Frequent + Random Mini-Freezes (1-5 seconds) on a High End Laptop

[DarkPaladin]

Having completed my overheating issue, I figured I'd make a separate thread to seek advice on my last issue with my laptop.

For the past few weeks, I've experienced mini-stutters when playing video games. Typically, it'd occur whenever something impactful would happen in the game, resulting in a very fast freeze/un-freeze. Although this might not seem like much, it can cause some problems when playing in vs. multiplayer games.

However, for the past few days, my laptop has been dealing with random mini-freezes regardless of what I'm doing (e.g. browsing files, listening to music, playing video games), and the freezes usually last between 1-5 seconds maximum. So far, these are the things I've done in an attempt to fix/identify the cause of what's happening:

• Disk Drive Error Check (all 3 drives came back perfectly normal) [I have 250GB WD Black NVMe SSD to install Windows, Samsung EVO 850 SSD to install games, and 2TB Seagate to install non-essentials like music or word documents]
• Memory Diagnostics Test (came back with no issues at all)
• Updated as many drivers as I possibly could
• Reduced maximum processor performance to 99% (didn't solve it so I reverted back to 100%)
• Hard Disk to "never" be turned off when my laptop has its battery + charger plugged in
• Fixed CPU overheating issue
• Did a clean reinstall of Windows 10, allowing windows to automatically download the drivers etc.

I was hoping you guys could point me in another direction here since I'm all out of ideas. I've heard that the Realtek audio drivers could be causing the random crashes but I'm not sure how that'd be the case since the freezes occur with/without audio playing. Appreciate the help in advance!

Specs:

Chassis & Display	Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync
Processor (CPU)	Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700k (3.7GHz) 12MB Cache
Memory (RAM)	32GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card	NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2080 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Storage Drive	2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
1st M.2 SSD Drive	250GB WD Black™ SN750 M.2 NVMe SSD (up to 3100MB/s R | 1600MB/s W)
Memory Card Reader	Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor	1 x 330W AC Adaptor
Power Cable	1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Battery	Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH)
Thermal Paste	STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card	Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless	GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ WIRELESS-AC 1550 M.2 GAMING 802.11AC + BLUETOOTH 5.0

 

[ubuysa]

I don't game so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but could this be network related? I'm thinking of the multiplayer games here.

 

[DarkPaladin]

I don't game so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but could this be network related? I'm thinking of the multiplayer games here.

I don't believe so. My latency/wi-fi is pretty good (70MBPS Download / 20 MBPS Upload + low latency). I haven't used my system with internet turned off so I could try that at least to see if it happens again.

 

[ubuysa]

I don't believe so. My latency/wi-fi is pretty good (70MBPS Download / 20 MBPS Upload + low latency). I haven't used my system with internet turned off so I could try that at least to see if it happens again.

Are you Ethernet or WiFi connected?

 

[DarkPaladin]

Are you Ethernet or WiFi connected?

Currently using Wi-Fi since there's no realistic way for me to use an ethernet cable without the upstairs area looking like a Home Alone trap

 

[ubuysa]

Currently using Wi-Fi since there's no realistic way for me to use an ethernet cable without the upstairs area looking like a Home Alone trap

I think that as a test it would be worth it. It would show whether or not the problem was wireless and that's important to know.

 

[DarkPaladin]

I think that as a test it would be worth it. It would show whether or not the problem was wireless and that's important to know.

I disconnected my wi-fi completely and used my laptop offline for just under 20 mins. The mini freezes still occurred unfortunately

 

[ubuysa]

I disconnected my wi-fi completely and used my laptop offline for just under 20 mins. The mini freezes still occurred unfortunately

OK, it was worth a try.

 

[ubuysa]

What's your RAM usage like?

 

[DarkPaladin]

RAM is currently at 20% usage (Chrome open with 7 tabs, Steam, HWMonitor, and music playing)

 

[ubuysa]

RAM is currently at 20% usage (Chrome open with 7 tabs, Steam, HWMonitor, and music playing)

Open Task Manager, select Options from the top line menu and click Always On Top, then select the Memory icon on the left. Now start whichever game most usually stutters and post a screenshot of the Task Manager memory display as close as you can to a freeze. I'm trying to eliminate the possibility of RAM paging causing the freezes.

 

[FerrariVie]

Do you have MSI Afterburner? You could try to add its in-screen overlay to look at something unusual at the exact time where the freeze happened... like how were your CPU and GPU temperatures, usage % and clock speeds? How much RAM was used? Did something spike or drop after the freeze?

I always keep an eye on those figures when gaming, I find it easier to identify the culprit and keep an eye on temperatures real-time.

 

[DarkPaladin]

Update. To try and solve it, I tried the following:

• DDU to remove my NVIDIA + Audio drivers
• Downloaded the newest versions of both NVIDIA + Realtek Drivers
• Updated Windows 10 to the latest version

Still nothing fixed.

I'll download MSI Afterburner + monitor the RAM in task manager and try running things to see if it can identify what's causing the crashes.

Do you have MSI Afterburner? You could try to add its in-screen overlay to look at something unusual at the exact time where the freeze happened... like how were your CPU and GPU temperatures, usage % and clock speeds? How much RAM was used? Did something spike or drop after the freeze?

I always keep an eye on those figures when gaming, I find it easier to identify the culprit and keep an eye on temperatures real-time.

Open Task Manager, select Options from the top line menu and click Always On Top, then select the Memory icon on the left. Now start whichever game most usually stutters and post a screenshot of the Task Manager memory display as close as you can to a freeze. I'm trying to eliminate the possibility of RAM paging causing the freezes.

 

[ubuysa]

Update. To try and solve it, I tried the following:

• DDU to remove my NVIDIA + Audio drivers
• Downloaded the newest versions of both NVIDIA + Realtek Drivers
• Updated Windows 10 to the latest version

Still nothing fixed.

I'll download MSI Afterburner + monitor the RAM in task manager and try running things to see if it can identify what's causing the crashes.

TBH updating to 20H2 (that's what I think you mean by updating to the latest version? Updating a system with a problem almost never results in a stable system. Your problem now will be that you won't know whether other issues that crop up are related to your original problem or to the upgrade.

I would now do a fully clean install of 20H2 and start again with a known stable system.

 

[DarkPaladin]

Do you have MSI Afterburner? You could try to add its in-screen overlay to look at something unusual at the exact time where the freeze happened... like how were your CPU and GPU temperatures, usage % and clock speeds? How much RAM was used? Did something spike or drop after the freeze?

I always keep an eye on those figures when gaming, I find it easier to identify the culprit and keep an eye on temperatures real-time.

I thought I'd give you both an update.

After playing Cyberpunk 2077 today, my laptop was running fine (performance wise + temps). However, since PCSpecialist uses thermal pads on my laptop's heatsink, I thought I'd replace them with new 0.5mm Arctic Thermal Pads (ordered the same day as the thermal paste in an attempt to fix my previous overheating issue) as the previous ones have become dirty/covered in dust etc.

However, despite my temps roughly being the same as before, the freezing issue is occurring far more frequently. Except now my cursor is having janky movement/skipping frames on any application (Desktop, Chrome etc.) In fact, just writing this sentence had my laptop freeze about 7 times for 5 seconds each time. When my laptop freezes, I notice the CPU usage spikes from around 4% (just having Google Chrome open) to 19-21% and then back to 4% again in task manager.

Additionally, when I stress tested the CPU in Intel XTU, after approx 1 minute of 100% usage, my laptop began to have "Power Limit Throttling" for the duration of the stress test. All of this is happening despite my CPU temps never exceeding 80 degrees.

Even more bizarrely, I noticed just now that in order to get out of the freezes quicker, hitting the Windows key causes it to resume slightly quicker again (while causing a slight increase in temps). I'd love to know what's going on here and if it would be worth putting the PCSpecialist thermal pads back on just to see if the problem continues.

 

[FerrariVie]

I thought I'd give you both an update.

After playing Cyberpunk 2077 today, my laptop was running fine (performance wise + temps). However, since PCSpecialist uses thermal pads on my laptop's heatsink, I thought I'd replace them with new 0.5mm Arctic Thermal Pads (ordered the same day as the thermal paste in an attempt to fix my previous overheating issue) as the previous ones have become dirty/covered in dust etc.

However, despite my temps roughly being the same as before, the freezing issue is occurring far more frequently. Except now my cursor is having janky movement/skipping frames on any application (Desktop, Chrome etc.) In fact, just writing this sentence had my laptop freeze about 7 times for 5 seconds each time. When my laptop freezes, I notice the CPU usage spikes from around 4% (just having Google Chrome open) to 19-21% and then back to 4% again in task manager.

Additionally, when I stress tested the CPU in Intel XTU, after approx 1 minute of 100% usage, my laptop began to have "Power Limit Throttling" for the duration of the stress test. All of this is happening despite my CPU temps never exceeding 80 degrees.

Even more bizarrely, I noticed just now that in order to get out of the freezes quicker, hitting the Windows key causes it to resume slightly quicker again (while causing a slight increase in temps). I'd love to know what's going on here and if it would be worth putting the PCSpecialist thermal pads back on just to see if the problem continues.

I'm not sure if you can put old thermal pads back on. One thing I know is that they should have different heights (at least mine has), so if you only got one type of pad and that doesn't match with the thickness of the default pads, you might have issues.

It is weird that pressing some key on the keyboard helps it in any way, though. Not sure if I asked you this already, but are you using a wireless/bluetooth mouse? Because you might perceive it as a freeze, but it might just be that your mouse is losing connection. The CPU spikes could also be related to this, as it might be the system detecting a new hardware piece.

 

[ubuysa]

However, despite my temps roughly being the same as before, the freezing issue is occurring far more frequently. Except now my cursor is having janky movement/skipping frames on any application (Desktop, Chrome etc.) In fact, just writing this sentence had my laptop freeze about 7 times for 5 seconds each time. When my laptop freezes, I notice the CPU usage spikes from around 4% (just having Google Chrome open) to 19-21% and then back to 4% again in task manager.

That sounds more like software to me. I think I'd be tempted to run a Performance Monitor data collector in the background whilst you're getting these freezes and CPU spikes to see whether it can catch a rogue process or something. I don't know how much you know about running a Performance Monitor data collector but there's a (long) explanation/tutorial on the Performance Monitor here https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/forums/threads/using-the-performance-monitor.60203/.

I would track Processor\% Processor Time (_Total) to see what's using your CPUs, Memory\Page Reads/sec to make sure your RAM isn't paging, and Physical Disk\Current Disk Queue Length to check that this isn't a disk access delay as a minimum. Those are the three main areas where performance delays occur and should give you a red flag if anything unexpected is going on. Choose a 1 second sample rate (that's the smallest you can get) and run the collector for long enough to catch a freeze - the longer it runs for the more data you're going to collect of course, ideally you want it running just long enough to capture a freeze.

If you're not used to it the Performance Monitor can take some time to get used to, it has a lot of options, but in cases like this it can give you the insight you need.

Additionally, when I stress tested the CPU in Intel XTU, after approx 1 minute of 100% usage, my laptop began to have "Power Limit Throttling" for the duration of the stress test. All of this is happening despite my CPU temps never exceeding 80 degrees.

That might be the BIOS intervening??

Even more bizarrely, I noticed just now that in order to get out of the freezes quicker, hitting the Windows key causes it to resume slightly quicker again (while causing a slight increase in temps). I'd love to know what's going on here and if it would be worth putting the PCSpecialist thermal pads back on just to see if the problem continues.

And that also makes me think this is software. I would suggest that it's worth taking the time to find your way around the Performance Monitor data collectors and get some real data covering these freezes.

 

[DarkPaladin]

Just wanted to give you both an update on what I've done so far.

While I was using the performance monitor, my laptop constantly froze to the point where it was borderline unusable. I decided to use your old suggestion of reinstalling Windows 10 from the Media Creation Tool instead of the factory reset option.
I then did the following:

1. Formatted the drive where windows was installed
2. Installed windows 10 on the recently formatted drive
3. Allowed everything to update itself that Windows possibly could
4. Once that was done, I downloaded the drivers from PCSpecialist and installed them in the correct order (as labelled 1, 2. 3, etc. on the folder + installation manual)
5. Re-downloaded all of my usual software e.g. CCleaner, HWMonitor, Intel XTU, CPU/GPU-Z
6. Allowed my laptop to run for +3 hours
7. Stress tested my CPU in Intel XTU, with Power Limit Throttling varying this time rather than being fixed after 1 minute (should be solved when I get my thermal paste + thicker pads in the mail tomorrow)
8. I ran my laptop for 3+ hours
9. I played multiple games and had little to no stuttering/freezes, played music/videos and no stuttering
10. The only time I've been able to replicate the awful freezing/stuttering is when I open HWMonitor, giving the system noticeable cursor skips/mini freezes

Edit: Just came across this. Apparently HWMonitor can cause major system stuttering on SSD's https://www.overclock.net/threads/hwmonitor-causes-major-stuttering.1156023/
I'll keep monitoring the situation in the meantime and I'll update this thread if the freezing occurs widespread again after re-applying paste etc.

 

[Martinr36]

you shouldn't have had to do step 4 windows should have taken care of that, with the exception of your graphic driver which should come from Nvidia

 

[DarkPaladin]

Just wanted to give 1 final update before moving on with this thread.

After receiving my new 1.0MM thermal pads in the mail (previously ordered 0.5MM but they were too thin), I re-applied Grizzly Kyronaut + replaced only a few of the thermal pads. I then recorded my temps in HWMonitor, HWInfo64, and Intel XTU.

As you can see, my issue has been fully resolved and since performing all of the recommended tasks, I've had absolutely zero stutters outside of opening HWMonitor (apparently this is an issue on some SSD's). My idle temps decreased from 40-45 degrees to 30-35ish and after performing a stress test in Intel XTU, the highest recorded temp was around 75 degrees, and even then it only lasted for a very brief moment.

Just wanted to thank everyone who contributed to solving my problems. You all saved me a potentially expensive and lengthy RMA process!