Stuttering and freezing every 3-6 hours

[riyusso]

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.

[191x7]

Does it happen when you use only the most necessarry hardware and sisconnect everything else?

 

Have you monitored your DPC latency?

[riyusso]

10 minutes ago, 191x7 said:

Does it happen when you use only the most necessarry hardware and sisconnect everything else?

 

Have you monitored your DPC latency?

1. The only thing I can remove is one of my memory sticks and two of my SSDs. I don't have a wired connection to my router so I can't take out the Wifi card. What else can I disconnect? The case fans I guess, but I dout that will help.

2. I have ran LatencyMon and there weren't any problems.

[191x7]

10 minutes ago, riyusso said:

1. The only thing I can remove is one of my memory sticks and two of my SSDs. I don't have a wired connection to my router so I can't take out the Wifi card. What else can I disconnect? The case fans I guess, but I dout that will help.

2. I have ran LatencyMon and there weren't any problems.

You have to take out the wifi card. it's not essential. And the card is the most likely culprit. Use the PC without the card, even if that means having no network access. That is the only way to detect if the PC will behave that way with the card unplugged.

[riyusso]

1 minute ago, 191x7 said:

You have to take out the wifi card. it's not essential. And the card is the most likely culprit. Use the PC without the card, even if that means having no network access.

If I take it out, I won't have network access(for Risk:Global Domination to force it) and I'll have to wait a long time to find out if it even works. But I guess If it's actually the issue that's the only way and atleast I will know to buy a new one.

[riyusso]

I took the wifi card out and used an ethernet cable to share from my laptop and it happed again. Looks like the issue is not the wifi card and it's probably something bigger. This time I even lost video output 2 minutes in after the stuttering began. Now I remembered that it has happened before one or two times. I'm back to square one.

[Tea-Sir]

I think I have an idea about this.

I think it could be the CPU that is bad.

 

To test this. There is a couple of things you can try.

1. Try starting an installation of Windows from a USB drive, it might do a BSOD.

2. Leave the system on in the BIOS, if it freezes here too, there is no doubt in my mind, it is the CPU.

 

When you try the install of Windows, you can just disconnect all other drives, than the one you test with. That way, you don't have to mess with your current installation.

 

Another thing you could check, is, if it is your graphics card that is crashing. Open the "Event viewer" and under Windows Logs, open the log "System". Your can click "Source" to sort the source alphabetical, and then look for the source "Display" or "nvlddmkm". If you have a rough idea about what the time and date was, the last time it happened it will make it a bit easier to find.

[riyusso]

4 minutes ago, The89Lunder said:

I think I have an idea about this.

I think it could be the CPU that is bad.

 

To test this. There is a couple of things you can try.

1. Try starting an installation of Windows from a USB drive, it might do a BSOD.

2. Leave the system on in the BIOS, if it freezes here too, there is no doubt in my mind, it is the CPU.

 

When you try the install of Windows, you can just disconnect all other drives, than the one you test with. That way, you don't have to mess with your current installation.

 

Another thing you could check, is, if it is your graphics card that is crashing. Open the "Event viewer" and under Windows Logs, open the log "System". Your can click "Source" to sort the source alphabetical, and then look for the source "Display" or "nvlddmkm". If you have a rough idea about what the time and date was, the last time it happened it will make it a bit easier to find.

Ok, I've installed Windows 10 maybe 30-40 times since I got this machine. I don't think there was ever any problem during installation except when I tried installing ElementaryOS.

 

I think it happened once in the BIOS tho, I'm just not sure because it has happened so many times that I didn't keep track.

 

About the thing with the Event viewer. Thank you for that, I knew there was something useful there but I didn't know where to look exactly. Turns out there are a few warnings. It's the same warning overall, it says "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

 

There's one warning at 2 pm today which I think is about the time it happened today which made me pull out the Wifi card.

Then there's 5 or 6 at the times 19:27:05  19:27:07  19:27:13  19:27:16  19:27:24. So basically they're seconds apart, what do you think about that?

[Tea-Sir]

It sounds like we need to take a close look at your GPU.

These crashes happen after multiple Windows installs correct?

 

That means we can skip the DDU thing. Try running the card in Debug mode, and see if that stops the crashing. (https://www.evga.com/support/faq/FAQdetails.aspx?faqid=59594)

 

You can also try and install HWinfo, and take a look at the core clock, power usage and idle temp.

I have just thrown out a MSI card, because it crashed frequently. For some reason it didn't downclock it self, and just ran 1400 MHz constantly.

 

Have you ever overclocked your graphics card?

[riyusso]

6 hours ago, The89Lunder said:

It sounds like we need to take a close look at your GPU.

These crashes happen after multiple Windows installs correct?

 

That means we can skip the DDU thing. Try running the card in Debug mode, and see if that stops the crashing. (https://www.evga.com/support/faq/FAQdetails.aspx?faqid=59594)

 

You can also try and install HWinfo, and take a look at the core clock, power usage and idle temp.

I have just thrown out a MSI card, because it crashed frequently. For some reason it didn't downclock it self, and just ran 1400 MHz constantly.

 

Have you ever overclocked your graphics card?

I have undervolted it in the past and changed OC a bit in Afterburner, but I didn't push it really far. Power limit and 50-100Mhz on the core.

[riyusso]

I tried the debug mode, too bad it didn't help which but I managed to get some new information.This is from last time my pc started lagging.

 

Any ideas?

[Tea-Sir]

I have no idea what programs caused the crash. But try uninstalling the two programs mentioned, and see what happens.

[riyusso]

I hope I don't spoil it but I think I fixed it and I hope that this can be of help to someone. It has been 3 days without any issues so far.

 

I think there's a bug when the GPU is exiting out of low power mode and to get rid of it, you have to change the Power management mode to "Prefer maximum performance" in the Nvidia Control Panel > Manage 3D Settings > Global Settings. Then restart your PC, because it doesn't seem to have an effect immediately, atleast not in MSI Afterburner.

 

Keep in mind that this is not a perfect solution. It will make your GPU run at high clocks all the time and increase your power draw. This should probably used only if it happens really frequently like it does in my case, not if it happens once a month or something. Hopefully this is a workaround for everyone struggling with this issue atleast until it's fixed by Nvidia/AMD/Microsoft/MSI.

 

I was hoping that I could report this but I'm not sure where, I've seen plently of threads about this issue.

 

Holy fuck, I finally managed to fix it after half a year of constant stuttering and freezing.