Question PC Suddenly running much slower

[Daveyys11]

Hi all, I’m writing in hope that someone could help me with a diagnosis. My PC randomly started boot looping a couple days ago every time I got to my desktop. Today it would not let me in at all so I ended up doing “Reset This PC” from the Troubleshoot options after the PC was unable to turn on and I chose to Keep my files. After reinstalling all of my apps, my games and logging into my accounts, I noticed that everything felt very laggy. When I moved icons on my desktop, they were slow to respond. I was running at 100% cpu usage and between 60 and 65 degrees Celsius while only having one game open with discord/chrome running in background without hardware acceleration. My PC was very choppy, I could see An immediate difference. I ran Virus scans, used sfc /scannow and DISM in command prompt but still nothing. I built the PC myself around a month ago and haven’t had any problems until now. I’m considering bringing the PC in to Micro Center if nothing gets better.

specs:

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE
CPU: Intel i7-11700k
MOBO: ASUS ROG STRIX Z590-E
RAM: Team Vulcan T-Series 16GB
PSU: CORSAIR 750W

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

there's nothing MicroCenter can do that you can't at home.

many times the Reset & Factory Restore options do not work correctly with Windows 10.
some data, some directories, and some registry entries seem to end up corrupted.

make a permanent backup location for your user files on a separate disk.
then create an up-to-date USB using the Media Creation Tool and do a total disk wipe and fresh install by these instructions:

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Daveyys11]

there's nothing MicroCenter can do that you can't at home.

many times the Reset & Factory Restore options do not work correctly with Windows 10.
some data, some directories, and some registry entries seem to end up corrupted.

make a permanent backup location for your user files on a separate disk.
then create an up-to-date USB using the Media Creation Tool and do a total disk wipe and fresh install by these instructions:

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

hi, I really appreciate the reply. I followed that guide, wiped the drive and did a clean install of windows. The computer ran much better but after only 5 minutes of it being on and in Windows, the PC just shut off and rebooted itself. It did this 2 more times until it booted me into the Troubleshoot options again. I even tried installing Windows on my other SSD, but had the same problem. Could this be a problem with my CPU? Maybe my RAM? I don’t have any extra RAM or a CPU on hand to test those. I’m very confused about what it could be and have now been dealing with this problem for at least 2 days now

 

[Mr.Spock]

first reseat your RAM and any cards, could also be PSU but start with the RAM.
If your system is unstable you'll keep corrupting the FS so run a RAM check once you get back on

 

[aldan]

need to know your pc specs.also have you taken a reading of you pc temperatures.if this just started to happen,have you made any program or hardware changes recently? more questions than answers for now im afraid.

 

[Daveyys11]

need to know your pc specs.also have you taken a reading of you pc temperatures.if this just started to happen,have you made any program or hardware changes recently? more questions than answers for now im afraid.

Hi Aldan, my specs are below

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 FE
CPU: Intel i7-11700k
MOBO: ASUS ROG STRIX Z590-E
RAM: Team Vulcan T-Series 16GB
PSU: CORSAIR 650 W PSU

Just today I did a completely clean install of windows and tried it on 2 separate drives. I use an AIO as my cooler and my CPU typically ran around 40 celsius idle and mid 50s under load. I am unsure of any other temps as the CPU is the only one I really looked at. When my CPU was under 100% Usage after this problem started, the temperatures did start to go above 60 celsius and even touched 65 celsius

 

[TommyTwoTone66]

Seems like possibly the pump in your AIO CPU cooler has failed and this is boot-looping the machine as it heats up the water next to the CPU during boot and shuts down before it gets anywhere.

How old is the CPU cooler? What make? Any rattling or ticking sounds coming from the pump / CPU block?

One thing they can easily do at MicroCenter is swap out parts one by one for known working parts and isolate the issue.

 

[Daveyys11]

Seems like possibly the pump in your AIO CPU cooler has failed and this is boot-looping the machine as it heats up the water next to the CPU during boot and shuts down before it gets anywhere.

How old is the CPU cooler? What make? Any rattling or ticking sounds coming from the pump / CPU block?

The AIO is the Lian Li Galahad AIO 240. The cooler is just about brand new, I got it the day before I built the PC less than a month ago. I have not heard any rattling or ticking sounds, The PC is as quiet as when I first built it. Another member suggested I reseat the RAM and any cards which I will be doing in a few minutes. I can say that the process of applying the AIO backplate to the motherboard was tedious and felt like I was doing it wrong when I first built the PC, but I haven’t had any problems until now

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

The AIO is the Lian Li Galahad AIO 240.

if you've been keeping track of temperatures and highest you've seen was ~65°C even while gaming your cooler is acting fine and extra-high CPU temps are not the issue.
though idling ~40° is a bit high. some fan curve adjustments and maybe improving case airflow could help this.

have you altered the BIOS any?
go ahead and reset to optimized defaults and just load your XMP profile.

also, be sure to have the latest system drivers installed from the ASUS product support page
and update to any new BIOS.

 

[Daveyys11]

if you've been keeping track of temperatures and highest you've seen was ~65°C even while gaming your cooler is acting fine and extra-high CPU temps are not the issue.
though idling ~40° is a bit high. some fan curve adjustments and maybe improving case airflow could help this.

have you altered the BIOS any?
go ahead and reset to optimized defaults and just load your XMP profile.

also, be sure to have the latest system drivers installed from the ASUS product support page
and update to any new BIOS.

I have not entered the BIOS since building the PC. I’m not too familiar with BIOS settings or what an XMP profile is but i’ll do some google searches and see if I can do those things. I’ll reply again once I’ve tried those

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

link to our system drivers, BIOS, utilities, etc:
https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z590-e-gaming-wifi-model/helpdesk_download

 

[Daveyys11]

link to our system drivers, BIOS, utilities, etc:
https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z590-e-gaming-wifi-model/helpdesk_download

I just reseated the RAM and Graphics Card per another user’s suggestion and now The PC doesn’t display anything when plugged into the monitor. Should I reseat them again?

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

is the system powering up just showing no display?

the RAM should be easy to tell. you can usually feel that definite click\pop when they're seated correctly.
the GPU though can be a bit harder to tell but you should be able to see if it's flush all the way across and if the lock tab pops out. make sure it's not sagging in place or anything.

i would try the GPU first.

 

[Daveyys11]

is the system powering up just showing no display?

the RAM should be easy to tell. you can usually feel that definite click\pop when they're seated correctly.
the GPU though can be a bit harder to tell but you should be able to see if it's flush all the way across and if the lock tab pops out. make sure it's not sagging in place or anything.

i would try the GPU first.

Ok solved that one. Reseated RAM and was good to go. Now I downloaded BIOS update and Lan, bluetooth and chipset drivers. Going to apply the BIOS update in just a moment and see how things go

 

[Daveyys11]

is the system powering up just showing no display?

the RAM should be easy to tell. you can usually feel that definite click\pop when they're seated correctly.
the GPU though can be a bit harder to tell but you should be able to see if it's flush all the way across and if the lock tab pops out. make sure it's not sagging in place or anything.

i would try the GPU first.

I think it might have ACTUALLY fixed it. I can't be sure for at least another day or two since it seemed fine for a couple hours yesterday as well.. I also installed the Intel Chipset driver from the ASUS website, and ran MemTest for over an hour with no errors. But the CPU temps are all over the place after now. I reset the BIOS to optimized Defaults, went to Ai Tweaker and set to XMP 1. CPU temps are varying between 36 and 48 degrees as I'm writing this from the PC with only discord running in the background. I'm using QuickCPU to see the temps and it also shows other things like Core Parking: 100%, Frequency Scaling: 100%, Turbo Boost: 100%, and Performance: 100%. I'm running in High Performance Power Plan. As for fans, I have 3 case fans in the front of the PC and the Galahad 240 AIO mentioned earlier. Are there fan settings that I can change in the BIOS to hopefully resolve this?