Processing frequency fluctuates and system becomes unresponsive.
Processing frequency fluctuates and system becomes unresponsive.
I haven't been using the troubleshooting mode for a while, so I’m hoping you can offer some useful advice on this problem. Right now the game freezes for 1 to 3 seconds with long periods of smooth play. I stopped the game and looked into it. HWinfo indicated that idle clock speeds were rising from 50% to 100%, while the PC froze at those high speeds. The sound during freezing was distorted, and the temperature stayed normal (below 70°C). Voltage changes matched the clock speed. Nothing else seemed to react. The GPU settings looked fine.
Back in my day, I remember a trick: if you gently move the CPU cooler while the PC is running, and it freezes completely, it usually means the CPU or memory is failing. That didn’t help because nothing changed. Since the PC was still not working despite constant freezing, I turned off the power supply and restarted it after one minute. Now it runs without issues. I’ve run both quick and full scans of Windows Defender, and no threats were found.
The PC is nine years old, so it’s likely aging. But the real question is—are these signs pointing to hardware failure, or could there be another cause?
Spec wasn't considered important here. The system details are as follows: CPU i5-3470, 16GB RAM, 12800 MT/s, PCIe 3.0, HyperX KIT2, 700W power supply from Coolermaster, and a GTX660 GPU.
It occurred in Star Craft 2 and didn't require much resources, which means it shouldn't have caused problems. However, the problem kept happening even after the game was closed, making it seem more unusual.