martixy

Hmmmmm.... HMMMM... Initially I classified it as faulty human memory, but I did also get the impression of weird lag in explorer, even without iCue. I can't do a direct comparison between both, but having a second person confirm my vague, subjective feeling independently gives some food for thought. I initially got the board because it had enough Storage I/O for all my drives(I have all ports populated). I have since discovered how disingenuous they were on that point(using the M.2 ports disables sata ports) and am never buying another asrock product ever again. Random note: The technical term for the interrupt spike you mentioned is an "interrupt storm". It is essentially a DoS attack on your processor. I've encountered it before (not on this mobo). Might help with diagnosing/googling if you know the term.

I detect a pattern here. Both of us are on the Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming 6 MoBo which has... issues with certain drivers. Starting to get the impression this mobo might be a piece of ****.

I'd say I'm stuck without RGB for now. :) I'd gladly give up all the RBG in the world for a more responsive system. (This is probably heresy on these forums, so keep it on the down-low.)

When I said up top, that "it's identical there", I meant that I had already done what you suggested and the behaviour was identical. In any case, went and downgraded to the old CUE, but now it says "Incompatible firmware". Guess I'm stuck with iCUE, mostly for worse. Nice case tho. Indy could probably survive a nuclear blast in one of these. :P

Well, I threw in iCUE before I knew iCUE would cause any issues. Though I don't understand your first paragraph. The temp comment was my attempt at lamenting the weather around here - I was like, wait... why is the GPU idling so high(according to the iCUE log), then I remembered I'm being cooked alive as we speak too (31C in the shade today, and I don't have an AC, blech...). Anyway, actual processor temps are pretty decent, given ambient temperature. And case airflow is quite good. I'm using all fan headers too(I think): 3 chassis fans and 2 processor fans (my cooler is the trusty old Hyper 212 Evo Plus or whatever it was, except the new ram I got was not low-profile and the normal fan got in the way, so I moved it to the back and got a slim noctua for the front, so now I got it in push-pull). Random edit 2: That case is built like a tank. It's practically all metal and weighs accordingly. Has a 140mm in the back and front by the drive bay, and a 200mm on top.

Well... apart from the mainstay Process Explorer, nothing really. It's a clean install on iCue, seeing as I upgraded to 9900K recently and did a fresh windows install, with a fresh everything else. Do still have my old windows install on the other drive (still have things things to migrate), it's identical there. The case... I don't have the box with me, but I went browsing thru a google image search and I think it's CM HAF 922 (when I said it's old, I meant it). :D And since we're doing this... *Gloryhammer - Masters of the Galaxy, cuz I didn't get to hear them live, cuz they chickened out cuz of a bit of rain.* I'm assuming we're talking about iCue's logging bits. Damn... it's hot today. I'm baking over here, to speak nothing of my GPU idling at 52C. I'm just gonna put everything here ↓ iCUE logs.zip

1. Updated specs. 2. No other RGB. The mobo and video card to tend to glow in my face when I go to sleep, but I've never bothered investigating just how RGB they are. So far they're mostly just blinky R. So it seems it shouldn't be idling that high. Though... if you're using task manager, not sure if it reports fractional percentages. I'm on process explorer over here. Hey, he knows what a context switch is and did mention .NET and its janky threading support, so I'mma give him a pass. :P

9900K. A sustained 1.7-1.8% processor usage represents a sustained 30% load on one core. iCue alone, to speak nothing of the Corsair service and child processes.

No, I do not. What does that setting do. Running iCue to check that setting immediately had an effect on the responsiveness explorer windows (and not just - for example I have process explorer running constantly, and it too gets painted one line at a time when you maximize the window), lending further credence to the notion that iCue is the cause. Speaking of process explorer - icue and corsair service's average context switch volume is abnormally high. And idling at ~30% CPU on one core is crazy just for some RGB. I want my billions of CPU cycles back! And put to good use painting windows. Not blinking a few lights on my KB.

First of all, iCue is a massive resource hog. It depends on the Corsair service which itself spawns half a dozen other processes, which constantly consume unnecessary amounts of CPU time. However the bigger problem is iCue seems to interfere in a very odd way with Windows Explorer. Ever since I installed it explorer has been sluggish as heck. It's difficult to describe. It's like the computer is starved of resources and is having a hard time painting explorer windows - components pop up one by one. For example it'll draw the top bar first, then the folder tree to the left, then the main view. It gets worse the more the PC has been on. A restart makes it somewhat bearable. This has been observed across 2 different windows installations. At first I wasn't sure what was causing it, so I began disabling things one by one. The last few of days I've been running without iCue, and it seems the problem has vanished completely. Now all windows explorer windows paint instantaneously. Nothing else on the system has been changed. This leads me to believe it is the culprit. Has anyone else observed similar behaviour? Is there any particular reason downgrading to the old CUE is a worse idea than staying on the bloated piece of crap that iCue seems to be presently? I just have the K70 keyboard. I would gladly give up all the RGB in the world for a more responsive system. I am open to alternatives. The only thing that bugs me right now is giving up the media keys working on non-focused applications.

Guys.... thank you SO MUCH. The same problem has been torturing me for DAYS. I'd send each of you a beer if I could.