100% CPU Utilization at Random Times during low end edits (1080p H.264 footage)

[engineeringfilmmaker]

Hello Everyone, I will try to be detailed as possible. I have contacted adobe twice, intel, and asus (motherboard manufacturer) and no one knows why my PC is doing this. 

My CPU will randomly go to 100% utilization when I am editing. My computer and premiere become useless until Premiere gets closed since my CPU cannot process any more info. It does this and never stops until I close it. I could wait 10 min and it still is doing it. I am really unsure why. Most of the time, it does it when opening the program and a project. At first I thought it was due to the footage I was editing. I was editing H.265 4k Canon R5 footage. From my understanding h.265 footage cant be decoded well by Intel or Nvidia cards/processors so I just accepted it was the footage. However, recently I was editing a different project that was h.264 canon R 1080p footage which I have been editing for the past few years with zero problems. 

I will go over things I have tried at the bottom of the post. I always edit off of an M.2 SSD (samung 970 evo plus or pro) and I save my scratch disks in the same folder as my project (been doing this for years). 

Lets start here:

PC 1: Temps always cool

i7 7820x (8 core 16 thread) 

32gb 3200 g.skill ram (with xmp)

GTX 1080 TI

970 evo plus

This worked great with 1080 h.264 canon R footage. No problems ever. Then I got the R5 and started having these issues listed above which made me thing it was the R5 footage. So I upgraded my PC. 

Got a new CPU and motherboard. Asus Rog gaming II or something like that with the i9 10980XE (18 core 36 thread). Then this issue still persisted. So I thought maybe it was a faulty part so I had my motherboard and CPU exchanged for new ones. Same issues. At this point I assumed it was just the footage so I accepted it and just moved on. Then I got the RTX 3090 thinking it would blast the footage since it can decode h.265 footage. But same issues, and I am having the same issues on a project where canon R5 footage is no where near. Only the canon R was used in 1080. 

adobe had me try to open the "tutorial" file project that they supply with the program and that seemed to work fine but what are the odds that out of 3 or 4 cameras all of the footage does the same thing. I have tried the canon RP, R, R5, 5d MK 4, and had someone shoot with their own Canon R and thats the footage I am editing. I have also edited sony footage. 

Things I have tried. 
Factory reset on my M.2 windows drive (My system runs on a 970 Pro 512gb at about 25% full) 

Fresh reinstall of windows and all adobe programs 

Tried editing off of a different M.2, also a sata SSD, also a HDD, also an External HDD, and finally a NAS network drive. 

New computer components

Older version of Premiere (like 14.2 vs 14.7) have not tried version 13

Older graphics card driver on both GPUs 

Things I will be trying

Opening windows in safe mode

going to my admin account in windows and trying the project 

[basil1891]

Are you still on 32GB RAM? You likely affected by 'RAM Starvation' problem. It's recommended to have 2GB RAM per logical core, that's for Adobe PP only, plus some for OS. Try to turn off HT and maybe even some cores completely. 

https://videoguys.com/blogs/news-and-sales/avoiding-ram-starvation-getting-optimum-performance-in-pr...

[engineeringfilmmaker]

I forgot to mention I am now on 64GB ram. All of my ram is identical. My RAM is normally at a max of 40% utilization. Most of the time that my CPU is at 100%, my ram is only at 33%. 

You mentioned turning off HT, I am not sure what HT is? 

Is your advice still relavent now knowing im on 64gb ram? I should also mention I am on an 850w platinum power supply, not sure if power consumption is relavent. 

[basil1891]

HT is for 'Hyper-Threading',  so if  HT off = > 18 threads remains. Still worth to try.

[engineeringfilmmaker]

Yeah, I realized that after reading the word Hyperthreading again. ha! 

Do the 36 threads count as logical cores? If they do not, I would be well over the amount of ram needed. 

I did put my i7 7820x back in for a couple of days when I got my i9 exchanged for a new one and that is only 16 threads and I still had the same issues. 

I am probably going to try to start in safe mode, and start in admin account before messing with turning off or on HT. 

The hard part about this issue is that its not an exact science to recreate the issue. Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes right when starting a project. Sometimes 1 hour into a project. 

[Andy 1968]

Some cameras use a variation of H.264/265 that is hard to plyback even at 1920 X 1080. Try R3D, BRAW and Apple Pro Res files.  You can find them on the internet. That being said is the GPU acceleration enabled? A GPU driver update might help.

[engineeringfilmmaker]

I thought it was the codec until it started happening on a codec that used to work perfectly fine, even on my i7 3770k with 16gb ram drr3. It would be strage if all of a sudden that same codec footage as before now wont work well on my 100x faster PC setup. 

I have tried Prores and it does the same thing. I usually shoot prores on my Ninja V Recorder so I dont have to deal with H.265 footage. 

My GPU acceleration is enabled in premiere and I have tried multiple variations of GPU drivers including older, newer, studio, and gaming versions. I have also had this issue on both the 1080 ti and RTX 3090. I have basically ruled out every single peice of hardware except the RAM and power supply at this point unless I have to go to a super old version of my GPU driver. I did try a decently old driver but not like a year old one so I could try that if necessary. 

When this issue I am having happens, my GPU is normally at 1% untilization. Is this normal? or should it be higher when in permiere. I am not normally using Effects other than color correction in lumetri on my footage when this issue happens. Sometimes I will have some graphics in my video too but it really happens with or without graphics/effects.