rare cases of hitching and frame drops.

[JackCato440]

As title suggests, got new computer from PCS today and have been putting it through a few games most of which are fine 99% of the time although i've noticed that there are some rare cases of my games bringing the entire system to a halt (all processes stop, audio halts and youtube videos stop) usually only a second but sometimes 1-3secs. Temps are all great and under 70c at all times on both cpu and gpu.
I've ran furmark and cinebench as well as heaven for multiple runs and all were fine, no BSOD artifacting or overheating, cinebench got the 7700x to 5.1ghz all core after hitting max temp which is normal i believe (no changes to bios other than what the builders of the system have done)
I have 2 monitors my main being 144hz 1080p and 2nd being 2k 60hz both don't have hdr.
Surprisingly when i don't have youtube running on my other monitor it seems to reduce the frequency by a bit though i don't know if that is real or just how i'm perceiving it. Below is the system i bought and i have an asus dual OC 3070 that i put into it, worked fine in the other system and runs furmark fine so i know it's not the problem. Just wondering if there's any ways i can try and find out what the cause may be, i was playing the games with firefox open on second monitor and discord open as well.

CORSAIR 4000D AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)	AMD Ryzen 7 7700X Eight Core CPU (4.5GHz-5.4GHz/40MB CACHE/AM5)
Motherboard	ASUS® TUF GAMING B650-PLUS WIFI (DDR5, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s)
Memory (RAM)	32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 5600MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card	NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD (Model: Asus DUAL OC 3070 RTX, Ports: 2)
Graphics Card Support Bracket	NONE (BRACKET INCLUDED AS STANDARD ON 4070 Ti AND ABOVE)
1st M.2 SSD Drive	2TB SOLIDIGM P41+ GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 4125MB/sR, 3325MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive	NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply	CORSAIR 750W RMe SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable	1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling	CORSAIR H100i ELITE RGB High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste	STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Extra Case Fans	2 x 120mm Black Case Fan
Sound Card	ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card	ONBOARD 2.5Gbe LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card	NOT REQUIRED
USB/Thunderbolt Options	MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00003]
Operating System Language	United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media	Windows 11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Supplied on USB Drive
Office Software	FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus	Norton 360 inc. Game Optimizer - Free 90 Day License
Browser	Firefox™

 

[JackCato440]

Also to note most games also hang on a stopped responding screen upon launching for ages, happens to every game i've launched since getting it if that's any indicator.
EDIT - dunno if it has any meaning but whilst all the cores/threads are showing on avg 30% with spikes to 60% #16 is always the one that hits 100% and causes sudden fps drops,this was on dota 2 and happened about 5 times in a match, averaging around 200fps the entire game other than this.

 

[TonyCarter]

If you've still got Norton installed, I would very quickly remove it via the official uninstaller, as the built-in Windows uninstaller doesn't remove all the tendrils.

The only other simple thing I can think of from just the config, is that everything seems to be running from a single SSD...and that means the system, the games and Norton are trying to access the same resource at the same time at random intervals. This is why we recommend a smaller, very fast SSD for the OS and a larger, sightly slower SSD for your games storage.

If the removal of Norton doesn't help, then I'm sure someone will be along to ask for some diagnostic files to help them.

 

[JackCato440]

If you've still got Norton installed, I would very quickly remove it via the official uninstaller, as the built-in Windows uninstaller doesn't remove all the tendrils.

The only other simple thing I can think of from just the config, is that everything seems to be running from a single SSD...and that means the system, the games and Norton are trying to access the same resource at the same time at random intervals. This is why we recommend a smaller, very fast SSD for the OS and a larger, sightly slower SSD for your games storage.

If the removal of Norton doesn't help, then I'm sure someone will be along to ask for some diagnostic files to help them.

I do have 2 other m.2’s in it as well both 970’s

 

[JackCato440]

If you've still got Norton installed, I would very quickly remove it via the official uninstaller, as the built-in Windows uninstaller doesn't remove all the tendrils.

The only other simple thing I can think of from just the config, is that everything seems to be running from a single SSD...and that means the system, the games and Norton are trying to access the same resource at the same time at random intervals. This is why we recommend a smaller, very fast SSD for the OS and a larger, sightly slower SSD for your games storage.

If the removal of Norton doesn't help, then I'm sure someone will be along to ask for some diagnostic files to help them.

With the help of a friend i downgraded to win10 and wiped everything and put my OS on my 500gb 970 instead, seems to be fine but still need to test a few games to make sure it was software and not hardware but things like games hanging on stopped responding during launch is gone instantly so that's good.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Had you uninstalled Norton before installing windows 10? I wouldn't suggest staying on windows 10, it's not getting any more version updates and is out of support in 2 years fully

With the help of a friend i downgraded to win10 and wiped everything and put my OS on my 500gb 970 instead, seems to be fine but still need to test a few games to make sure it was software and not hardware but things like games hanging on stopped responding during launch is gone instantly so that's good.

 

[JackCato440]

Had you uninstalled Norton before installing windows 10? I wouldn't suggest staying on windows 10, it's not getting any more version updates and is out of support in 2 years fully

No but the PCS guys had installed a massive amount of bloat so i just went ahead with the wipe anyway, will probably end up updating to win11 in the future but as it seems to be running fine rn i'm planning on leaving it as is for now.

 

[SpyderTracks]

No but the PCS guys had installed a massive amount of bloat so i just went ahead with the wipe anyway, will probably end up updating to win11 in the future but as it seems to be running fine rn i'm planning on leaving it as is for now.

I would strongly suggest just clean installing windows 11 now, you don't want to do an upgrade in place, even if there are no issues, it reduces performance.

A clean install is always the best platform to start from

What bloatware do you mean though? PCS don't install any bloatware other than what you order?

 

[JackCato440]

I would strongly suggest just clean installing windows 11 now, you don't want to do an upgrade in place, even if there are no issues, it reduces performance.

A clean install is always the best platform to start from

What bloatware do you mean though? PCS don't install any bloatware other than what you order?

I think it was mostly just asus stuff like the armoury crate stuff, there was something like 100 processes running after first boot, norton ofc and other normal windows apps etc.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I think it was mostly just asus stuff like the armoury crate stuff, there was something like 100 processes running after first boot, norton ofc and other normal windows apps etc.

Thatq not bloatware really, its motherboard software, and you'd selected Norton.

I would personally not install armory crate though where possible as it is quite buggy

 

[JackCato440]

Thatq not bloatware really, its motherboard software, and you'd selected Norton.

I would personally not install armory crate though where possible as it is quite buggy

Yes i didn't know the problems with norton until i googled something along the lines of "norton win11 issues" and the first thing that popped up was the exact symptoms that i was having so most likely that was the cause.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Yes i didn't know the problems with norton until i googled something along the lines of "norton win11 issues" and the first thing that popped up was the exact symptoms that i was having so most likely that was the cause.

So yeah, I would strongly recommend clean installing windows 11 now rather than later, you don't want to do it once windows is all configured. Only takes 30 mins

 

[DarkPaladin]

1) Perform a clean install of Windows 11 through the Media Creation Tool to ensure there are no OS/Software issues.

2) If your PC is still having the mini freezes, it could be worth checking for thermal or power limit throttling. You can check for this in software such as HWInfo64 (recommended), where it will give you detailed charts to show of any issues.

3) Something else to mention is if the games you're playing are new and graphically intensive, having Chrome open simultaneously may be causing the GPU to be overworked.

By default, Chrome uses your GPU for its display. So when you're using YouTube while in-game, Chrome will be taking performance from the GPU and can also cause micro stutters.

To fix this (if you really wanted both Chrome and games running simultaneously), you'd go into Chrome's settings and disable hardware acceleration.