PC freezes or becomes extremely slow after sitting idle for 10–15 minutes
Asked by
MellowCedar42
I bought a custom-built PC with all new parts in December last year, and it has had this problem since day one. The system runs perfectly while I'm actively using it, but after being left untouched for roughly 10–15 minutes, it sometimes becomes almost completely unresponsive. Everything slows down dramatically, although it doesn't fully crash.
My specifications are:
- AMD Ryzen 5 7500F
- NVIDIA RTX 4060
- ASUS A620M-PLUS motherboard
- 32GB Crucial DDR5-5600 RAM, 2×16GB
- Kingston SNV3S2000G 2TB SSD and Lexar NM620 256GB SSD
- Windows 11 Pro 25H2
The issue doesn't happen every time, and it can occasionally appear shortly after a cold boot. When it occurs, Task Manager is difficult to open, but CPU usage usually fluctuates between about 30% and 70%, while memory usage remains around 40%–60%. Neither appears to be maxed out.
Waiting several minutes sometimes lets the PC recover, while restarting may or may not help. A full power-off and cold boot usually works. I have already disabled sleep-related settings, and the problem existed before I started using a screensaver with a live wallpaper. I regularly update my NVIDIA drivers, but otherwise haven't changed many system drivers or settings. Malware scans have found nothing.
What could cause this kind of idle-related semi-freeze, and what should I test first?
Answers
The behavior could also point to instability during CPU idle states. Some Ryzen systems have shown problems when dropping to very low voltage or clock speeds, although that doesn’t automatically mean the processor is defective. Updating the motherboard BIOS and chipset drivers, then testing with default BIOS settings, would be sensible before concluding that the CPU is bad.
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This may be related to a power-state transition rather than ordinary resource usage. Check the Windows power plan and try temporarily setting it to High or Maximum Performance. In the advanced power settings, you can also raise the processor minimum state slightly as a diagnostic. If the freezes stop, the system may be unstable when the CPU enters a low-power idle state.
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Don’t rule out the power supply just because the system is new. A faulty or unstable PSU can cause problems when the PC changes between idle and active power states. Someone I know had similar idle freezes that continued after disabling sleep and disappeared after replacing the PSU. If power-plan testing doesn’t help, checking the PSU model, connections, and warranty would be worthwhile.
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MellowCedar42: I’ll try adjusting the power plan and minimum processor state. The normal sleep settings have already been disabled, but I hadn’t tested the processor power-state settings specifically.