[SOLVED] Can my new SSD be causing a CPU or RAM bottleneck?

[Boss_baby2023]

I upgraded my SSD and now I'm having crashes, stuttering, and my system is laggy while running games. I suspect my GPU is being bottlenecked, but not sure which component is doing it.

System Specs:
CPU: Intel i5-8400 2.80 GHz
Motherboard: ASUS TUF B360M-PLUS GAMING S
RAM: 2x8 DDR3 1600 (runs at 2666 MHz)
SSD/HDD: 1TB HDD, Silicon Power 4TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 (Games are installed here), 125GB internal SSD (Windows install)
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB, integrated Intel UH Graphics 630 for second display
PSU: Corsair 850W (5 months old)
OS: Windows 10
Monitors: Primary: Acer 75 Hz 1920x1080, Secondary: HP 2011 60 Hz 1600x900

Despite my GPU being way stronger than other components, I haven't had major enough performance issues in the 5 months since buying it to justify an upgrade until now. The new SSD is faster at 5,000MBps read/4,500MBps write to 3430 MBps read/2600 MBps write. So far I've wiped the graphics drivers and reinstalled them and the problem still occurs. Crusader Kings 3 (a very low intensity game) and Jedi Survivor stopped crashing after disabling v-sync and updating the AMD driver. Overwatch 2 runs smooth sometimes but other times will stutter and always crashes after playing a while, but it's usually when there's a lot of explosions and particle effects on screen and is more like the game froze, where as when CK3 and Jedi Survivor crashed it would just close like it ran out of memory. I moved Overwatch 2 to my HDD and the problem persisted. I was thinking maybe the CPU and/or memory can't handle the faster SSD speed. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Here's what is looks like normally while playing Jedi Survivor, it's a recent game and will run at 60 FPS if I'm standing still. When I move the camera or run it stutters or freezes every few seconds and when that happens the CPU and GPU utilization drop, but the memory usage stays at around 90%.

 

[neojack]

it's not normal to have 100%CPU and 90% ram utilisation while gaming.
even if your CPU is somewhat weak by today's standards. it's still better than say a i5 2500k that would not bottleneck this hard.

did you checked the running processes (the tab on the left ?)
click on the cpu column to order the processes by CPU utilisation
same for memory

I think you have another program running that's eating up your PC's ressources. Maybe Prime95 or forlding@home if you have used them for benchmarking ? i think folding@home default's behavior is to autorun after a reboot of the system.

Also, on the graphs you can see the SSDs at 0% utilization.
but your HDD D: is at 25% and the graph is busy. to know what is using your HDD, go to the link "open process monitor" at the bottom

then on the middle you will see "disk activity", order by the column on the right called "total".

 

[RealBeast]

I would do a clean install on the new NVMe and put both the OS and games on there.
I just looked at your manual and your M.2 only uses SATA devices, not NVMe. You will need a different drive. Take a look at item 17 on page 1-4 of your manual.

 

[thestryker]

The SSD shouldn't have any impact at all for something like this unless it's malfunctioning.

Generally speaking your CPU shouldn't be running at 100% and the DRAM usage seems high (unless you have a ton of stuff open, in which case this may be the issue).

Just to note your system only supports PCIe 3.0 and I'm guessing the new drive is QLC so it might actually perform worse than your old one did.

 

[Boss_baby2023]

it's not normal to have 100%CPU and 90% ram utilisation while gaming.
even if your CPU is somewhat weak by today's standards. it's still better than say a i5 2500k that would not bottleneck this hard.

did you checked the running processes (the tab on the left ?)
click on the cpu column to order the processes by CPU utilisation
same for memory

I think you have another program running that's eating up your PC's ressources. Maybe Prime95 or forlding@home if you have used them for benchmarking ? i think folding@home default's behavior is to autorun after a reboot of the system.

Also, on the graphs you can see the SSDs at 0% utilization.
but your HDD D: is at 25% and the graph is busy. to know what is using your HDD, go to the link "open process monitor" at the bottom

then on the middle you will see "disk activity", order by the column on the right called "total".

The HDD usage is from the paging file. I forgot to mention I moved it there when I was troubleshooting.

I would do a clean install on the new NVMe and put both the OS and games on there.
I just looked at your manual and your M.2 only uses SATA devices, not NVMe. You will need a different drive. Take a look at item 17 on page 1-4 of your manual.

The SSD shouldn't have any impact at all for something like this unless it's malfunctioning.

Generally speaking your CPU shouldn't be running at 100% and the DRAM usage seems high (unless you have a ton of stuff open, in which case this may be the issue).

Just to note your system only supports PCIe 3.0 and I'm guessing the new drive is QLC so it might actually perform worse than your old one did.

I checked and my old SSD was also NVMe and had no problems, but you're right this one is PCIe 4.0 instead of PCIe 3.0.

 

[Boss_baby2023]

The HDD usage is from the paging file. I forgot to mention I moved it there when I was troubleshooting.

This was the issue, I just moved the paging file to my new SSD and now things work fine. Thanks, everyone.