[SOLVED] Could my new RAM upgrade be causing my CPU to hit 100%?

[ssluggss]

I recently decided to upgrade my desktop from 8gb of RAM to 32 (I got the Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 DRAM Memory Kit). Now however, when I play games that ran fine on 8GB I'm hitting 100% CPU (Ryzen 5 1400) and getting massive frame drops. I am not sure why this would be, although I've read that more RAM means the CPU could be active more which is leading to my problem. Question is, how do I fix it?

 

[rgd1101]

check cpu temp?

 

[ssluggss]

check cpu temp?

CPU temp didn't exceed 50C, was monitoring it and my hardware in general while I was playing the game. Idk if it helps but my GPU simultaneously dropped off from 100% to like 70% then 50% load

 

[iTragedy]

CPU temp didn't exceed 50C, was monitoring it and my hardware in general while I was playing the game. Idk if it helps but my GPU simultaneously dropped off from 100% to like 70% then 50% load

the gpu thing im pretty sure is normal it just drops due to not needing all the gpu power (correct me if wrong)
my first thought was thermal throtling like the other guy said
whats your psu?
whats your gpu? and what did that temp reach

 

[ssluggss]

the gpu thing im pretty sure is normal it just drops due to not needing all the gpu power (correct me if wrong)
my first thought was thermal throtling like the other guy said
whats your psu?
whats your gpu? and what did that temp reach

So my psu is a Corsair CX500. I'm pretty sure my gpu was also hanging out at a reasonable temperature. I can perform a test though, will report back in a few minutes

 

[iTragedy]

whats your graphics card

 

[InvalidError]

In principle, a memory upgrade would solve performance issues from being low on RAM and make things better overall by substantially reducing if not eliminating swapping, not worse. The CPU hitting 100% usage would make sense if you were previously IO-bottlenecked from low RAM but if that were the case, your old frame rates should have been a whole lot more erratic than they are now.

 

[ssluggss]

whats your graphics card

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti.
So here's the deal, I just tried to reproduce the the issue and I actually wasn't able to. I took some screenshots of NZXT CAM's reporting on my hardware but my GPU temperature never got above 61, it was between 70% and 100% load the entire time, and the clock stayed around 1822MHz (tbh Im still learning about what clocks mean).

My CPU stayed around 32 degrees, 26ish% load and 3194MHz clock. At this point I'm just confused. If it isn't reliably reproducible (I had all my chrome tabs open, NZXT running, game running etc) then is it likely it was just some bizarre fluke?

edit: in addition my RAM never went above 26% load but thats expected

Thanks for your help in general ya'll, I'm still learning the ins and outs on how all these parts interact with each other

 

[ssluggss]

In principle, a memory upgrade would solve performance issues from being low on RAM and make things better overall by substantially reducing if not eliminating swapping, not worse. The CPU hitting 100% usage would make sense if you were previously IO-bottlenecked from low RAM but if that were the case, your old frame rates should have been a whole lot more erratic than they are now.

before I upgraded it I was definitely having RAM issues. Chrome+word was enough to cause pretty bad system stuttering, as well as issues with file explorer. I'm just concerned I overlooked something when buying RAM and might have somehow overdone it or bought the wrong kind. I checked online though and this ram should be compatible with my motherboard (Biostar TB350-BTC)

 

[InvalidError]

I'm just concerned I overlooked something when buying RAM and might have somehow overdone it or bought the wrong kind. I checked online though and this ram should be compatible with my motherboard (Biostar TB350-BTC)

DRAM is relatively dumb electronics: you give it an address and it reads/writes data a predetermined number of cycles later. It either meets timings and signal integrity requirements or it does not. When it does not, data gets corrupted and the system crashes, typically before it even manages to load the BIOS.

For a DRAM problem to cause your system to have random performance issues but not crash on short order, you'd have to have something like one or two intermittent bits in the DRAM triggering routines into fault states in a way that it manages to recover most of the time instead of crashing. That's pretty much the only way DRAM can cause stutters. To make reasonably sure this isn't the case, you can try running memtest86+ for 12+ hours. If the DRAM is working properly, there should be no errors whatsoever.

 

[iTragedy]

reseat your ram(if you want) and if you said you couldnt reproduce it then it probably was a fluke and youre fine