[SOLVED] Why does my computer have fps drops and input lag after being on for a few hours?

[Kafooie]

After running for less than 3 hours, I will start experiencing fps drops and input delay. This occurs outside games. It only occurs about once every few minutes, but it is for a few seconds each time. This can be very frustrating in games. I have tried monitoring with AMD's radeon overlay. My GPU temp is around 77C. I have also used Core temp 1.15.1 and my CPU usually stays around 35-40C and 70-75C during intense games. I do not see anything unusual while monitoring the resource monitor/task manager. Please let me know if you have any ideas. Any help is much appreciated. I am not super familiar with computers but I did build this myself and have been updating it over the years.

A complete restart fixes everything for 2ish hours and then it starts up again.

PC Specs:
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming7
PSU: Corsair RM750X
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4.20GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
RAM: GSkill Ripjaw 16gb x2
SSD: Samsung 250GB
Keyboard: Corsair RGB Rapidfire
OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit

I have:
-Reinstalled graphics drivers
-scanned for viruses and malware.
-Monitored with core temp and resource monitor and GPU monitor
-Lowered graphics (has happened multiple times while typing all of this out)
-High performance is selected in power settings.
-Cleaned from dust regularly
-I have NOT reinstalled windows and would like to hold off on this as long as possible.

 

[dorsai]

When it happens open Task Manager and look at your memory use...especially the "paged pool".

I'm going to bet you're suffering from Windows 10 poor memory management...it has a bad habit of not releasing memory.

I run into this all the time and end up having to reboot to release the memory...and even then sometimes it won't release which is ridiculous.

 

[Kafooie]

When it happens open Task Manager and look at your memory use...especially the "paged pool".

I'm going to bet you're suffering from Windows 10 poor memory management...it has a bad habit of not releasing memory.

I run into this all the time and end up having to reboot to release the memory...and even then sometimes it won't release which is ridiculous.

Thank you so much for your reply!

I do not know what the paged pool is and will look into now since it was at 580 MB before my restart and is now at 266 MB.

Before I research further, have you found a way to reduce Windows 10 RAM usage or a workaround?

 

[dorsai]

If memory use was down to 580mb after gaming then Win10 not releasing memory was not your issue...mine will have 16-24 gig stuck in paged memory at times.

Try moving any USB devices to different ports...sometimes there's a conflict in the USB driver that can cause input lag.

 

[Kafooie]

If memory use was down to 580mb after gaming then Win10 not releasing memory was not your issue...mine will have 16-24 gig stuck in paged memory at times.

Try moving any USB devices to different ports...sometimes there's a conflict in the USB driver that can cause input lag.

After experimenting for a week with usb ports, it turns out it was my external HDD. Thanks again for your responses!