[SOLVED] New monitor: GPU usage shoots to 100%, PC freezes/ stutters A LOT. Recommended actions?

[ojasV]

After hooking up a Gigabyte M27Q at 1440p 170Hz my PC randomly freezes while on Youtube or Netflix. I forced the power management mode of my GTX 1070Ti to maximum performance from the Nvidia control panel then played Valorant at 1440p maxed out for three hours, no hiccups. After a day PC again froze with Netflix. I have once been able to get into Task Manager and the GPU performance was at 100% and RAM and CPU were really low, as they should be. This monitor is connected via Display Port and there is another 1080p 60Hz monitor connected via HDMI.

The "VGA" debug LED of my motherboard sometimes lights up on boot and system doesn't post. I clean the GPU regularly but should I replace the thermal compound and inspect or should I seek professional service? The GPU is almost 4 years old.

Rig:

MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge Wi-Fi
Ryzen 5 3600
Corsair VENGEANCE LPX SERIES 32GB (16GBX2) DDR4 3600MHZ BLACK Memory
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 PCIe NVMe
Seagate Barracuda 4TB SATA HDD
Zotac GTX 1070Ti Mini
Antec EAG Pro 650W PSU
Windows 10 Pro

 

[Krotow]

Nvidia drivers are updated?
Windows is updated?
Motherboard BIOS is updated?
If you use Chrome browser for YouTube/Netflix watching, make sure that browser is updated as well.

There indeed was problems with NVIDIA cards in multi-monitor configuration and uneven monitors where both monitors had different refresh rates. Sometimes changing desktop refresh rates to 60 Hz for both monitors helped to fix that. This seems was fixed in latest drivers. In worst case remove Nvidia drivers with DDU and Chrome browser with user profile directory under %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome completely (a thread about that here). And then reinstall them from scratch.

 

[ojasV]

Nvidia drivers are updated?
Windows is updated?
Motherboard BIOS is updated?
If you use Chrome browser for YouTube/Netflix watching, make sure that browser is updated as well.

There indeed was problems with NVIDIA cards in multi-monitor configuration and uneven monitors where both monitors had different refresh rates. Sometimes changing desktop refresh rates to 60 Hz for both monitors helped to fix that. This seems was fixed in latest drivers. In worst case remove Nvidia drivers with DDU and Chrome browser with user profile directory under %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome completely (a thread about that here). And then reinstall them from scratch.

All drivers and BIOS are updated. I did receive an Nvidia update last night but haven't been able to test it since I've been getting chkdsk errors thanks to the multiple improper shutdowns 🤦‍♂️
As soon as I'm able to resolve my SSD issues I shall test again. Will also try the clean Nvidia and Chrome install if nothing works.

 

[Krotow]

Run chkdsk C: /f on your system drive, reboot and then try driver update as mentioned above.

 

[ojasV]

Run chkdsk C: /f on your system drive, reboot and then try driver update as mentioned above.

Yeah that doesn't work as windows tries to check the boot drive on startup but never actually starts the checkup process. fsutil says the drive is dirty though. So far I've only been able to check the C drive by booting via a USB stick, and going into the command prompt via the "Repair Windows" option. CHKDSK ran and gave no errors but failed to log into the event log. I don't know what to make of it.

 

[Krotow]

CHKDSK /f on system drive actually happen after reboot, that is correct.

Try chkntfs /T:0. Run this from user account in Administrator group.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/chkntfs

 

[ojasV]

CHKDSK /f on system drive actually happen after reboot, that is correct.

Try chkntfs /T:0. Run this from user account in Administrator group.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/chkntfs

So this changes the countdown timer to 0 right? I don't understand why my drive is dirty even after chkdsk gave no errors.

 

[Krotow]

In your case chkdsk seems even didn't launched on system drive yet because countdown was interrupted by some other process. That is why countdown times must be deliberately set to 0.

 

[ojasV]

In your case chkdsk seems even didn't launched on system drive yet because countdown was interrupted by some other process. That is why countdown times must be deliberately set to 0.

The prompt does change from "press any key to skip" to "checking c:" but immediately after that I get the windows log in screen, no progress shown of the disk checking process.

 

[Krotow]

Weird. What happen if you run chkdsk /f from recovery console? By the way in recovery console Windows system drive is not C: but D: or something else. Try to restart into recovery mode, open console and run

chkdsk d: /f

This should do the trick.

 

[ojasV]

Weird. What happen if you run chkdsk /f from recovery console? By the way in recovery console Windows system drive is not C: but D: or something else. Try to restart into recovery mode, open console and run

chkdsk d: /f

This should do the trick.

It did! Thanks man! I'm a little puzzled as to why this worked and booting from a thumb drive didn't. Also when I booted form the thumb drive CHKDSK took wayyyy too long to finish.
Anyway I ran CHKDSK for both C: and D: just to be sure and while it gave no issues, Windows now doesn't see my drive as dirty.

https://imgur.com/b2Zn48D

https://imgur.com/a/JC7UiId

 

[ojasV]

Yeah that doesn't work as windows tries to check the boot drive on startup but never actually starts the checkup process. fsutil says the drive is dirty though. So far I've only been able to check the C drive by booting via a USB stick, and going into the command prompt via the "Repair Windows" option. CHKDSK ran and gave no errors but failed to log into the event log. I don't know what to make of it.

Back to this. I haven't run into any freezes for a day. But I think I'm gonna do a clean install of Nvidia drivers and Chrome anyway.

 

[Krotow]

Yes, now finish all pending updates now (Windows, Nvidia, Chrome etc.).

Windows and driver updates usually make system configuration integrity query before proceeding. This query fail if file system have registered unfinished write operations or other file system discrepancies. chkdsk run on drive sort them out.