Unplayable extreme FPS lag spikes in games such as Overwatch (lag freezes pc for seconds at a time)

[Pepsidot]

Hey all. I was wondering if anyone could diagnose what is causing my PC to have extreme lag spikes? It started happening about a month ago and I have had this PC setup for years without any troubles.

Overwatch is the worst, but all games have very noticeable lag spikes. I have lag that freezes my PC for seconds at a time, it is horrendous when I first start playing but gradually gets better and better.

 

For example in Overwatch, I'll get these extreme lag spikes for about 30ish minutes of gameplay. After that, it'll be as smooth as butter. I have attached an example of the lag I experience below (and in fact I think it was very tame in this example compared to usual):

My specs: 

GPU: GTX 1070

CPU: i7 4790k

RAM: 16GB 2133MHz

Motherboard: Asus Maximus VII Ranger

PSU: EVGA Super Nova NEX750B 750W 

Resolution: 2560*1440p

 

Thanks for any help!

 

PS: I do not believe it is a SSD/hard drive problem as I installed Overwatch on 3 of my drives and all of them had this result. 

 

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, Pepsidot said:

PS: I do not believe it is a SSD/hard drive problem as I installed Overwatch on 3 of my drives and all of them had this result. 

It could still be a HDD issue. In your video at 1:55 you get a really bad lag spike. Exactly at the same time task manager reports your HDD usage as 100%.

Also things like these:

26 minutes ago, Pepsidot said:

It started happening about a month ago

 

27 minutes ago, Pepsidot said:

I'll get these extreme lag spikes for about 30ish minutes of gameplay. After that, it'll be as smooth as butter.

can be an indicator of a dying hard drive. Check your HDD health with a tool like HWInfo.

[Pepsidot]

7 minutes ago, Medicate said:

It could still be a HDD issue. In your video at 1:55 you get a really bad lag spike. Exactly at the same time task manager reports your HDD usage as 100%.

Also things like these:

 

can be an indicator of a dying hard drive. Check your HDD health with a tool like HWInfo.

I'll download HWInfo and give it a go.

Also interestingly you mentioned the really bad lag spike at 1:55 caused my HDD usage to be at 100%. That is my drive where I don't play any games, but store 2TB of gaming videos (that just gets bigger and bigger). It's not full though, I'm currently using 2.26TB out of 3.63TB on that drive.

 

Thanks for your help.

[Pepsidot]

I fixed this issue by following a comment in this reddit post:

So to fix it, do this: