MHW Iceborne PC Crashes, Memory Leaks, 100% CPU Usage, Performance Issues

MHW Iceborne is having performance issues on PC. A number of players have been complaining about things ranging from minor problems, like FPS drops and lagging when moving between areas, to big issues, like crashes, memory leaks, abnormal CPU usage, blue screen of death and more. This guide is going to show you a list of known issues in MHW Iceborne on PC, how to fix or avoid them when possible.

MHW Iceborne memory leak

A lot of folks have reported RAM usage climbing steadily while Iceborne is running, until either the game or the OS crashes. We’ve seen pictures of up to 27 GB being used. It seems like the game isn’t the culprit here, but rather one of Windows’ crappy defender applications. It’s called the Antimalware Service Executable, and disabling it seems to help.

100% CPU usage in Iceborne

The CPU usage itself isn’t troublesome – as long as core temperatures are fine and the game doesn’t suffer any performance issues because of it. If it does, you can try a program that limits the amount of CPU power the game can use, like BES – we’ve heard reports of it helping.

Crashes, freezing, BSOD

A lot of players have been experiencing hard crashes, freezing or the blue screen of death while trying to play Iceborne. As far as we can tell, there’s nothing that can help with these – you’ll just have to wait for a patch to smooth things out.

MHW Iceborne PC won’t launch

We’ve heard several reports of people being unable to launch the game at all. There’s a bunch of things you could try if this happens to you. First of all, delete any mods you might have – Special K seems to be the culprit, but it’s better to be safe. Then, open up the graphics_options ini file and change fullscreen to borderless, set the resolution you want, and maybe even enable DirectX 12.

We’re going to keep monitoring the situation, and we’ll update the guide if we find out anything new.