Question PC Slows Down And Speeds Back Up - CPU usage drops in Task Manager

LuciaRomano

Commendable
Jul 16, 2019
7
1
1,515
Alright so I've seen many threads about this, yet not were able to solve my problem so I thought it best to post a question myself rather than trying to solve my problem through someone else's solution to another's problem.

Anyways, my problem is as stated above. Quite frequently, my PC would run smoothly, then randomly slow down. My frames will drop down to like 5-12 fps, audio begins to crackle and slow down; basically my PC just seems to drag its feet for a couple seconds then BAM it's back to normal.

The frequency of it is quite annoying, and I've tried stopping all other programs and just running the game + discord, but it still does it. I've tried restarting the PC, I've tried running anti-virus software, nothing.

That was until I decided to put Task Manager up on my second screen while I play & had the performance tab open. And when the slow down happened, my CPU usage dropped to about half it was while it was running normal, then after a few seconds it jumped back up to normal and everything resumed.

This was a problem I had in the past, but haven't really had in a long time but has just resurfaced. I think, it's my HDD. I recently plugged back in my old HDD to get some files off of it, and I've begun experiencing this problem. Just to be sure, does anyone know of a way to test/find out if the problem is my HDD and not something else? I'd really like to find out, thank you for the trouble!
 
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Alright so I've seen many threads about this, yet not were able to solve my problem so I thought it best to post a question myself rather than trying to solve my problem through someone else's solution to another's problem.

Anyways, my problem is as stated above. Quite frequently, my PC would run smoothly, then randomly slow down. My frames will drop down to like 5-12 fps, audio begins to crackle and slow down; basically my PC just seems to drag its feet for a couple seconds then BAM it's back to normal.

The frequency of it is quite annoying, and I've tried stopping all other programs and just running the game + discord, but it still does it. I've tried restarting the PC, I've tried running anti-virus software, nothing.

That was until I decided to put Task Manager up on my second screen while I play & had the performance tab open. And when the slow down happened, my CPU usage dropped to about half it was while it was running normal, then after a few seconds it jumped back up to normal and everything resumed.

This was a problem I had in the past, but haven't really had in a long time but has just resurfaced. I think, it's my HDD. I recently plugged back in my old HDD to get some files off of it, and I've begun experiencing this problem. Just to be sure, does anyone know of a way to test/find out if the problem is my HDD and not something else? I'd really like to find out, thank you for the trouble!

HDD makers usually have free utilities you can download to test drives...look for the SMART test in the utility and run it...it's usually a good place to see drive health.
 
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