clear the kill-ring and free memory?

[unfrostedpoptart]

Hi.

I've been having a lot of emacs (24.3.1 linux) hangs/crashes/cpu-hogging 
related to too much stuff in the kill-ring.  I'm looking for a nice, safe way 
to empty it.  I've searched around a lot and haven't seen a good solution.  
There's 

(setq kill-ring nil) 
(garbage-collect)

but I don't know if that would leave some clipboard functions/variables in an 
illegal state.

Thanks!

 David