[SOLVED] PC suddenly unbearably slow. please help!

[prismagon69]

Hello everyone,
I encountered a huge problem today.
I have my gaming PC since last January, and it's pretty powerful, so I am sure the problem isn't in the specs. I've had problems like it not booting after some time, and telling me to insert a proper boot device. However, it booted after a couple tries, and I figured that if I had it in sleep mode it would work perfectly. So I have it normally for weeks in sleep mode. I've tried reinstalling Windows and it worked for a couple of months, but then it happened again. This still didn't have any impact on the performance. The PC, however, was sometimes unstable, even freezing on me for minutes. I started having problems with loading stuff. For an example, when I'm playing Fortnite or any other game it just takes ages to load the map properly, even though I have an SSD. The reason I am writing to this forum is the problem that happened today. I was playing games for like 3 hours, everything was running smoothly, Fortnite on medium was averaging at 150 Fps. I went to have lunch so I put my PC in sleep. When I turned it on I got about 30-70 Fps in Fortnite on low settings. I know that using Fortnite As an example is bad, but I didn't play anything else worthy of mentioning today. So the PC is unbearably slow in games, and the system itself is pretty unstable. Even task manager is lagging a lot.
Is there anything that could cause this? Thanks in advance.
My specs:
i5 7400
GTX 1050 ti
8GB DDR4 RAM
Kingston SSD 120 GB
1 TB HDD WD BLUE

 

[Obakasama]

Holding out until someone who knows their stuff pops along...

It sounds like you've got several problems going on.

1. Boot device.
2. Framerate issues in-game.
3. Stability of some description.

With the boot device aspect I would check your connections. Try another port for the device if necessary and see whether the problem reoccurs later. It doesn't sound like a persistent problem from your description, so may require long term awareness.

For gaming performance I would suggest using MSI Afterburner to monitor CPU, GPU and RAM usage and frequencies; CPU and GPU temperatures; fps and frame times; and page file. See whether there are any particular spikes when the fps drops; it may help to eliminate possible causes.

Describe the system instability you mention. What are the symptoms there?

Is that one stick of 8GB RAM or two sticks of 4GB RAM? More often than not, two sticks in the dual channel slots provide an advantage for games.

 

[prismagon69]

@Obakasama
So I tried reconnecting the connectors, and it worked but when I rebooted again to see if it isn't just a coincidence, the problem returned. In terms of instability, I meant that games freeze alot, most of the programs aren't responding often. When I'm playing something it freezes for a long time.
I forgot to mention that my main drive (SSD) is 96% full, does that have to do something with the other problems? And my ram is unfortunately single channel. Was looking for an upgrade to dual channel but this stopped me. Also I am using this forum for the first time, so I am sorry for any potential bs I am doing. I am going to install Afterburner to maybe find it out.
Thanks for your help.

 

[Obakasama]

I've seen mention that when an SSD gets fuller it can slow down, so for some performance issues it could be a factor. This was definitely true of old mechanical HDDs due to moving parts. With your SSD being 96% full I wouldn't rule out the possibility it is causing some performance issues. If you can move some of the data off it (onto a secondary drive), then give that a try.

The other thing is what is the PSU model? Your specs don't suggest it's particularly power hungry, but something to rule out if running out of probable causes.