Horrible lag on newly built Haswell system - please advise

harddud

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2005
Messages
285
Hey, I build systems as a hobby and not very often. I just built a Haswell i5 HTPC with a 120GB Crucial SSD, 1 TB drive for media, 8 GB RAM and a GTX 950. I TRY to use the system for browsing, videos and some light gaming on our TV.

The bottom line is that even with almost nothing installed on the system the comp suffers from horrible lag problems.

I have loaded all of the latest drivers for all components including the MB and vid card. Within a few days of conception the system really bogs down ... and I mean really badly. A mouse click might not be fulfilled for up to 10 or more seconds after the click. I have Avast and Malwarebytes loaded and have no hits on either.


I am ready to start from scratch and reload everything bit by bit but was hoping that someone might have had a similar situation occur ... and provide a roadmap to fix it.

Thank you and please ask any questions if you need more info.
 
What OS are you using?

Have you checked system resource usage when this occurs?
 
What OS are you using?

Have you checked system resource usage when this occurs?


I originally installed Win 7 but upgraded to 10. I then chose to return to Win 7. Yes, svchost.exe is showing up a lot. I am looking into this and finding a LOT of other users with this issue.
 
Just for shits and giggles run the DPC Latency Checker and post some screenshots of it after it's been running for a while:

DPC Latency Checker

If you have lag, you're going to know it for certain as it'll cause that tool to show nothing but red spikes of activity so, give it a go and get some screenshots posted then we can see about the next step.
 
Just for shits and giggles run the DPC Latency Checker and post some screenshots of it after it's been running for a while:

DPC Latency Checker

If you have lag, you're going to know it for certain as it'll cause that tool to show nothing but red spikes of activity so, give it a go and get some screenshots posted then we can see about the next step.



Will do and thank you. I'm just about ready to wipe the whole thing ... but I like a good mystery and would like to find out who done it here ...
 
OK

I ran the LC and it was difficult, why? Because my system would lock every time I tried to even open Explorer. Here are two screen captures:
 

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I want to than k everyone who attempted to assist in this matter. This system is locking/lagging no matter what application I use. I try to use Explorer and it locks for 30+ seconds before it will load.. When I try to use Firefox I constantly get "not responding" for a time. This system is capable of much more than this. These lags are not showing up (apparently) on the latency graphs.
 
The wipe and reinstall is probably your fastest and safest bet.

Apart from that, your stuck either going through safe boot and eliminating hardware drivers, and/or eliminating startup services, until you figure out which one it is.
 
I have seen this happen on numerous systems (usually laptops) (and usually with non ssd main drives) . This is typically resolved by leaving the system in an on state awake and allowing the mysterious windows background processes to complete.

I am suspicious of an issue where there is not enough free space on the drives in use. What are the current numbers for free space on both drives ?
 
You mentioned svchost and it taking a few days, so could it be windows update is bogging you down? 7 does have a lot of updates it needs to do from a fresh install
 
I have seen this happen on numerous systems (usually laptops) (and usually with non ssd main drives) . This is typically resolved by leaving the system in an on state awake and allowing the mysterious windows background processes to complete.

I am suspicious of an issue where there is not enough free space on the drives in use. What are the current numbers for free space on both drives ?



Sir,

77 GB free space on the 120 boot SSD and 890 free on the backup media drive. his is beguiling. Every time I try to execute an app it takes 30-60 seconds to acknowledge ... it is a new system! I tested my internet connect and it look very robust.


Time to wipe and reload?
 
Checked the SMART status on the SSD and HDD?

Firmware on the SSD? BIOS on the motherboard?

If those are all good then reinstall.
 
Checked the SMART status on the SSD and HDD?

Firmware on the SSD? BIOS on the motherboard?

If those are all good then reinstall.

I second this. Or try unplugging the HDD. When I first built my PC the secondary HDD I got was DOA. When I unplugged it everything worked perfectly.
 
There's no reason that system, even when going through fresh install indexing, would bog down (especially with an SSD).

I would guess a hardware issue like the CPU is throttling down due to overheating or some other hardware issue. It does not sound like a driver issue.
 
There's no reason that system, even when going through fresh install indexing, would bog down (especially with an SSD).

I would guess a hardware issue like the CPU is throttling down due to overheating or some other hardware issue. It does not sound like a driver issue.


I did a fresh install and everything now seems fine but I am concerned about this issue that you bring up. I purchased an i5-4590s (65W) because I was concerned about the temperatures inside the Cooler Master Elite 130 that I used. What do you think the normal temps should be for this chip in such a case? I am using a stock cooler ...
 
The stock intel coolers suck. You are probably running high if it was not installed correctly. There could be a number of factors, is the SSD working right so running an SSD s.m.a.r.t. disk checker, are you sure windows is done updating? I would unplug the internet and see if it still runs crappy. Do you have motherboard drivers installed? I do think we have a complete picture of the initial setup.
 
I am getting about 58C at idle on this system. This is in the "normal" range for this chip but still seems warm. Is this acceptable?
 
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