I have a Windows 7 laptop and recently the fan has started to run loudly whenever I open Chrome. This made me think that Chrome was using up too much memory. I was able to narrow it down to Chrome because it happens even if there is nothing else open.

I noticed in the Task Manager (ctrl+alt+delete, then select “Task Manager”) that Chrome had launched several processes. I wondered why that was the case and whether that was what was causing the problem. This post on Reddit gave an idea of how to proceed.

1. Use shift+esc while you are in Chrome to see what processes are currently running.
2. Have a look (on the settings page) at which extensions you have enabled and delete any ones that you don’t use very often.

This seems to have fixed the problem, so far.