System consistently stumbles

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

So the issue I'm having has been happening for a long time. Essentially what's happening is my system would stumble where it would pause for a second or so randomly (screen freezes and sound loops rapidly) and soon returns to normal. It's rather annoying especially when trying to watch stuff on YouTube/ Netflix. The system is overclocked but it still does that at stock settings. Also, from a cold boot, it's slow as balls. The machine could just hang (but you can move the mouse, but clicking on stuff will react but nothing happens) for a few seconds on end before it snaps back to life and everything you did during the hang gets executed almost immediately. 

 

I don't think it's the SSD as I've swapped out the drive with a spare 850 EVO, did a fresh install, and this strange behavior persists. I've since transferred the drive I swapped out, into my old laptop which has been happily running macOS without a hitch for a few months now. Any ideas of what the issue could be? 

 

If I look at task manger when the hang happens, it reports the SSD is at 100% but at 0 KB/s read and write speed. Response time is also 0 ms. And at other moments in the first few minutes on the desktop when the thing is stumbling on itself after a cold boot, response times could reach as 9000ms randomly. 

 

Any ideas of a possible culprit would be appreciated. 

 

Specs:

 

AMD FX-6300 

ASUS M5A97 R2.0

24.0 GB Kingston DDR3 (8+8+8GB; speed currently set to 800MHz by default) 

Samsung 850 EVO 

WD 1.5TB Green

MSI GTX 550Ti 

ASUS Xonar DG