PC had a stroke!?

[fishcrab]

Is my hdd or ram dying or this is a software issue?

I was doing some uni work on after effects cc 2015 when i realised it was somehow using over 90% of my 16gb of ram. freezing my pc forcing me to cut the power manually. After turning it back on the pc it acts like its on the verge of dying; everything takes 10-20 times longer than usual and have mini freezes opening folders and just about everything. I can run after effects but the mouse and click response time is very laggy same with everything else.

Running windows memory diagnostics just gives me errors saying it can't restart and scanning my hdd it just takes forever and eventually aborting the entire process. Is this a common issue or am looking at expensive hardware replacements?

specs:

I7 4790 k
16gb corsair vengeance pro ddr3 ram
windforce r9 290
gigabyte z97 ud3h bk
seagate barracuda 1tb hdd
corsair cs850m psu

 

[Colif]

Download this and test hdd: http://www.seagate.com/au/en/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/

if its just hdd, its not expensive at all. You should have an SSD in that and get no slow downs,

 

[Faux_Grey]

It's a rare problem (but one that can happen) with the RAM. When you shut down the PC power doesn't get cut properly and the RAM cells stay full, so even if it says 10% RAM usage or whatever it's actually maxed out. What you need to do is disconnect the RAM while it's on to properly flush it and then plug it back in (since you have modern parts you CAN do this, a few years ago it was a pain because you couldn't hot-swap RAM).

Don't listen to this.
You'll end up damaging something.
RAM cannot be removed while the PC is running.

Colif is on the ball, most likely a hard drive issue or a RAM issue.
I'd suggest to run a test like Memtest86, check RAM for errors..

As well as the hard drive test, that's most likely the cause.