For the past few weeks, my PC has been unusually slow during startup, and applications stutter heavily when launching. Even opening a simple website can push the system into severe slowdown. The Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSD appears as 100% active in Windows, although its read and write speeds fluctuate rather than staying consistently low.
I have checked the drive with CrystalDiskInfo and Samsung Magician. The SSD reports 97% health, no outstanding SMART issues, current firmware, and passes the available diagnostic tests. I have also removed a recent Windows update, cleaned the drive, compressed files, run scans, disabled SysMain, changed PCIe power-saving settings, updated firmware, cleaned the PC, and restarted it several times.
The system has used this SSD since May 2022. The PC includes a Ryzen 9 7950X, 32 GB of RAM, an RTX 4080, two Samsung 980 PRO 2TB SSDs, and a 4TB hard drive. The motherboard is an ASUS ProArt X670E-Creator WiFi. A Samsung Magician benchmark showed about 6881 MB/s sequential read and 588 MB/s sequential write, with no unusual temperatures.
What else should I check to determine whether this is a Windows, driver, motherboard-slot, or actual SSD problem?
3 Answers
A useful next step is to boot from a Linux live USB or another temporary operating system. If the system runs normally there, the cause is probably Windows, a driver, or background software. If the same stuttering and disk activity happen outside Windows, that points more strongly toward the drive, its connection, or the motherboard slot. You can also monitor temperatures and activity with tools such as HWiNFO while testing.
Run a proper storage benchmark such as CrystalDiskMark and check which PCIe slot each SSD is installed in. The motherboard model and slot configuration matter, especially with multiple NVMe drives. Also watch Task Manager or Resource Monitor to identify which process is causing the 100% active time, because a drive can show high active time even when its transfer speed is not very high.
Verify the SSD firmware in Samsung Magician, since older 980 PRO firmware versions caused reliability problems for some drives. If it is already current, the benchmark results and health report do not completely rule out an intermittent problem, so make sure important data is backed up.
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