Some programs dramatically slow down or lock up my computer

In November I put have a fresh Windows 10 install (old one was freaking out on me and Fall Creators Update fully hosed it) and got new Coffee Lake CPU/Mem/MB while I was at it. I was really expecting a performance boost over my 2nd gen i5. Instead I got a laggy system.

It is generally less responsive than before, but some programs (today's list is: Visual Studio 2017, or programs compiled with VS2017, The VS Updater, the Intel Driver and Support Assistant,) will bring my computer to a crawl, as in 3 second delay to move mouse, windows waiting 10 seconds to refresh, and some times hit the reset button frozen.

VS2013 does cause some increased lag (I can watch the controls paint on my form), but at least the message pump still works.

I opened Process Explorer and added the CPU history tab to try and catch the culprit in the act. But either ProcExp does not log during laggy periods or it shows a noticeable spike in CPU, but none of the active processes are showing any corresponding spike in activity (and yes, I have show process from all users turned on).
CPU and GPU temps are well below problematic levels.

Full computer specs: Win10, i5-8600K, MSI Z370-A Pro, Radeon R9 200, 2x Viper 8GB DDR4 2800Mhz, Samsung SSD 840 1TB, Samsung SSD 850 500GB (boot), WD5000AAKX 2TB.

Any advice on what might be going on or what further debug steps I can take?

Have you gone through and installed the drivers from MSI.

Looks like a few BIOS's are also available, obviously you know the risk in updating BIOS's

Did you also follow recommendations on placement of your two memory sticks, slots a2 and B2?

I would compare BIOS installed to latest version. See how many versions are between them.

Are the SSD's new? I ask as I think the Samsung Magician can check them for speed.

I might shut off Integrated graphics to see if they are somehow conflicting.


Edit: Are any devices being flagged in device manager? Have you confirmed with power off that all cables are seated correctly?

Be interested after BIOS.

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Jack

Fingers crossed my end.