BSOD's, severe latency and mouse lag with audio issues!

[Simon Slays]

Hi guys,

I'm in desperate need of help with my newly built PC as I have spent over a week trying to solve the issue but I'm getting nowhere which is why I need your expertise. Firstly, I built my computer and I know how to build one as I had one previously that worked great. After building it I went and installed the latest BIOS along with a fresh install of Windows 11 using the media creation tool and put in my old Windows activation key from my previous motherboard as I was able to retrieve it from the command prompt. I then installed the latest graphics drivers after using DDU to clean any remnants of previous drivers that were added when Windows got installed along with the latest chipset drivers for AMD. I then began to install all of my favourite games and software such as Afterburner and everything seemed fine. Then I decided to go back to the BIOS and enable EXPO I, which is when all of my issues started. Every time I saved a setting in the BIOS it would cause my PC to boot terribly slow along with freezes and sometimes a black screen. If it would make it to Windows it would sometimes BSOD or it would only just about run but would constantly freeze or lag. I know it's not an issue with EXPO I being activated because when I restart the PC I have no freezing issues whatsoever and the computer is stable with minimal latency in latencymon. The issue only seems to start whenever I change something in the BIOS and try to boot back into Windows. It doesn't seem to matter what I change in the BIOS as I have changed things that wouldn't affect system stability such as disabling the monitoring of my CPU fan or disabling the iGPU. The strange thing is, once I restart the PC after getting or not getting into Windows, I can use the PC without any latency or latency that is nowhere near as bad as shown in Latencymon. On some of the freezes in Windows I would also receive what appears to be artifacts but I'm not 100% sure (see images below).

I then started to troubleshoot by disabling USB Root Hubs in device manager which made no difference. I then thought that perhaps I had screwed the AIO pump onto the CPU too tightly as I have heard that can cause all sorts of BSOD issues so I removed it, added thermal paste and remounted without making it too tight; this made no difference either. Then I ran a Memtest86 twice on the DRAM as I thought that was the reason behind the freezes, it wasn't as it passed all tests on both runs (see image below). I then decided to start removing pieces of hardware such as the graphics card. This seemed to fix it as the PC would boot normally and I could change BIOS settings to my hearts content without there being any freezing issues or latency in Windows. I then thought to myself that the PCI-E slot is perhaps faulty, the GPU itself, the GPU drivers are conflicting or there's a power delivery issue with the Cablemod 90 degree adapter. I then put the GPU back in and reinstalled one of the older drivers to see if it fixed the issue, it didn't. I then removed the 90 degree adapter and tried with just the 12VHPWR from the PSU and it too made no difference. I then decided to flash the GPU BIOS to see if it was bugged and see if that would fix the issue, it didn't.
After a full week of scouring the internet in search of an issue similar to mine, I finally came across one and decided to try and copy what they did to resolve the issue. I began disabling almost everything I could in device manager that coincided with the drivers that were showing the highest DPC latency and ISR's which was Nvlddmkm.sys and HDAudBus.sys which happened to be sound drivers and graphics drivers. I finally landed on High Definition Audio Controller under System Devices and decided to disable it. Lo and behold, it was this the entire time that was causing the extremely high latency up in the hundreds. The problem I am facing now is that when this is disabled, my Nvidia High Definition Audio also gets disabled and I am no longer able to use my monitors sound. I have tried uninstalling all of the Realtek drivers but they always seem to come back after a reboot. I feel like there's either a hardware issue with the GPU or the Motherboard. If not a hardware issue then there's a conflict between the audio drivers of my GPU and the Motherboard but I'm not sure how to go about fixing it.

I have created a Google Drive with all of my Minidumps in so that you can take a look, I have looked at them myself and it's pointing to hardware failure but I'm not a pro at reading the code. I get the error DPC_Watchdog_Violation in all of them which I know can also be due to a misbehaving driver: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19f8A8R1aJECUo03L-uSzbafOFxMdFt-V?usp=sharing

I have made a YouTube video so that you can see exactly what happens when I save something in the BIOS and boot up the PC. I had to constantly retake the video as the PC would sometimes just black screen after leaving the BIOS but I got lucky and managed to get into Windows. Please take a look at the video, It's around 9 minutes long. I tried to restart the PC in the video to show that it works fine after restart but as you will see in the video, the PC just froze on restarting. After the video ended I got another BSOD (see image below).

YouTube Video:

View: https://youtu.be/oTpZS4GizL8


Artifacts when the freezes happen:

View: https://imgur.com/a/JDbbFWK

View: https://imgur.com/a/byZ3axY

Memtest86 pass:

View: https://imgur.com/a/ozZ5qjn

BSOD after YT video:

View: https://imgur.com/a/JCkpn5P

Latency after BIOS change and no PC restart:

View: https://imgur.com/a/puz0non

View: https://imgur.com/a/gP9JFtG

Latency after PC restart:

View: https://imgur.com/a/TGlZMYA

Latency with High Definition Audio Controller disabled:

View: https://imgur.com/a/s5EsqoA

View: https://imgur.com/a/srSBNZ5

Event Viewer errors:

View: https://imgur.com/a/p99XnoY

View: https://imgur.com/a/g0GEDtw

Reliability monitor:

View: https://imgur.com/a/UkV4fgx


Things I have tried thus far:

1. Reinstalling Windows after wiping all drives
2. Reinstalling latest BIOS or going back to an older BIOS version either by installing it in the BIOS or using BIOS flashback with PC turned off
3. Reinstalling Windows on my old NVME to see if my new one is faulty
4. Updating to latest Nvidia drivers and also an older one after using DDU in safe mode
5. Removing GPU and using CPU's onboard graphics (stopped the issue until I put GPU back in)
6. Reset the CMOS with the dedicated button on the Motherboard as well as removing the CMOS battery
7. Reinstalled AIO to see if pump was too tight potentially causing freezes
8. Ran Memtest86 on DRAM
9. Removed Cablemod 90 degree adapter
10. Disabled all root hubs
11. Updated all drivers I could think of
12. Followed many guides on the internet about using basic commands in command prompt such as sfc /scannow, dism, etc.
13. Disabled automatic driver installs in Advanced System Settings
14. Begged the PC to work

PC Specs:
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU: ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC
DRAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum 6000Mhz CL30 32GB (2x16)
NVME: Samsung 990 Pro 2TB
NVME: Intel 760p 2TB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda Sata III 4TB
PSU: ASUS ROG Strix 1000W Aura Edition
Cooler: NZXT Kraken Elite

I am honestly at my wits end and would really appreciate any help to try and solve what is causing my PC to be unusable with High Definition Audio Controller enabled. Please let me know if you think it's a possible hardware issue as I will just return the parts under RMA. Have a good day/night and thanks for reading.

[Bjoolz]

This particular crash is a bit weird as it comes in two flavors. One where it sort of "guesses" and one where it's pretty sure. You had two of each in the dump files you posted.

 

In the two where it sort of "guesses"  it blames a different driver in each of them, an audio driver and the Nvidia driver. In the two where it's pretty sure it blames the network driver. WiFi both times. Try installing the latest driver for the WiFi card. If you still crash, post the new dump files. 

[Simon Slays]

10 minutes ago, Bjoolz said:

This particular crash is a bit weird as it comes in two flavors. One where it sort of "guesses" and one where it's pretty sure. You had two of each in the dump files you posted.

 

In the two where it sort of "guesses"  it blames a different driver in each of them, an audio driver and the Nvidia driver. In the two where it's pretty sure it blames the network driver. WiFi both times. Try installing the latest driver for the WiFi card. If you still crash, post the new dump files. 

Hi, thanks for the response. I have unfortunately already installed that driver as it shows up with a (1) at the end of the download.

[Bjoolz]

16 hours ago, Simon Slays said:

Hi, thanks for the response. I have unfortunately already installed that driver as it shows up with a (1) at the end of the download.

Disable the WiFi card and see if you still crash. If you do, attach dump files.