CPU Prioritizes Downloads over Basic Functions

[FluffyZeuss]

Hey, when I am downloading anything for like games, my computer just dies. My audio cuts in and out, my screen freezes, and my computer as a whole just dies. It stays running, but becomes completely unusable. When I open Task Manager my CPU is maxed out at 100% at all times. If I limit download speeds on Steam for example it can work but it then becomes a game of trying to find the speed to limit my downloads to that lets me do whatever in the background while downloading things at faster than 5mb/s. My Ethernet is stupid good (700mb/s or more) and has never negatively impacted my experience. It almost feels like my CPU is prioritizing downloads over basic functions like running Windows which is really stupid. I have never messed around in BIOS before but a friend of mine told me it could be that. I don't think I could figure out BIOS on my own as I get lost anytime I go in. Anyone know how to help? (It is the MSI BIOS, that's all I know for that).

 

UPDATE: So here is where it gets funny. I forgot to mention my cpu. I have an i5-12600k, my buddy has an i5-10400 and has the exact same issue

[TylerD321]

What cpu do you have? Doing a ton of downloading and fast storage actually does take up a bit of cpu resources, though I wouldn’t expect to see this as a problem at like 5 mb…

[OddOod]

It's kind of a fundamental feature: the OS will perform everything as fast as possible without crashing. It does this by increasing the resources available to everything by some amount and if the program uses it, it will allow it to keep using it until performance limits are hit or the program stops using as much. 

What are your temps?
I did notice this problem cropping up on my buddy's computer when he upgraded from a i5-4550 to a i7-4790k and kept using the stock air cooler. His discord would go robit and start cutting out as soon as he launched any game that pegged his CPU to 100. 

All that being said, yeah, if you're getting 100% CPU usage while performing a download on 700Mbps, you are in dire need of a system upgrade. Even an old i3-2100 wouldn't throttle that much

[SkilledRebuilds]

3 hours ago, FluffyZeuss said:

Hey, when I am downloading anything for like games, my computer just dies. My audio cuts in and out, my screen freezes, and my computer as a whole just dies. It stays running, but becomes completely unusable. When I open Task Manager my CPU is maxed out at 100% at all times. If I limit download speeds on Steam for example it can work but it then becomes a game of trying to find the speed to limit my downloads to that lets me do whatever in the background while downloading things at faster than 5mb/s. My Ethernet is stupid good (700mb/s or more) and has never negatively impacted my experience. It almost feels like my CPU is prioritizing downloads over basic functions like running Windows which is really stupid. I have never messed around in BIOS before but a friend of mine told me it could be that. I don't think I could figure out BIOS on my own as I get lost anytime I go in. Anyone know how to help? (It is the MSI BIOS, that's all I know for that).

You wouldn't happen to have a DRAMLESS SSD boot drive by any chance, some lowgrade SSD's are bad in that they queue up a long line and delay the whole system while it's super busy. and writing to the SSD for prolonged periods (Steam DL) is what causes it on these drives to slow down to a crawl. (Some SSD's are worse than others in this regard) some drives utilize sysram to get by, some don't do it very well..

[StDragon]

That's symptomatic of failing storage with the controller throwing an interrupt storm which would tie up the CPU for attention. That would show the CPU at 100% utilized when in reality it's just unavailable for anything else while it responds to the countless interrupt requests.

Take a good look at the Windows System event log for storage errors such as disk I/O. Also review SMART status with a program such as CrystalDiskInfo (standard edition). Though if you can, the HDD or SSD vendor specific diagnostic utility would be preferred. But at the least get some eyes on the logs and dive deeper if needing more info.

[FluffyZeuss]

I have an i5-12600k I bought less than 6 months ago

[FluffyZeuss]

17 hours ago, OddOod said:

It's kind of a fundamental feature: the OS will perform everything as fast as possible without crashing. It does this by increasing the resources available to everything by some amount and if the program uses it, it will allow it to keep using it until performance limits are hit or the program stops using as much. 

What are your temps?
I did notice this problem cropping up on my buddy's computer when he upgraded from a i5-4550 to a i7-4790k and kept using the stock air cooler. His discord would go robit and start cutting out as soon as he launched any game that pegged his CPU to 100. 

All that being said, yeah, if you're getting 100% CPU usage while performing a download on 700Mbps, you are in dire need of a system upgrade. Even an old i3-2100 wouldn't throttle that much

Temps are usually pretty good. Its liquid cooled and stays below 60C 99% of the time. I have an i5-12600k so I think a i3-2100 might be a bittt of a downgrade

[FluffyZeuss]

17 hours ago, TylerD321 said:

What cpu do you have? Doing a ton of downloading and fast storage actually does take up a bit of cpu resources, though I wouldn’t expect to see this as a problem at like 5 mb…

I have an i5-12600k I bought less than 6 months ago

[FluffyZeuss]

15 hours ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

You wouldn't happen to have a DRAMLESS SSD boot drive by any chance, some lowgrade SSD's are bad in that they queue up a long line and delay the whole system while it's super busy. and writing to the SSD for prolonged periods (Steam DL) is what causes it on these drives to slow down to a crawl. (Some SSD's are worse than others in this regard) some drives utilize sysram to get by, some don't do it very well..

I honestly don't know how to check, I have a XPG S40G 1TB RGB 3D NAND PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1.3 M.2 2280 Internal SSD. Thats the exact one off of amazon where I bought it. Granted it is getting old so maybe thats the issue? Its maybe 4 years old now? 4.5 even?

[FluffyZeuss]

14 hours ago, StDragon said:

That's symptomatic of failing storage with the controller throwing an interrupt storm which would tie up the CPU for attention. That would show the CPU at 100% utilized when in reality it's just unavailable for anything else while it responds to the countless interrupt requests.

Take a good look at the Windows System event log for storage errors such as disk I/O. Also review SMART status with a program such as CrystalDiskInfo (standard edition). Though if you can, the HDD or SSD vendor specific diagnostic utility would be preferred. But at the least get some eyes on the logs and dive deeper if needing more info.

So could this be that my SSD is just getting old? I mean its 4-4.5 years old now but I thought they lasted a while. The name for mine off amazon is XPG S40G 1TB RGB 3D NAND PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1.3 M.2 2280 Internal SSD.

[StDragon]

44 minutes ago, FluffyZeuss said:

So could this be that my SSD is just getting old? I mean its 4-4.5 years old now but I thought they lasted a while. The name for mine off amazon is XPG S40G 1TB RGB 3D NAND PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1.3 M.2 2280 Internal SSD.

There is a write endurance level for any SSD.

What I'm suggesting is a hypothesis. Facts will be found in Windows System event logs and SMART stats. So need to start there.

Also, If the issue is only while downloading files with Steam, it could be a CPU throttling issue. That's because Steam does quite a bit of decompression and checksum calculations while downloading game data. This uses a substantial amount of CPU resources. If the CPU overheats and thermal throttles, that will reduce headroom and show as 100% utilized too.

 

[FluffyZeuss]

6 hours ago, StDragon said:

There is a write endurance level for any SSD.

What I'm suggesting is a hypothesis. Facts will be found in Windows System event logs and SMART stats. So need to start there.

Also, If the issue is only while downloading files with Steam, it could be a CPU throttling issue. That's because Steam does quite a bit of decompression and checksum calculations while downloading game data. This uses a substantial amount of CPU resources. If the CPU overheats and thermal throttles, that will reduce headroom and show as 100% utilized too.

 

its definitly not throttling, downloading I've never seen the temps above 60C with as low as 25C. I'll look into the system logs and smart stats and get back to you. The issue is with most launchers except battle.net. Steam, epic games, and the xbox launcher all do it.

[SkilledRebuilds]

9 hours ago, FluffyZeuss said:

I honestly don't know how to check, I have a XPG S40G 1TB RGB 3D NAND PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1.3 M.2 2280 Internal SSD. Thats the exact one off of amazon where I bought it. Granted it is getting old so maybe thats the issue? Its maybe 4 years old now? 4.5 even?

There are ssd benchmarks where you can select the lengthbif the data to use.

1gb, 4GB 10GB.

And you can repeat runs...

 

So doing a lot of 1GBs or 4GB on repeat should fill any prebufffer it has and when it actually starts writing to the slow stuff, you should see your symptoms.

Most of the Googled SSD benchmarks will let you select a filesize to test with.. to fill that buffer and check the sustained write performance over time

[FluffyZeuss]

4 hours ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

There are ssd benchmarks where you can select the lengthbif the data to use.

1gb, 4GB 10GB.

And you can repeat runs...

 

So doing a lot of 1GBs or 4GB on repeat should fill any prebufffer it has and when it actually starts writing to the slow stuff, you should see your symptoms.

Most of the Googled SSD benchmarks will let you select a filesize to test with.. to fill that buffer and check the sustained write performance over time

No clue if this is what you meant but I just searched up a SSD benchmark tool and ran tests at 1GB, 4GB, 16GB, and 64GB. These are all the results here

[OddOod]

6 hours ago, FluffyZeuss said:

SSD benchmark tool

As StDragon mentioned, you should look at the SMART data for the drive as well. Grab CrystalDiskInfo and give us a peek

[FluffyZeuss]

3 hours ago, OddOod said:

As StDragon mentioned, you should look at the SMART data for the drive as well. Grab CrystalDiskInfo and give us a peek

 

21 hours ago, StDragon said:

There is a write endurance level for any SSD.

What I'm suggesting is a hypothesis. Facts will be found in Windows System event logs and SMART stats. So need to start there.

Also, If the issue is only while downloading files with Steam, it could be a CPU throttling issue. That's because Steam does quite a bit of decompression and checksum calculations while downloading game data. This uses a substantial amount of CPU resources. If the CPU overheats and thermal throttles, that will reduce headroom and show as 100% utilized too.

 

So I downloaded the CrystalDiskInfo and ran it while idle, then again while downloading. I don't really know what I'm looking at here so I'll leave that to you guys but it just looks like the temp went up 2C which doesn't really mean much I'm assuming? It's normal for things to go up a little bit while under load. While the download was active I took 2 screenshots of task manager as close to the same time as I could get. My SSD was under minimal load while my CPU was fluctuating from 0-100%. I'll attach all the photos here.

[OddOod]

Looks like you've only got a total of 62TB written which is well under the rated lifetime of 640TBW.
Something I'm a bit surprised by is the 1613 power cycles which is more than one per day for four years, though that's not an indicator of failure for SSDs

 

On 6/11/2024 at 11:07 PM, StDragon said:

controller throwing an interrupt storm which would tie up the CPU

I don't see anything really concerning in this SMART report, do you?

 

[FluffyZeuss]

11 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Looks like you've only got a total of 62TB written which is well under the rated lifetime of 640TBW.
Something I'm a bit surprised by is the 1613 power cycles which is more than one per day for four years, though that's not an indicator of failure for SSDs

I looked at the receipt and I got it in september of 2020 so its about 3.5 years old, but I've used it pretty much daily since then between school and games. This was the computer I used during online schooling with Covid and I've sent it into memory express probably close to 5-6 times for diagnostics or part replacements over the years so im sure there were a few extra start ups in around there. 

[StDragon]

@OddOod 

SMART stats look good, and so does the write endurance life too (90% remaining). However this drive is rated for 3.5GB/s read, 3GB/s Write. The drive looks good on reads, but not writes as it can't even go above 1GB/s. Being that it's linked at PCI 3.0 x4, that's not the issue. Also, it does have SLC caching with onboard DRAM cache; this drive should be very performant on writes. It clearly is not.

 

@FluffyZeuss
For reference, here's the spec sheet of your XPG SPECTRIX S40G SSD. This apparently is an ADATA drive. You'll want to download the ADATA SSD Toolbox to run more comprehensive diagnostics and check for available firmware. Be sure to backup your data before performing any firmware update.

 

I also noticed the CPU kernel times are very high, this would indicate IRQ storm or excessive processing by the NTFS.sys process (kernel subsystem for reading/write to NTFS volumes).

 

I wonder if your partition is out of alignment with the SSD blocks as that can definitely affect writeback speeds and excessive CPU overhead. There's multiple ways of doing this, but the easiest method is opening up System Information in Windows (msinfo32). Navigate to System Summary --> Components --> Storage --> Disks. There you will find "Partition Starting Offset". Take that number and divide by 4096. It should give a result without fractioning off with a decimal place.

https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/ssd-alignment-windows-10-3889.html

[FluffyZeuss]

25 minutes ago, StDragon said:

@OddOod 

SMART stats look good, and so does the write endurance life too (90% remaining). However this drive is rated for 3.5GB/s read, 3GB/s Write. The drive looks good on reads, but not writes as it can't even go above 1GB/s. Being that it's linked at PCI 3.0 x4, that's not the issue. Also, it does have SLC caching with onboard DRAM cache; this drive should be very performant on writes. It clearly is not.

 

@FluffyZeuss
For reference, here's the spec sheet of your XPG SPECTRIX S40G SSD. This apparently is an ADATA drive. You'll want to download the ADATA SSD Toolbox to run more comprehensive diagnostics and check for available firmware. Be sure to backup your data before performing any firmware update.

 

I also noticed the CPU kernel times are very high, this would indicate IRQ storm or excessive processing by the NTFS.sys process (kernel subsystem for reading/write to NTFS volumes).

 

I wonder if your partition is out of alignment with the SSD blocks as that can definitely affect writeback speeds and excessive CPU overhead. There's multiple ways of doing this, but the easiest method is opening up System Information in Windows (msinfo32). Navigate to System Summary --> Components --> Storage --> Disks. There you will find "Partition Starting Offset". Take that number and divide by 4096. It should give a result without fractioning off with a decimal place.

https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/ssd-alignment-windows-10-3889.html

so my partition starting offset is 1,048,576 bytes, or after dividing by 4096, 256 even. Would my issue be fixed completely by just buying a new ssd? Or is there a chance it is still a CPU issue?

 

I downloaded the ADATA SSD Toolbox and ran it a 5(?). This is the result I got

[StDragon]

11 minutes ago, FluffyZeuss said:

so my partition starting offset is 1,048,576 bytes, or after dividing by 4096, 256 even. Would my issue be fixed completely by just buying a new ssd? Or is there a chance it is still a CPU issue?

I can't imagine it being the CPU. It's overclocking at 4.25Ghz at 100% CPU load. If it was thermal throttling, the frequency would have dropped well below base.

Which M.2 slot is it plugged in? Are you sure it's not going through the MB chipset? Can you provide the Motherboard model?

Could it be the SSD? Possibly, but I wouldn't replace it unless you want a larger capacity drive (and if you do, go with Samsung, Sabrent or Crucial). Even then it might not fix the issue you're having.

[FluffyZeuss]

2 minutes ago, StDragon said:

I can't imagine it being the CPU. It's overclocking at 4.25Ghz at 100% CPU load. If it was thermal throttling, the frequency would have dropped well below base.

Which M.2 slot is it plugged in? Are you sure it's not going through the MB chipset? Can you provide the Motherboard model?

Could it be the SSD? Possibly, but I wouldn't replace it unless you want a larger capacity drive (and if you do, go with Samsung, Sabrent or Crucial). Even then it might not fix the issue you're having.

How can I check the M.2 slot without physically checking? I have no clue how to check if its going through the MB Chip set. The motherboard is a MSI PRO B760M-A WIFI DDR4. Is Western Digital good for a SSD? I have a SN770 2TB laying around that's only about a month old. I have no problem with wiping my computer right to the bone if I have to, I just don't have a way to reload windows without spending the $100 so it would have to be through the windows wipe. Could it maybe be a BIOS setting?

[StDragon]

24 minutes ago, FluffyZeuss said:

How can I check the M.2 slot without physically checking? I have no clue how to check if its going through the MB Chip set. The motherboard is a MSI PRO B760M-A WIFI DDR4. Is Western Digital good for a SSD? I have a SN770 2TB laying around that's only about a month old. I have no problem with wiping my computer right to the bone if I have to, I just don't have a way to reload windows without spending the $100 so it would have to be through the windows wipe. Could it maybe be a BIOS setting?

Your MB has two M.2 slots. You'll want the SSD connected to M2_1 which is closest to the CPU. That slot connects direct to the PCIe lanes to the CPU. Slot M2_2 has to traverse through the B760 chipset.

That WD SN770 is a nice SSD. Use that one.

You can test performance with the SN770 by swapping SSDs and installing a trial version of Windows 11 from a USB flash drive. Just choose Windows 11 Pro, don't bother activating it if it's temporary for testing. If you're satisfied that resolves the issue, then you can look into using that as your primary. If by chance no improvement, you can swap them back as though nothing ever occurred.

 

Also, be sure you don't have BitLocker enabled. If you do, you'll need to make a backup of the recovery key or else your data will be lost once you swap them back and forth (this would trip the TPM in requiring a recovery code to unlock the drive).

Also be sure to update the BIOS too (again, obtain the BitLocker recovery key if the drive is encrypted before doing this)
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-B760M-A-WIFI-DDR4/support

[FluffyZeuss]

16 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Your MB has two M.2 slots. You'll want the SSD connected to M2_1 which is closest to the CPU. That slot connects direct to the PCIe lanes to the CPU. Slot M2_2 has to traverse through the B760 chipset.

That WD SN770 is a nice SSD. Use that one.

You can test performance with the SN770 by swapping SSDs and installing a trial version of Windows 11 from a USB flash drive. Just choose Windows 11 Pro, don't both activating it if it's temporary for testing. If you're satisfied that resolves the issue, then you can look into using that as your primary. If by chance no improvement, you can swap them back as though nothing ever occurred.

 

Also, be sure you don't have BitLocker enabled. If you do, you'll need to make a backup of the recovery key or else your data will be lost once you swap them back and forth (this would trip the TPM in requiring a recovery code to unlock the drive).

Also be sure to update the BIOS too.
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-B760M-A-WIFI-DDR4/support

How do I disable Bitlocker? Everywhere I have looked gives options that just do not exist when I try them. I have tried going through control panel and it didn't work. I am working on updating the BIOS now. Is it okay if i put the SN770 in without a heatsink for long enough to test it? I only have the one on my motherboard and the one I have doesn't have one pre installed. While I wait for a reply from you I'll install the new SSD and I won't touch digitally.

 

responding on my phone here, I think I’m going to shoot memory express workers. My SSD is in the second slot. I’m assuming putting this new SSD in the first slot and making it my new boot drive has a 99% chance of solving my problems?

[StDragon]

23 minutes ago, FluffyZeuss said:

How do I disable Bitlocker? Everywhere I have looked gives options that just do not exist when I try them. I have tried going through control panel and it didn't work. I am working on updating the BIOS now. Is it okay if i put the SN770 in without a heatsink for long enough to test it? I only have the one on my motherboard and the one I have doesn't have one pre installed. While I wait for a reply from you I'll install the new SSD and I won't touch digitally.

 

responding on my phone here, I think I’m going to shoot memory express workers. My SSD is in the second slot. I’m assuming putting this new SSD in the first slot and making it my new boot drive has a 99% chance of solving my problems?

In the Windows Search bar, look type in "Manage BitLocker" (without quotes). If it says "C: BitLocker on" with a padlock icon, that means the drive is encrypted. In which case you have an option to backup the recovery key in the options to the right. It's super easy. Just be sure to obtain that key and take a picture of that with your phone if you want as you may have to enter that key in later if prompted.

 

And yes, you can use an NVMe without a heatsink. It will thermal throttle itself if too hot, but that rarely happens, and when it does it's only because you've been issuing sustained writes for minutes at a time. So an SSD heatsink is nice to have, but totally not required.

And yes, you can move that SSD from the 2nd to 1st slot without issues. But again, be sure to backup that BitLocker recovery key first before doing anything else. If the drive isn't encrypted, then it's a non-issue.