I built this PC around 2020 with an Asus TUF Gaming B550M-Plus motherboard, Ryzen 7 3700X using the stock cooler, 32GB of G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 memory, an RTX 2070, and a 750W 80+ power supply. Storage includes a 4TB hard drive for media, a 1TB M.2 boot drive, and a 4TB Crucial SSD for games.
Recently, the CPU has started showing temperature spikes, and the system has occasional stuttering and lag. The game SSD also seems unusually slow and much fuller than expected, while the boot drive appears more full than it should be. Hardware monitoring and disk-checking tools haven't reported any obvious problems.
I mainly play at 1440p, with a second 1080p monitor connected. I haven't replaced the CPU thermal paste or removed the cooler since building the system, although I have cleaned out the dust. Should I start with new thermal paste or a better CPU cooler? Would a CPU or GPU upgrade make more sense, and are there other things I should check first? I'd prefer Nvidia graphics and would like to keep the total upgrade budget around $1,000.
4 Answers
Start with the inexpensive maintenance first. Remove the cooler, clean off the old thermal paste, and apply fresh paste. The stock Ryzen cooler may also be struggling after several years, so a decent tower cooler would be a reasonable $30–$40 upgrade. This could address the temperature spikes and some of the stuttering before you spend heavily on new hardware.
Check the exact Crucial SSD model before assuming it is defective. Some budget models have much worse sustained write performance than their advertised peak sequential speed, especially when they are nearly full. Leave a healthy amount of free space, verify that TRIM is enabled, and check the drive's SMART health and remaining life. Also inspect the boot drive for large game libraries, cached files, restore points, or other data that may be consuming space.
At 1440p, the RTX 2070 is more likely to be the gaming limitation than the Ryzen 7 3700X, especially in newer games. A used RTX 3080 or 3080 Ti could provide a substantial improvement while staying well below the full budget. Keep the existing CPU for now, then consider a BIOS-supported Ryzen 5000 upgrade later if the CPU is still holding performance back.
That makes sense. I would prefer to stay with Nvidia, so I'll compare prices on those cards and check CPU support for my board.
The two monitor resolutions are unlikely to be the main cause of the problem. Mixed refresh rates can occasionally contribute to desktop or video playback issues, but they generally won't explain an overheating CPU or a consistently slow SSD. Update chipset and graphics drivers, monitor CPU and GPU temperatures while gaming, and check whether the stuttering happens when the drive is nearly full or when the CPU is thermally throttling.
I'm running Windows 10, and the upgrade checker says Windows 11 isn't supported even though the hardware seems to meet the requirements. I'll also check TRIM and the drive health more carefully.
I haven't replaced the paste yet, so I'll do that before making a bigger upgrade. I was also wondering whether the motherboard supports a newer Ryzen processor.