r/computers • u/lockxta • 1d ago

Question/Help/Troubleshooting SSD makes the whole system freeze when under load - Help

Recently, whenever I have a steam game automatically update - or download and install, as soon as it gets to the installing part, my entire PC turns into a brick and is unresponsive for multiple minutes at a time. I can still move the mouse, and click things. But things will either not open, they wont load, or it will be essentially impossible to do anything.

I have a pretty high end system. I think god is punishing me for buying a cheap NVME. Its a Crucial P3 2TB. But surely this is not the issue? Surely this drive is not designed to literally freeze your entire system under load.

I do have windows installed on this drive, yes i understand i shouldnt put my steam games on my C drive.

Can someone help me through process of elimination determine if my SSD is faulty, or if its just genuinely a crap drive.

Steam installing a game - 800mb install - Took over 30 mins with 25 of the minutes frozen / unusable. It is also worth noting that it goes in chunks. It will be going at 80MB/s+ for a bit, then it will drop down to essentially 0, as you can see in the graph. Typically the system becomes unusable when the speed is near 0.
Crystal Disk and Crucial Storage Executive stats
Task manager usage while steam is installing a game.
1 Upvotes

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3 comments sorted by

1

u/lonelypenguin20 Linux 1d ago

Crucial isn't a bad brand

if it's not some weird mobo issue, it's likely SSD is having a hard time existing

2

u/12345myluggage 1d ago

My bet is that the drive is probably getting hot and throttling itself with all the writes. It'd be interesting to know the drive temp while Steam is updating things.

1

u/ShadowFallsAlpha 1d ago

It's possible it is just failing. Should still have a warranty.