Hi all,
I've been having some very frustrating system issues for the past month or so and I am pretty much out of idea regarding how to narrow it down to a cause. Any ideas would be gratefully received.
For starters specs:
Intel 2600K @ 4.2
8Gb Corsair Dominator (1866)
ASUS P8P67 Pro
Crucial M4 64Gb SSD (OS)
OCZ Vertex 3 (Games)
WD Black 2Tb (Data)
780Ti (Gigabyte GHz edition)
ASUS Xonar DX
The issue is what I can only describe as severe stuttering, which varies from freezes lasting a second or 2 repeating every 10-20 seconds, up to freezes that last for 30 seconds with the system only unfreezing for a couple of second before locking up again, so bad that even getting to the restart menu option takes several minutes. It seems to mostly present when I'm running DCS World (DX9 based flight sim) but it does not go away when exiting the game, no matter how long the system is left running (the process isn’t left running). I can also play other games and use the system for hours without issue occurring.
When it happens stutters are accompanied by an increase in CPU usage on the “system” process (up to 10-15% CPU), when the CPU usage drops to normal levels the stutter ends.
This started presenting a month or so ago and was quite sporadic, I couldn't put a finger on the possible cause. Having recently upgraded to Win 8.1 I put it down to a Win 8 issue and coped in the hope that a windows updater would solve it, obviously it didn't. I've since updated all hardware drivers to the latest available, tried alternate drivers for my sound card, and also rolled back to all applicable graphics drivers. None of these helped so suspecting a drive failure I switched out the SSDs by adding the 64Gb Crucial as the OS drive in place of the 128 Vertex and taking the previous 256Gb OCZ Agility game drive out of the equation, this had no effect.
I then did the same driver reinstalls a further time, and shortly afterwards did a reinstall of Win 8.1, again no effect on the issue.
Last night I switched back to Win 7 with a full clean install, again installing the most recent drivers available for all hardware, and this evening the problem occurred again.
So my current thinking is that is must be a hardware issue, but I just can’t figure out what. SMART checks out ok on all driver, the only issue being a dodgy temp sensor in the OCZ Vertex reporting 128C. CPU and GPU temps are all fine, MEMTEST reports no problems, and running Prime 95 for several hours goes fine.
All my Googling suggests the “system” process high CPU usage is linked to either a driver or physical hardware issue, but I am out of ideas when it comes to narrowing down to exactly what. So any ideas? Hopefully I'm just missing something "obvious" but I'm totally stumped. Help!
I've been having some very frustrating system issues for the past month or so and I am pretty much out of idea regarding how to narrow it down to a cause. Any ideas would be gratefully received.
For starters specs:
Intel 2600K @ 4.2
8Gb Corsair Dominator (1866)
ASUS P8P67 Pro
Crucial M4 64Gb SSD (OS)
OCZ Vertex 3 (Games)
WD Black 2Tb (Data)
780Ti (Gigabyte GHz edition)
ASUS Xonar DX
The issue is what I can only describe as severe stuttering, which varies from freezes lasting a second or 2 repeating every 10-20 seconds, up to freezes that last for 30 seconds with the system only unfreezing for a couple of second before locking up again, so bad that even getting to the restart menu option takes several minutes. It seems to mostly present when I'm running DCS World (DX9 based flight sim) but it does not go away when exiting the game, no matter how long the system is left running (the process isn’t left running). I can also play other games and use the system for hours without issue occurring.
When it happens stutters are accompanied by an increase in CPU usage on the “system” process (up to 10-15% CPU), when the CPU usage drops to normal levels the stutter ends.
This started presenting a month or so ago and was quite sporadic, I couldn't put a finger on the possible cause. Having recently upgraded to Win 8.1 I put it down to a Win 8 issue and coped in the hope that a windows updater would solve it, obviously it didn't. I've since updated all hardware drivers to the latest available, tried alternate drivers for my sound card, and also rolled back to all applicable graphics drivers. None of these helped so suspecting a drive failure I switched out the SSDs by adding the 64Gb Crucial as the OS drive in place of the 128 Vertex and taking the previous 256Gb OCZ Agility game drive out of the equation, this had no effect.
I then did the same driver reinstalls a further time, and shortly afterwards did a reinstall of Win 8.1, again no effect on the issue.
Last night I switched back to Win 7 with a full clean install, again installing the most recent drivers available for all hardware, and this evening the problem occurred again.
So my current thinking is that is must be a hardware issue, but I just can’t figure out what. SMART checks out ok on all driver, the only issue being a dodgy temp sensor in the OCZ Vertex reporting 128C. CPU and GPU temps are all fine, MEMTEST reports no problems, and running Prime 95 for several hours goes fine.
All my Googling suggests the “system” process high CPU usage is linked to either a driver or physical hardware issue, but I am out of ideas when it comes to narrowing down to exactly what. So any ideas? Hopefully I'm just missing something "obvious" but I'm totally stumped. Help!
