I get these stutters pretty much every day since I built this thing 6 months ago. It begins with my mouse locking up for a few seconds and then the entire OS starts lagging hard. For a minute the system is just barely usable, but then it gets really bad and actions are very rarely registered(alt-tabbing, hovering over UI has delayed effect, clicking on things, pausing a video). Maybe once every 45 seconds I can see my action being registered. The only thing that fixes it is a restart. Just so you can imagine how bad it is, I use the case buttons to reset the PC because it takes around 10 minutes if I try to do it from Windows.
Note: It's really weird, but this does seem to happen a lot more when I'm playing a RISK: Global Domination on Steam. Don't get me wrong, it happens once or twice a day even when I don't, but it seems like it triggers something about my system. It can happen like 6/7 times in a day if I play that particular game. Other games seem fine.
Some things I've noticed:
Resetting the PC after I had the issue will make Windows boot up a lot longer(1-2 minutes more). Usually the Windows logo and the loading circle shows up for 2 seconds, then both disappear and the loading circle appears for 2 seconds and I get to the loading screen. After a stuttering "session" the logo+circle show up, then disappear, then the loading circle shows up again and loops for maybe 60-90 seconds.
I get the issue in light usage scenarios, not when gaming/coding or doing something intensive. I don't think it has happened while I'm playing anything other than Risk: Global Domination.
This is my build:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600
MSI B450M Mortar Max
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB 2x8 3600Mhz
be quiet! System Power 9 600W PSU
be quiet! Dark Rock 4
be quiet! Pure Base 500
Gainward RTX 2060 Super
3x 500Gb SSDs *1x new WD Blue in M.2_1 and 2x SanDisk SSD Ultra which I had from before but they're only like 1 year old.
3x be quiet! case fans
TP-Link Archer T6E AC1300 Wireless PCIe card
I would prefer if I can resolve this issue without buying new hardware, but when I built this thing 6 months ago my plan was to upgrade to RTX 3000 and maybe Ryzen 4000(depending on how big the gains are) once they came out, so if you think it could be GPU/CPU related, I will probably upgrading them soon anyway.
What I have tried:
Obvious things like reinstalling Windows 10, reinstalling drivers, using different power plans, switching the memory sticks, reseating GPU/RAM, using older drivers, flashing older bios versions, disabling the XMP profile, running my RAM @3200(didn't try lower tho)... The only thing that I can think of that I haven't tried is putting my M.2 SSD in the M.2_2 slot because I have the Wifi card and it disables it.
Installing Linux one time but the funny thing is I couldn't even get past the installation process most of the times. I tried installing ElementaryOS like 7 times and maybe 5 out of them I got stuck in the installation process. The few times I got it to work, the issue presented itself within 5 minutes of me using the distro. I don't know tho, it could be an issue with ElementaryOS.
Letting it do it's thing several times for 10/15 minutes. One time my Wallpaper Engine crashed and the window showed an issue with a DirectX file. Sorry, but I don't remember the exact name(something like d3*9***.dll). Another time most of my background apps crashed(MSI Afterburner, RTSS, Wallpaper engine and suck) and it seemed like it fixed itself. I've tried not using any background apps but it still happens.
I've tried so many things, I'm just so tired of the trial and error process and I hope some of you can help me.