Question 100% Disk Usage (and malfuncioning fans)

[Azeew]

I bought a mid/high end PC around an year ago.

• Issue #1: Few weeks after purchase, it started making A LOT of noise when it would turn on, and the fans started malfunctioning. The lights would turn off/on randomly, it would decelerate, then accelerate, in syncrony with the loud noise. Anyway, a few months later they just completely stoped working and the noise is gone. They're 4 fans in total. I'm afraid this could be a problem with the motherboard, or maybe even the power supply? Cause it would be weird for all 4 to stop working, wouldn't it? Some lights still turn on, but it's pretty unstable. I can provide a few videos if necessary.
• Issue #2: I don't know for how long this has been happening, but I'm getting 100% disk usage spikes when I launch any heavy software. When that happens, it feels like I'm using a machine 10x cheaper than it actually is. I tried every single possible fix I found online, to no success. In case it's the hard drive itself, is there a way I can check that? I'm about to buy an SSD (a small one, for windows + a few programs), but I'm afraid it might not solve the problem (or only solve for files inside the SSD).

And is there a possible reason why I got so many problems? Is that normal? It feels really bad to have spent so much and still have to go through a lot of issues, I don't really "trust" this machine at this point. Anyway, any ideas on what could be happening on any of these issues? I'm also wondering if there's a way to know how my hardware is holding up, like a software with hardware specific benchmarks? Cause the first issue really makes me worry about what could have went wrong, what pieces are possibly malfunctioning. It could be that the fans are just all cheap and broke, but I don't know how likely that is. Thanks in advance.

I posted this on reddit, but I'm in kind of a hurry. I'll try a clean Windows install tomorrow to try to fix the disk issue, tho I'm still worried about the rest.

 

[nick_v15]

Are your fans connected on your mobo or a fan hub in your case?Write your specs too.

 

[Azeew]

Are your fans connected on your mobo or a fan hub in your case?Write your specs too.

Sorry, I'm a bit "afraid" of checking too much. The cables are all organized in the back, it's hard to check without commiting. I don't think there's a fan hub, no, I'd assume it's just directly into the mobo. Here are my specs:

PCYES SHOCKER 600W 80 Plus
Intel Core i5 8600K 3.6 GHz
Z370M AORUS Gaming
PNY GeForce 1070 Ti 8GB
HD Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM010 1TB 7200RPM 64MB Sata III
Generic DDR4 8gb RAM
Generic fans as well, they came with the case.

 

[Solandri]

Noise from fans is almost always due to a wire or cable hitting one of the fans. I've also seen it happen to case fans if the case gets bent or distorted. It causes the spinning portion of the fan to hit the fan housing.

As for issue #2, the common causes I've encountered are:

• File fragmentation. Windows now automatically defragments once a week. But this becomes less effective if your HDD is very full (over 85% full).
• Windows Update wants you to restart. I dunno why, but Windows update will frequently peg the CPU at close to 100% and thrash the disk at 100% when it wants you to reboot so it can complete installing updates. The catch is that shutting down does not constitute a reboot. Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft changed it so "Shutdown" actually puts the computer into a pseudo-hibernate state. To do a real reboot, you need to select the Restart option, not Shutdown followed by a manual power on.
• Overzealous antivirus software. A lot of antivirus software have gone through feature bloat, and one of the common features is real-time scanning of every file the system uses. This usually isn't worth it, as it slows down the system considerably. And if you're using HDDs, it usually results in the HDD thrashing at 100%. It's an optional feature of Windows Defender, and I've seen it accidentally turned on a couple times. Unfortunately, Microsoft keeps moving the setting for it around. I'm not sure where it is now. You can try this:

https://www.isumsoft.com/windows-10/turn-on-or-off-windows-defender-real-time-protection.html

• A bad or loose SATA cable. This causes data transmission errors between the HDD and the computer, forcing the data to be re-sent. That leads to thrashing the disk. My incident rate for seeing this dropped almost to zero after I switched to using SATA cables with clips.
• A dying drive. Grab CrystalDiskInfo and check the drive's SMART stats. The problems which cause the drive to thrash excessively usually show up in SMART as data error rate or pending/uncorrectable sector count.

CrystalDiskInfo

About CrystalDiskInfo A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe. Aoi Edition Standard Edition Shizuku Edition Kurei Kei Edition Download System Requirements OS Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 Architecture x86/x64/ARM64...

crystalmark.info

 

[Azeew]

Noise from fans is almost always due to a wire or cable hitting one of the fans. I've also seen it happen to case fans if the case gets bent or distorted. It causes the spinning portion of the fan to hit the fan housing.

As for issue #2, the common causes I've encountered are:

• File fragmentation. Windows now automatically defragments once a week. But this becomes less effective if your HDD is very full (over 85% full).
• Windows Update wants you to restart. I dunno why, but Windows update will frequently peg the CPU at close to 100% and thrash the disk at 100% when it wants you to reboot so it can complete installing updates. The catch is that shutting down does not constitute a reboot. Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft changed it so "Shutdown" actually puts the computer into a pseudo-hibernate state. To do a real reboot, you need to select the Restart option, not Shutdown followed by a manual power on.
• Overzealous antivirus software. A lot of antivirus software have gone through feature bloat, and one of the common features is real-time scanning of every file the system uses. This usually isn't worth it, as it slows down the system considerably. And if you're using HDDs, it usually results in the HDD thrashing at 100%. It's an optional feature of Windows Defender, and I've seen it accidentally turned on a couple times. Unfortunately, Microsoft keeps moving the setting for it around. I'm not sure where it is now. You can try this:

https://www.isumsoft.com/windows-10/turn-on-or-off-windows-defender-real-time-protection.html

• A bad or loose SATA cable. This causes data transmission errors between the HDD and the computer, forcing the data to be re-sent. That leads to thrashing the disk. My incident rate for seeing this dropped almost to zero after I switched to using SATA cables with clips.
• A dying drive. Grab CrystalDiskInfo and check the drive's SMART stats. The problems which cause the drive to thrash excessively usually show up in SMART as data error rate or pending/uncorrectable sector count.

CrystalDiskInfo

About CrystalDiskInfo A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe. Aoi Edition Standard Edition Shizuku Edition Kurei Kei Edition Download System Requirements OS Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 Architecture x86/x64/ARM64...

crystalmark.info

Thanks!!

It would be great if it's just a wire being hit by the fan, but what's weird is that it happened on all 4 of them. And now they don't even spin anymore and the LEDs only light up here and there.

Btw, here are my results from CrystalDiskInfo. I have no idea what they mean tho, haha.

https://imgur.com/8plxZMA

View: https://imgur.com/8plxZMA

https://imgur.com/TRYMAX0

View: https://imgur.com/TRYMAX0