Flipendo!

Eh, who needs quality? I took this a little over ten years ago and it still makes me laugh for some reason.

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Try uninstalling the Asus game performance booster, restart, and then see if the problem persist. If it does, try uninstalling steam next.

Edit: I want to add that the fact the freezing only happens when software isnt running makes me believe its software related. If i had to guess, possibly a program or utility that runs alongside the game and may even run at startup. If it was the same game everytime, then I would suspect the game install first, but since any game keeps the system running fine it makes me think the issue stems from software running only during game play for all games. Getting a blue screen error makes me think the problem software is something with elevated system access and, before your response, my intial suspicion was a bad AntiCheat install. If i had to guess, your game boosting software might be trying to run when games arent creating a conflict somewhere (maybe unresponsive programs windows cant resolve).

Out of curiosity, is it the same game that keeps it from freezing, or is it any game?