Slackware :: Possible For Some Hardware To Effect RAM Usage?

after my friend dismantled my laptop, to clean out the fans, heat sinks, etc, I've noticed a few odd things, most of which have been fixed.But now, upon booting up, I'm using way more RAM than I should be using. Before, I'd boot up, start Openbox-session (which autostarted two instances of conky, tint2, gnome-panel, cario-compmgr, volumeicon, jackd, and wicd-client, and set my wallpaper), and I'd be using about 150MB of RAM, but now I'm using about that much before I even start my xserver, and when I boot up OpenBox (no session), and start conky, I'm using about 300-350MB. I start up Chromium, and it goes up to about 600MB immediately, then creeps up to around 900MB (which is ridiculous. Before the dismantle, the only time I'd ever been using that much is when running a game, or 464574568 tabs in Chromium.) And when I close Chromium, RAM only goes down to about 600MB.

While compiling my kernel, and with four tabs open in Chromium, my RAM usage went up to 1.80GB (which is also ridiculous, again I've never had that much used).what the hell is going on here!? :| is it even possible for some hardware issue to effect RAM usage?