stuttering and slowdowns while playing

[Rarok]

To be honest I'm going to change my computer in a few months but I still want to fight against a trouble that I have in my computer.

SPECS
Asrock 970 Extreme4
AMD FX-8350
2x8GB 1600DDR3
Asus DUAL-GTX1060 6GB
Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB and SanDisk SDSSDH-3500G 500GB

The issue is that for example while playing Destiny 2 it doesn't matter if I put the game at High graphics or at Lowest.
I can play it without issues at rock solid 60FPS but from time to time (most of time when there are tons of explosions in screen) it suddenly falls to 2-3FPS or even 0.5FPS for a few seconds and then it returns to work perfectly, sometime I have a stutter like that every few minutes and sometimes it takes a hour in doing but always will do it.
One strange thing is that when that happens if I check in the windows system monitor the load of the computer it seems that it had the CPU and GPU working depending on the setting I put in the game (when playing at high graphicts the CPU and GPU are almost at 100% all the time and in low setting they are at 50%) but when the stuttering/slowdown/freezing happens the load of CPU/GPU falls to 5% like it was idling).
There are other games that due the same, for example today I played Watch Dogs and while driving a car it does exactly the same, the fun part is that when I had a AMD Phenom II X4 965 and a GTX770 with the same board the game never reached the 60FPS but It didn't had any slowdowns.

Checked:

• Windows reinstalled from scratch only with graphics drivers, steam and a game.
• Not thermal throtling, GPU has the fan speed in automode and it never reaches 100%, CPU has a DarkRock Pro2 for cooling and it keeps at 55ºC. The Mobo reaches 60ºC but I think that still it isn't so high)
• No RAM corruption checked with memtest
• When that happens the sound gets also glitchy and it remembered the DOS times when you had to limit the sound channels or you'll get slowdown and started hearing tons of glitched sounds so I tried to desactivate the sound card from the windows devices screen.
• People say that the GTX1060 can't get the most of the PCIE-2 but the 3DMark PCI Express tests goes 6GB/s.

To be honest I'm wondering if there is something wrong in my mobo or if it can be a trouble with the PCI bandwith of if there is any memory buffer that gets full and has to free space, if anyone has a idea about what to check I'm interested in reading.

[emosun]

I'm more willing to bet it's windows simply doing something software related that causes the slowdown. The gpu going to 5% is the gpu waiting for the system to catch up.

Since your cpu is said to only have 50% load on the lower settings it would take something significant to slow the game down that much , of course windows 10 has significant things happening at all times so it could really be anything like telemetry or something else that uses cpu power for a bit.

[themelvin]

 

 

- Are you running your games of that old SSHD? Ever since they came to market I've blamed them for everything evil in this world, and I swear that 9 times out of 10 when I get a laptop or PC in for repairs and it has a SSHD installed it has something to do with why it came in to my shop in the first place.

Try and simply unplug it and test a game or two, even if your games or launcher are currently not installed on it - drives that are starting to go bad can cause the weirdest headaches.

[Rarok]

11 hours ago, themelvin said:

 

 

- Are you running your games of that old SSHD? Ever since they came to market I've blamed them for everything evil in this world, and I swear that 9 times out of 10 when I get a laptop or PC in for repairs and it has a SSHD installed it has something to do with why it came in to my shop in the first place.

Try and simply unplug it and test a game or two, even if your games or launcher are currently not installed on it - drives that are starting to go bad can cause the weirdest headaches.

Nice idea, have tried it a few minutes ago as you sugested, still same issue. Also didn't know that Sandisk SSD where giving troubles to people.

[Rarok]

12 hours ago, emosun said:

I'm more willing to bet it's windows simply doing something software related that causes the slowdown. The gpu going to 5% is the gpu waiting for the system to catch up.

Since your cpu is said to only have 50% load on the lower settings it would take something significant to slow the game down that much , of course windows 10 has significant things happening at all times so it could really be anything like telemetry or something else that uses cpu power for a bit.

That could be if the CPU didn't went almost idle when to slowdowns happen. Also I tried to deactivate any overlays (and didn't realised I had so many ones that I never use, Steam, Windows, Discord, nvidia) but even without any overlay it still keeps having troubles.

Also tried deactivating the game mode in Windows. And also lowered the sampling speed in the mouse (I know that in very old computers it was a trouble, today it shouldn't but still I changed it)
 

I added two captures of what happens with the load then the slowdown happen (ignore the very last one because that was when I alt+tab to do the screenshots



 

[Rarok]

I think that I can say that I "solved" the trouble (not solved but detected where can be the trouble)
While playing
CPU temperature (socket): 50ºC
Core temperature: 25ºC-30ºC depending on what core.

North-bridge temperature: 65-75ºC (using a probe on the heatsing)
VRM: 75-80ºC (using a probe on the VRM)

That and I checked and it seems that people had trouble with my motherboard+processor combination because the VRMs are not enought. So probably thermal throttling or power failure due to heat in the VRM/Northbridge.

Well I was going to update my computer.