs-memory-usage/#post-14012682)
 * I appreciate your input. I did post on Serverfault as well but this post is relevant
   to WordPress. I think there were updates to either WordPress or Woocommerce that
   modified the RAM and CPU usage. Does this not seem possible? Also, how would 
   you adjust the PHP-FPM parameters?

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

The topic ‘CPU vs Memory Usage’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 4 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [vorticy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/vorticy/)
 * Last activity: [5 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cpu-vs-memory-usage/#post-14012682)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics