[SOLVED] Random major usage drops, application proceeds to freeze for 5 seconds minimum

[uhGhosts]

Hey!

Since 3 to 4 weeks i am experiencing extreme freezes in some games (not all for some reason) , to where my game freezes for a minimum of 5 seconds, and i mean a complete full freeze of the application, all other applications still work, such as discord. These freezes are completely random, sometimes they happen more than 10 times a game.
What i so far have noticed is pretty concerning: My GPU Usage, CPU Usage, Power %, Power W all dips down to a very low count on MSI Afterburner. I am honestly clueless of what to do here.


I have tried a lot to fix this issue:

• Update BIOS
• Update all drivers
• DDU all drivers
• Reinstall Windows
• Switch GPU's
• The standard ethernet solving procedures.

Nothing seems to work and this is really frustrating to deal with.

My PC Specs are:
MSI MPG Z390 GAMING PRO CARBON Motherboard
Intel Core i7 9700K
DDR4 2x8GB RAM
Dark Power Pro 11 850W PSU
RTX 2080 TI

If somebody would have an answer or solution to this, i would be so grateful.

Thank you,
uhGhosts

 

[Ralston18]

How how is that Dark Power PSU? History of heavy gaming use?

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for error codes, warnings, or even informational events that occur just before or at the time of the freezes.

Start with Reliability History. Much more user friendly and presents a time line format that can prove very helpful.

Go back through the timeline to 3 -4 weeks ago. You may be able to find when and what changed when the freezes began.

Or something else changed and began occurring more frequently. Look for any patterns.

Also manually install drivers. No third party apps, tools or utilities. You have little or no control over what those 3rd party tools are actually doing.

They could be installing older driver versions and/or who knows what all else on the side....

 

[uhGhosts]

How how is that Dark Power PSU? History of heavy gaming use?

Look in Reliability History and Event Viewer for error codes, warnings, or even informational events that occur just before or at the time of the freezes.

Start with Reliability History. Much more user friendly and presents a time line format that can prove very helpful.

Go back through the timeline to 3 -4 weeks ago. You may be able to find when and what changed when the freezes began.

Or something else changed and began occurring more frequently. Look for any patterns.

Also manually install drivers. No third party apps, tools or utilities. You have little or no control over what those 3rd party tools are actually doing.

They could be installing older driver versions and/or who knows what all else on the side....

I have had the Dark power PSU since 2019 and have had no problems at all with it, it has been in my since the pc build then.

In the reliability center, there is no tied errors to the freezes. In the Event Viewer there is also nothing on the exact time the freeze takes place closest thing is 4 minutes off, and that is the Kernel-EventTracing; Event ID 2.
What is also see is a warning on Disk 2 that accurs, 'Disk 2 has been surprise removed' but that is not close to any of the freezes, i do not know if that has anything to do with it, i guess not.

I have done a manual install of the drivers aswell, doesn't seem to work.

 

[Ralston18]

A three year old PSU is a likely suspect. Especially if the PSU has a history of heavy use for gaming, video editing, and mining.

The "surprise removal" of Disk 2 could be a loose connection, a pending drive failure, or perhaps some momentary inability of the PSU to provide power to the disk drive and/or other components as well.

Disk drive(s): Make, model, capacity, how full?

PSU's have a designed in EOL (End of Life) and not having prior problems is not any assurance that the PSU remains healthy. It could be starting to falter and fail.

First thing to do is to ensure that all important data is backed up at least 2 x to locations off of the current host computer. Verify that the backups are both recoverable and readable.

Second thing to do is to power down, unplug, open the case.

Clean out dust and debris.

Verify by sight and feel that all connectors, cards, RAM, and jumpers are fully and firmly in place.

Use a bright flashlight and a magnifying glass to inspect everywhere for signs of damage. Bare conductor showing, melted insulation, cracks any where, pinched or kinked wires, browned or blackened areas, swollen components, loose screws.

If all appears well then try again but keep an eye on the errors.

Third, if the errors continue, then manually download the drivers via the applicable manufacturer's websites. Reinstall and reconfigure as appropriate.

No third party tools or installers.

Objective being to eliminate other possible causes for the freezes by narrowing down the suspects.

 

[uhGhosts]

A three year old PSU is a likely suspect. Especially if the PSU has a history of heavy use for gaming, video editing, and mining.

The "surprise removal" of Disk 2 could be a loose connection, a pending drive failure, or perhaps some momentary inability of the PSU to provide power to the disk drive and/or other components as well.

Disk drive(s): Make, model, capacity, how full?

PSU's have a designed in EOL (End of Life) and not having prior problems is not any assurance that the PSU remains healthy. It could be starting to falter and fail.

First thing to do is to ensure that all important data is backed up at least 2 x to locations off of the current host computer. Verify that the backups are both recoverable and readable.

Second thing to do is to power down, unplug, open the case.

Clean out dust and debris.

Verify by sight and feel that all connectors, cards, RAM, and jumpers are fully and firmly in place.

Use a bright flashlight and a magnifying glass to inspect everywhere for signs of damage. Bare conductor showing, melted insulation, cracks any where, pinched or kinked wires, browned or blackened areas, swollen components, loose screws.

If all appears well then try again but keep an eye on the errors.

Third, if the errors continue, then manually download the drivers via the applicable manufacturer's websites. Reinstall and reconfigure as appropriate.

No third party tools or installers.

Objective being to eliminate other possible causes for the freezes by narrowing down the suspects.

The disks aren't really disks, they are 2 Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 SSD NVME's

All cables and components have been checked and are firmly connected, and there is no sign of any damage.

The latest drivers have been installed via the manufacturers website.

But the freezes still persist.

 

[Ralston18]

NVME's noted. Being 1 TB each I would hope that neither are anywhere nearing being full. However, if partitioned etc.. then the problem could be within a given partition.

Seems to be narrowing to the PSU.

Wondering about MSI afterburner because it seems to be impacted for what ever reasons. Hopefully TBD....

Try some testing without Afterburner. Make notes. Manually reinstall and watch to determine if anything changes.

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance. Use both tools but only one at a time.

The objective being able to determine what is (or is not) using system resources, to what extent (%).

Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) may prove helpful as well.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Watch, for example, for some other process to start running when the freezes occur. Or perhaps the opposite some process that stops....

Especially anything that you do not recognize or otherwise expect to see running.

 

[geofelt]

What might have changed since 3/4 weeks ago when all was well?
Perhaps some bad update?

Could you have contracted malware or a virus?

I see may posts regarding freezes and discord.
As a stab in the dark, try running without discord.

 

[uhGhosts]

NVME's noted. Being 1 TB each I would hope that neither are anywhere nearing being full. However, if partitioned etc.. then the problem could be within a given partition.

Seems to be narrowing to the PSU.

Wondering about MSI afterburner because it seems to be impacted for what ever reasons. Hopefully TBD....

Try some testing without Afterburner. Make notes. Manually reinstall and watch to determine if anything changes.

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance. Use both tools but only one at a time.

The objective being able to determine what is (or is not) using system resources, to what extent (%).

Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) may prove helpful as well.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Watch, for example, for some other process to start running when the freezes occur. Or perhaps the opposite some process that stops....

Especially anything that you do not recognize or otherwise expect to see running.

MSI Afterburner should not be the issue since i forgot to install it after the windows reinstall, and the hard freezes were still there.

I have been testing with taskmanager open now aswell, no application moves up in usage, just the application that freezes goes down drastically in usage. < In this case Apex Legends.
I am going to do further research with the resource monitor, after doing so i will be posting the CPU usage percentages.

I will also be testing without discord, and a full virus scan using bitdefender.

 

[uhGhosts]

NVME's noted. Being 1 TB each I would hope that neither are anywhere nearing being full. However, if partitioned etc.. then the problem could be within a given partition.

Seems to be narrowing to the PSU.

Wondering about MSI afterburner because it seems to be impacted for what ever reasons. Hopefully TBD....

Try some testing without Afterburner. Make notes. Manually reinstall and watch to determine if anything changes.

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe system performance. Use both tools but only one at a time.

The objective being able to determine what is (or is not) using system resources, to what extent (%).

Process Explorer (Microsoft, free) may prove helpful as well.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Watch, for example, for some other process to start running when the freezes occur. Or perhaps the opposite some process that stops....

Especially anything that you do not recognize or otherwise expect to see running.

Okay so after some digging and testing whilst playing SpeedRunners, a not demanding game in the slightest my CPU1 is running on a 100% usage. All CPU 2 to 8 are running normally.
When the spike occurs the usage will go from a 100% to a 6%.

Also, i have never overclocked my CPU, because i want to get the most out of my components in terms of them working properly.
But what i have noticed is that in taskmanager it says that this CPU is capable of running at a 3.60GHz, but the current speed on SpeedRunners is 4.6GHz.


This looks very odd to me, do you guys have any knowledge or solution to this?
Thanks for all the help so far.

 

[Ralston18]

This game?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/207140/SpeedRunners/

 

[uhGhosts]

This game?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/207140/SpeedRunners/

Yes, but it also happens on Apex Legends, also apparently an CPU intensive game.

 

[uhGhosts]

Yes, but it also happens on Apex Legends, also apparently an CPU intensive game.

But i am still 100% convinced it should not and never max out on this spec. My friend who has a similar cpu, but lower specs, but is running this game at 40% usage.

 

[Ralston18]

Going back a bit....

What tool or how are you obtaining the individual CPU core %'s?

What does your system tell you about the CPU?

https://www.pcworld.com/article/395047/how-many-cpu-cores-do-you-have.html

According to the specs your CPU has 8 cores:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...-12m-cache-up-to-4-90-ghz/specifications.html

What I am not sure about is what performance behavior should be expected from the CPU. Certainly the freezes are not acceptable. Yet comparisons to other systems and similar CPU's may or may not be truly helpful. Too many variables.

= = = =

I am wondering about "But what i have noticed is that in task manager it says that this CPU is capable of running at a 3.60GHz, but the current speed on SpeedRunners is 4.6GHz. "

What is causing that speed change? You are not overclocking so what is either changing the speed (if being changed) or otherwise causing that "speed" to be reported.

Some background information:

https://www.lifewire.com/multiple-core-processors-832453


In Task Manager, look in the Processes tab and the CPU column. Click the CPU column header to sort the processes by clicking the column header.

When the freezes occur and/or the CPU % drops - are you able to note any changes in either the processes themselves or the CPU % used by any given process?

If nothing noted then start observing the other columns.

As you noted: " I have been testing with taskmanager open now aswell, no application moves up in usage, just the application that freezes goes down drastically in usage".

Key is to find some pattern taking place with respect to resources being used.

Also: are you familiar with Process Explorer (Microsoft, free)? I do not want to introduce another variable; however, Process Explorer may prove helpful as another way to delve into what is going on.

FYI:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Keep it in mind.....

 

[geofelt]

Let me ask again... What might have changed since all was well??

 

[uhGhosts]

Going back a bit....

What tool or how are you obtaining the individual CPU core %'s?

What does your system tell you about the CPU?

https://www.pcworld.com/article/395047/how-many-cpu-cores-do-you-have.html

According to the specs your CPU has 8 cores:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...-12m-cache-up-to-4-90-ghz/specifications.html

What I am not sure about is what performance behavior should be expected from the CPU. Certainly the freezes are not acceptable. Yet comparisons to other systems and similar CPU's may or may not be truly helpful. Too many variables.

= = = =

I am wondering about "But what i have noticed is that in task manager it says that this CPU is capable of running at a 3.60GHz, but the current speed on SpeedRunners is 4.6GHz. "

What is causing that speed change? You are not overclocking so what is either changing the speed (if being changed) or otherwise causing that "speed" to be reported.

Some background information:

https://www.lifewire.com/multiple-core-processors-832453


In Task Manager, look in the Processes tab and the CPU column. Click the CPU column header to sort the processes by clicking the column header.

When the freezes occur and/or the CPU % drops - are you able to note any changes in either the processes themselves or the CPU % used by any given process?

If nothing noted then start observing the other columns.

As you noted: " I have been testing with taskmanager open now aswell, no application moves up in usage, just the application that freezes goes down drastically in usage".

Key is to find some pattern taking place with respect to resources being used.

Also: are you familiar with Process Explorer (Microsoft, free)? I do not want to introduce another variable; however, Process Explorer may prove helpful as another way to delve into what is going on.

FYI:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/process-explorer

Keep it in mind.....

Hey,

So i have done some researching now, and in terms of new processes that start when the crash happens, i found nothing. It all seems like normal running processes, and no other application spikes in usage when the other drops in it. I used ProcessExplorer to test this.
Also, apparently there is a technology intel uses where my clock speed is allowed to go up to 4.9GHz, and my base clock speed is 3.6GHz. So i would consider this all well to be honest.

I have done a few benchmarks in 3DMARK, stresstest and CPU benchmarks. My score comes out great with a consistency of 97.9% FPS wise.

So i'm kinda clueless at this point.

 

[uhGhosts]

Let me ask again... What might have changed since all was well??

The problem started at a random given time.
I do have to say that 2 weeks before i used another GPU, a RTX 2080 TI that would completely crash and failure on me. My pc froze completely with small white blocks on my screen.
I solved this issue with NVIDIA and got a new RTX 2080 TI. In the time that i did not have a GPU i used a 1080, and the problems started 7 to 10 days AFTER i put in the replacement GPU for the time being.

So there were no direct changes when the gpu's were switched, it happened randomly.

 

[Ralston18]

The GPUs being switched is a change.

That makes me think that perhaps the crashing and freezing brought about by that second GPU may have corrupted some files.

Some initial issue and then a subsequent change (perhaps some update if no new apps or tools were installed) caused the drops to begin.

Try running "sfc /scannow" and "dism".

References:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-sfc-scannow-to-repair-windows-system-files-2626161

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

You may be getting close to the need to do clean windows install.....

Just keep that in mind.

 

[uhGhosts]

The GPUs being switched is a change.

That makes me think that perhaps the crashing and freezing brought about by that second GPU may have corrupted some files.

Some initial issue and then a subsequent change (perhaps some update if no new apps or tools were installed) caused the drops to begin.

Try running "sfc /scannow" and "dism".

References:

https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-use-sfc-scannow-to-repair-windows-system-files-2626161

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-dism-command-line-utility-repair-windows-10-image

You may be getting close to the need to do clean windows install.....

Just keep that in mind.

As soon as i had my new RTX 2080 TI in, I have done a clean windows install, and I already have done the sfc /scannow and dism commands. No corrupted files were detected then.
I was suspecting this was the issue aswell, but to my surprise it wasn't...

 

[Ralston18]

I am running out of ideas.

Reading back:

Per @geofelt 's suggestion in Post #7 have you tried with and without Discord?

 

[uhGhosts]

Yes i have ran it without discord. Out of total despair i have role-backed my internet drivers to a driver from 2018; the previous driver. I'm shooting in the dark now because they are both online games.
Because i am too, running out of ideas... so far in a session of 3 hours, no lag, but it has happened before that it just doesn't happen for a few hours.

 

[uhGhosts]

So i have tried this, it somehow worked for a day, a full day. And the next day, that is today, the freezes began to happen a lot again. I don't know if it has anything to do with dumb luck or that it is actually a factor in the issue; I tried doing the same, role-backing the driver but without success now.
I'm actually going kinda crazy to how mysterious this problem is. I'm willing to replace any part hardware wise, but i just don't know because it can't be narrowed down.

Does somebody please have any idea?

 

[geofelt]

If you worked for a while, I would conclude that your hardware is sound.
Hardware will not deteriorate.
A failing AIO cooler might be an exception.

Your problem comes from software or some other source.

 

[uhGhosts]

I managed to narrow it down to pretty much only online games, I tried the same game offline (SpeedRunners; a not demanding game at all) and there were not freezes at all . Software wise i've tried a lot to try and troubleshoot the problem, but without any result.

• There is no sudden changes in DNS or IP
• Ethernet cable works perfectly
• I completely reset the drivers (again)

And its not internet provider issue, since its only my device that is having issues on the network.
Does somebody have any suggestions on this matter?
I am really grateful for any ideas or possible solutions.