PC Freezes For A Few Seconds When Gaming Under Load

[DBDavid58]

When gaming under load - whether it be an uncapped framerate or a more modern resource heavy game about every 5 minutes the image on screen will freeze for a few seconds. The audio will loop in the background. After that the game will continue on. It happens with games both on my SSD and HDD.

I've uninstalled and updated the Nvidia GPU driver.
I've ran a diagnoses on both the SSD and HDD.
I've cleaned the cache.
I've diagnosed the RAM.
The event viewer doesn't register it either
The temps are good.
Not overclocking.
When I monitor the task manager and hw monitor I see that when the freeze occurs the power and usage of the GPU will drop to 0% for a second then jump back up.

CPU: i7-4790K 4.0GHz
CPU Cooler: CM 212 EVO
Motherboard: Gigabyte z97x - Gaming GT
OS: Windows 10 Home 64 (Anniversary)
Mem: Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600 2x8GB (16GB)
GPU: EVGA GTX 1080 FTW
Monitor: Asus VG248 (144hz)
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 250GB
HDD Seagate 2TB 7200RPM
PSU: EVGA Supernova 1000w G2 Gold
Network card: Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet

I've done everything I can think of.
Thanks for your time

 

[Frag Maniac]

Could be you need to try a different driver. I've seen cases where rolling back solved this kind of thing.

http://forums.evga.com/gpu-usage-drops-to-0-for-a-split-second-in-games-solved-m2264706.aspx

Always check EVGA forums when asking about EVGA GPUs.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there DBDavid58,

You've done some extensive troubleshooting.

As this happens when the system is under load, it could be PSU related. Unfortunately, the easiest way to troubleshoot you PSU is to borrow one from somebody, install it in your system and see if the issue persists.

Have you performed some stress testing?

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[DBDavid58]

Hi there DBDavid58,

You've done some extensive troubleshooting.

As this happens when the system is under load, it could be PSU related. Unfortunately, the easiest way to troubleshoot you PSU is to borrow one from somebody, install it in your system and see if the issue persists.

Have you performed some stress testing?

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

So far stress testing hasn't produced any results. It only happens in games.
Borrowing a PSU isn't possible at the moment. Replacing the PSU would be a last resort.

 

[DBDavid58]

Could be you need to try a different driver. I've seen cases where rolling back solved this kind of thing.

http://forums.evga.com/gpu-usage-drops-to-0-for-a-split-second-in-games-solved-m2264706.aspx

Always check EVGA forums when asking about EVGA GPUs.

Thanks for the suggestion. Looks like rolling back the nvidia drivers to 372.70 has improved things. I will continue testing.
The only drawback is that Forza Horizon 3 is unstable without the 372.90 driver. Oh well.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Looks like rolling back the nvidia drivers to 372.70 has improved things. I will continue testing.The only drawback is that Forza Horizon 3 is unstable without the 372.90 driver. Oh well.

Yeah that's my only reservation about Nvidia drivers. They have you searching forward and backward for the ones that work best, then when you finally find one that works, other games can be compromised in the process.

With AMD, generally you can use the latest ones, and not have such problems.

 

[DBDavid58]

In the end I did a system reset in windows 10 by going to "Reset this PC" under the Recovery settings. Doing this to reinstall windows completely resolved all problems. Whatever the issue was it was the windows OS, not the PSU hardware, fortunately. Thanks all for your help everyone.

 

[Frag Maniac]

In the end I did a system reset in windows 10 by going to "Reset this PC" under the Recovery settings. Doing this to reinstall windows completely resolved all problems. Whatever the issue was it was the windows OS, not the PSU hardware, fortunately. Thanks all for your help everyone.

Did you install W10 the first time via upgrade vs clean install? Anyways, glad you got it sorted out.

 

[DBDavid58]

In the end I did a system reset in windows 10 by going to "Reset this PC" under the Recovery settings. Doing this to reinstall windows completely resolved all problems. Whatever the issue was it was the windows OS, not the PSU hardware, fortunately. Thanks all for your help everyone.

Did you install W10 the first time via upgrade vs clean install? Anyways, glad you got it sorted out.

It was an upgrade. That may have been it.