Games take a long time load/start, and when they do I have a low framerate

[Flying Cattle]

Hello,

My Specs:
CPU: i5 4690k (w/ Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO)
GPU: EVGA GTX 980
Mobo: MSI Z97 Gaming 7
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2
RAM: HyperX Fury 16gb

I have been having framerate issues when playing games such as League of Legends, CS:GO, TF2, and The Witcher 3, which started about a week ago. I would usually get 200+ FPS on the easier-to-run games such as League and Counter Strike, but lately am lucking to be pushing 40.

I've also noticed when starting up these games, the screen will be black for a while (a lot longer than it would be in the past), and when the game finally comes up, it will lag and play an audio loop for a couple seconds whenever I click on anything. It then takes a while to load when I finally find a match.

What I've tried:

• 
  ■ Uninstalling Nvidia drivers (using DDU) and reinstalling them
  ■ Reverting back to an older driver
  ■ Changing power settings
  ■ Swapping out GPUs
  ■ Doing a fresh install of Windows 7
  ■ Upgrading to Windows 10
  ■ Reevaluating my life
  ■ Monitoring temps.
  ■ Monitoring clockspeed
  ■ Resetting CMOS

What did seem to work, though, is when I did a fresh install of Windows 7, I got CS:GO to run at 180-200+ FPS once I downloaded all of my drivers. It THEN reverted back to its 40 FPS when I installed the "Important Windows Updates."

I'm kinda lost and would love some help. There are a lot of good games releasing soon and I want to be able to play them at a glorious 60 frames-per-second.

Thank you for your time,

-Flying Cattle

 

[Gingerbread]

This sounds like a storage issue, what is your current HDD/SSD and how old is it?

 

[Flying Cattle]

This sounds like a storage issue, what is your current HDD/SSD and how old is it?

This is my current HDD, which is about 3 years old.

 

[James Mason]

How much free space does it have? if it's getting low that could be the cause, clean it up.

And uhh, your video cable is connected to the gpu and not the motherboard right?

 

[Flying Cattle]

How much free space does it have? if it's getting low that could be the cause, clean it up.

And uhh, your video cable is connected to the gpu and not the motherboard right?

I did a fresh install of Windows, whipping my HDD in the process (I thought something on my HDD was the issue), so I have 369gb of free space left. I also just defragged it, but that didn't help.
And yeah, it's plugged into my GPU. My integrated graphics doesn't even show up in my device manager.

 

[Flying Cattle]

I just downloaded and used MSI Afterburner. It shows that my CPU usage reaches 100% in all cores. Is this a bad thing for a game like CS:GO?

EDIT: I tested it again, and it seems to very rarely spike to 100%, but usually stays around 70-80%.

 

[Flying Cattle]

I'm thinking my CPU is the issue here. After more tests, it looks like my GPU usage is quite low, where as my CPU usage is jumping around from like 50 to 80 (this was all while playing League of Legends).
Also, when I change my in-game settings, the FPS does not change at all.

EDIT: Eh, maybe it isn't. I just ran the Intel Diagnostic Tool and everything passed. I don't know if that is a for sure sign that my CPU is fine (didn't mean to rhyme; too defeated to do it on purpose)... I just don't know what else to try.

 

[gamerk316]

Overheating? Or maybe a possible PSU issue. Those are the two things that come to mind.

 

[Flying Cattle]

Overheating? Or maybe a possible PSU issue. Those are the two things that come to mind.

My temps. seem fine. My CPU stays around 35ish and my GPU will go as high as maybe 58.
Hmm, I doubt it's my PSU. I just bought it about 2 months ago, but it still very well could be. Any way to find out (without switching it out)?

EDIT: Okay, I just did a stress test with Prime95 and monitored it with HWMonitor. The max temp. was 39C and the clock speed stayed at 800MHz.

Funny thing, when I closed out of the programs, my PC seemed to freeze for about 15 or so seconds, then went black for about 2. The image came back and I was greeted with a message saying something like, "Display adapter stopped working but successfully recovered" (said Nvidia somewhere in there).