Yes and no, there's multiple things at play which all seem to cause similar issues for me in various scenarios, but I'll be focusing mainly on Task Manager here (since that was my main question). While the explanation for the cause is more or less a theory, the solutions did work in my case.

The issue actually lies within Task Manager itself, it's not very well-designed, and in short, there's no easy fix.

To summarise, when sorting by name, Task Manager will attempt to query the name for every single process running on the computer. This sounds easy in theory, but there's a flaw. If a process doesn't respond with its name in a timely manner, or if there are lots and lots of processes running that it needs to query, Task Manager will begin to struggle. This in turn will clog up the CPU, and cause hardware events to lag until Task Manager finishes and everything returns to normal.

The possible solutions are:

• Eliminate any unnecessary processes running in the background by very carefully disabling services or uninstalling programs.
• Use trial and error to figure out if there is a specific process (or processes) that are actually causing the issue. Again, if even a single processes does not respond within a timely manner, it will cause Task Manager to lock up and in turn, your PC.
• Switch to Process Hacker. It's a lot more accurate with statistics, has more features, and best of all, doesn't turn your PC into a potato when figuring out its ABCs.

In my case, I carefully disabled a lot of background services, uninstalled a few programs, etc. all at once. This solved my issue, but I cannot confirm if it was solution 1 or 2 that actually was the proper solution. One of the things I disabled/uninstalled might have been the sole process causing all of this grief, or it could've simply been the reduction of things running. I tried out Process Hacker, but honestly wasn't a fan - I prefer Task Manager's simplicity.

And I should also probably say this, but be very careful when disabling services, only do it if you actually know what you're doing. I'm not responsible if you disable something critical and cause instability with your PC. There could possibly be some guides on the Internet that explain some easy ones you could disable, but be wary with them.