I have a 13900KS CPU. Then I configured CPUs 8-15 as system reserved cores.Then I set the CPU affinity for games like Naraka: Bladepoint and CS:GO to CPUs [8,10,12,14], and set their CPU set to 8-15. When the games are under high load, they freeze or even cause a black screen shutdown.
If leave other settings unchanged, I set the CPU affinity to 8-15 , this issue does not occur.
But when I set the CPU affinity to 8, 10, 12, 14, I can obviously feel that the game latency is greatly reduced, but it can't last long before it gets stuck, and in a few cases black screen restarted.
Of course, the problem only arises when the system is modified to preserve the CPU.
I don't know much about this knowledge and have a shorter learning time. Is there a better way?
You may need to remove the Reserved CPU Sets *or* some of the problematic affinity rules. Not all adjustments will play well together, and in those cases, it is often necessary to simply back them off.
This is a scheduling bottleneck, not raw CPU power. By pinning to 8,10,12,14 you're starving the game of threads and breaking how the OS balances load across P and E cores. It feels fast briefly but becomes unstable under load.
Better approach is keep affinity wider like 8–15 or let Windows manage it, avoid aggressive core isolation.
With that information, I can pinpoint exactly why configurations 8, 10, 12, and 14 cause crashes while 8–15 works normally.
I had a similar experience after reserving CPU cores and limiting games to selected threads. Latency initially felt better, but heavy loads sometimes caused freezes and unexpected restarts. Returning to the full core range fixed the instability. Thank you to the admin for documenting this so clearly—it helped me understand the trade-off.
Hey, affinity and CPU sets only control where threads run, so they shouldn't crash a PC. A freeze or black-screen reboot under load usually points to CPU or voltage instability, and your pinning is just exposing it. With only 8/10/12/14, four cores take the whole load and boost to their max clock (~5.8-6 GHz on a 13900KS), which is exactly where 13th/14th-gen K/KS chips can be unstable, while spreading the load over 8-15 keeps the cores lower and gentler, so no crash. I'd start by updating the BIOS to the latest Intel microcode and loading the Intel Default profile with no manual OC or undervolt, then check Event Viewer after a crash for WHEA-Logger or Kernel-Power 41 errors. You can also cap the P-core max ratio around 55x: if the crashes stop, it's boost stability and not your affinity settings. If it still crashes at stock, contact Intel or your seller, since these chips have an extended warranty. A simpler alternative is to disable Hyper-Threading in the BIOS, which gives you the same "one thread per core" effect without any pinning.