Is it possible for an old SSD to cause high CPU usage/spike in games?

[Spriggan]

I was just wondering how Valorant can cause 95-99 percent CPU usage while it's the only thing running on my system when I'm playing it. I do stream on this pc and I am suspicious that the high CPU usage spikes is causing my stream to have occasional fps drops when I'm playing Valorant. Keep in mind that this never happens when I stream other games. Even Valhalla runs smooth on my 720p 30fps stream.

 

My system specs are:

 

i3 8100

GTX 1060 6gb

16gb ram dual channel 3200mhz

WD Green SATA SSD 240g

 

I find this very odd as all my other games are on my HDD and the games I play there are AC: Valhalla, Genshin Impact, RotR, SotTR. These games never caused high CPU usage/spikes. They normally sit at 60-85% which doesn't cause my stream to lag.

 

I will appreciate any thoughts about this.. Thank you so much!

[SavageNeo]

well you have 4c/4t cpu for starters. also valorant is more cpu intensive than valhalla.

old SSD wont affect cpu usage.

 

 

Cpu upgrade should help with valorant. you could get used i5 8400,8500,8600 in there. mayby even i7 8700. i5 8400 is definetly a upgrade but i would not spends over 100 dollars to it

 

[SupaKomputa]

I still play most of my games from good old HDD, so no to that.

[Spriggan]

2 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I still play most of my games from good old HDD, so no to that.

 

29 minutes ago, SavageNeo said:

well you have 4c/4t cpu for starters. also valorant is more cpu intensive than valhalla.

old SSD wont affect cpu usage.

 

 

Cpu upgrade should help with valorant. you could get used i5 8400,8500,8600 in there. mayby even i7 8700. i5 8400 is definetly a upgrade but i would not spends over 100 dollars to it

 

Thank you both for the input.. I guess it's just a dumb theory of mine. Thinking of upgrading soon

[jaslion]

53 minutes ago, Spriggan said:

 

Thank you both for the input.. I guess it's just a dumb theory of mine. Thinking of upgrading soon

I 100% recommend you either get a 8700 or 9900 (if your board is good enough). Why? These cpu's have more than 8 threads total. The pure 6 core i5's already struggle in a fair few games and it wont get better. Basically they have the same issues as you have now. The 9700 is the new minimum but I see that changing relatively soon when just 8 threads (it's a pure 8 core cpu) isn't enough.

 

Hence why I either recommend the 8700 or 9900. But it all does depend on your budget. It might even be cheaper to move platform to a lower end newer cpu with more threads.

[Pixelfie]

I had an old WD drive in my system that caused weird performance issues in games. Fortnite for example had weird frame spikes, Fall Guys suddenly started stuttering badly after a few minutes and Rocket League felt like it had 40 fps but had 300. After replacing it with a Seagate Barracuda no more of these issues. And yes I tried formatting the drive, I even reinstalled my OS on the SSD. So yes, it is possible, but...

 

I think in your case it's CPU related. The 8100 simply isn't a great CPU anymore. Also Valorant isn't very heavy on the GPU. For example my 5500 XT (similar to 1660) and 10400F are already nearing a CPU bottleneck in Valorant. And my CPU is much better, while the CPU is only slightly better.