Excessive and Unusual Cached Files in Memory

[Traverse]

Hello all,

Before any chastises me, I know fully how cached files work and how it can help previously opened apps function more quickly. However, I monitor my system closely and until 10.11.4 this cache was empty unless I've used my Mac extensively for days. For the past few days, this cached memory balloons up to 4.8GB at log in and keeps growing until I restart and it drops to 4.8GB.

I have 16GB of RAM so it isn't a massive issue. My question is, did something change in 10.11.4? Is this a bug or how it should be working because this is not typical behavior based on past use.

EDIT: I wanted to add that I realize unused RAM is wasted Ram and I don't really mind so long as system performance isn't affect, I'm just curious why there would be such a drastic difference.

 

[KALLT]

Is it cache or RAM? Where do you see the increase?

 

[IowaLynn]

Maybe run Etrecheck and see if there are any background apps etc that are incompatible.

Got a clone made prior to .4 update to test or look at?

In grand scheme not using even 7-8GB RAM is drop in bucket. If cpu% changed a lot also, yes. And var/temp/vm page outs also near zero? Some apps will regardless of real memory.

 

[Traverse]

@KALLT It's "cached files" in System Monitor

 

[Shirasaki]

I only have 4GB RAM and my "cached files" is around 600MB almost all the time.
Don't know if this is normal or not. But yeah, app performance is not that good.

 

[Ritsuka]

If there is free ram OS X loves to use it for cache, it would be weird if it didn't use it.