PC randomly fully freezes for 10–20 seconds
Hello.
Around half a year ago I noticed that my PC started randomly fully freezing for about 10 to maybe even 20 seconds at a time. It happens both while gaming and during simple tasks like opening browser tabs, for example. Turning the system on and booting in Windows also takes an extremely long time
Some things I noticed:
Whenever my system freezes, and I have some type of audio playing, that audio will keep playing despite everything frozen
CrystalDiskInfo reports the SSD health as Good
PC slows down drastically when installing any type of file onto the SSD
Loading into games takes much longer than expected (for example, Counter Strike - can take 4-5 minutes to load into the main menu)
Things I've tried:
Completely reinstalled Windows multiple times (fully wiped all drives during install)
Ran Windows Memory Diagnostic (no RAM errors)
Used DDU and reinstalled NVIDIA GPU drivers
Installed latest AMD A520 chipset drivers
Disabled SysMain, Windows Search, and Windows Update services
Temporarily disabled the HDD in Device Manager
Possible things I’m considering:
SSD issue despite "Good” SMART status
Faulty SATA cable or SATA port
HDD causing stalls somehow
PSU instability
SPECS:
AMD Ryzen 5 5600
GTX 1650 (MSI)
ASUS Prime A520M-K (motherboard)
16GB of DDR4 (single stick)
Verbatim 512GB SSD (Windows installed here)
WDC WD10EURX 1TB HDD
Windows 11
Does this sound more like a failing SSD/controller issue, a PSU problem, or something else entirely? Or maybe its just time for me to update?