[SOLVED] 4 Month Old System - Games Fast; Windows Slow, why? - Detailed Post

[Taze722]

Hi all,
My Specs:

• 600W Corsair 600SF (PSU)
• X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI (MoBo)
• AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (6 cores, 12 threads) CPU
• Corsair Vengence 16GB DDR4 @ 3200 MHz (RAM)
• AMD Radeon RX 6800 (newly installed last week)
• Western Digital Black SN750 1TB NVMe M.2 Drive (Games Drive)
• Kingston A400 SATA 120GB (Boot Drive)
• Windows 10 Home (Ver. 20H2) (O/S)
• Malwarebytes Premium (Antivirus)
• No overclock/undervolt on any components

____
The Issue:
I start my pc and it boots to the windows login screen normally and in good time. When I then attempt to login, sometimes it takes me to desktop quickly, other times it sits and loads for a good 20 seconds.
Once on the desktop and after my startup programs are loaded (Only Malwarebytes, Discord and Razer Central), windows feels very slow to run in general. Examples are if I click "ThisPC" it takes a good 10 seconds to open. Same results with chrome which loads very slowly too. Even my volume mixer requires the little loading circle near the mouse wheel before opening after around 5-10 seconds.
Weirdly, when I run any game - it loads in good time and FPS is normal. The game is responsive and I have no issues.
I have restarted the PC multiple times.
____
Diagnostics
Task Manager:

• When computer is struggling to load something (we'll use "ThisPC" as an example), task manager doesn't open straight away and when it does, shows around 50% CPU usage but each process shows 0% initially, until the PC eventually loads the app, and CPU goes down to normal levels again with individual process percentages now reading.
• Memory: around 25% used at idle, no abnormal programs taking up excessive memory

HWMonitor:

• All temperatures are typical for my setup - CPU at around 40°C Idle, 60°C under gaming load - GPU & Drive temps all normal too
• All 6 cores of harddrive range from 3.3MHz - 4.2 MHz under light load (internet browsing). I understand Ryzen CPUs tend to run at high clock speeds at idle a lot of the time, so not sure if this is suspicious or not.

Virus Scanning:

• Ran the rkill program for killing active malware processes - nothing flagged
• Ran a Malwarebytes scan with rootkit scanning enabled - nothing flagged
• Ran adwcleaner scan - nothing flagged

DDU

• Ran the Guru3D DDU software in safemode which uninstalled a couple of old Nvidia drivers that were kicking around on my system from my old GTX 980 before these issues started.

BIOS

• Updated the BIOS 3 days prior to this issue to current version
• Also noticed ram speed was at 2133MHz by defult when it's rated for 3200MHz so enabled the X.M.P profile for 3200MHz - as far as i'm aware the Ryzen 3600 can take this no problem?

____
Good people of Tom's H/W, what say you? I have no idea what's causing this. The PC was running fine until yesterday. I did get some random crashes to desktop in games while using the RX 6800. I didn't get that with my GTX 980 before. The crashes themselves have had no error message on any of the games, but if i have other programs open at the same time, Windows tells me i'm running out of memory. Never had this before - 16BG has always been enough.
Any responses are greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[SkyNetRising]

Good people of Tom's H/W, what say you? I have no idea what's causing this.

Run some diagnostics and benchmarks.
Test your Kingston A400 - AS SSD benchmark, HDtune benchmark. Post screenshots.
Lot of people complain about having issues with this model.

Can you show screenshot from Task Manager performance/memory section? and CPU-Z memory/spd sections?
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

 

[Taze722]

Hey, Thanks for the swift response! Click the pictures to take you to the albums, they all have multiple pictures.

Here's the HD Tune benchmarks for the drive:

https://imgur.com/a/Fpyjj10

View: https://imgur.com/a/Fpyjj10


Here's the CPU-z memory & spd sections:

https://imgur.com/a/0XbO7Ke

View: https://imgur.com/a/0XbO7Ke


Here's the task manager sections:

https://imgur.com/a/nHyiUe5

View: https://imgur.com/a/nHyiUe5


Let me know your thoughts - Looks normal to me but i'm not 100% on what i'm looking at.

 

[neojack]

the Kingston A400 is a dram-less SSD. it means it does not have a cache on oboard ram.
this kind of SSD can be as slow as an HDD in certain workoads.

consider upgrading to a crucial MX series or samsung EVO . 250GB is enough for the C: drive
no need to reinstall windows either, juste install macrium free and do a clone. you would even be able to resize the partition.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Let me know your thoughts - Looks normal to me but i'm not 100% on what i'm looking at.

Benchmarks look fine.

One thing though - your pagefile settings are too high. You have 9GB pagefile allocated currently.
Set it to 1GB initial, 8GB max.

Yes - and consider upgrading your Kingston A400 to something better.

 

[neojack]

pagefile of 1-8GB max would cause crashes at least in one game : star citizen. Maybe in others workloads too

better left it on auto