PC Stuttering/Screen Tearing Issue.

[v Rybo x]

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone here might be able to shed light on an issue that's been driving me absolutely mad for the past year. I've experienced persistent microstuttering, screen tearing, occasional audio crackling/distortion, and wired Ethernet dropouts — even when no other devices on the network are affected. Over time, this has escalated to the point where it’s noticeably affecting video playback, gaming, and even desktop usage.

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System Troubleshooting So Far

Originally, I tried to resolve this with my old PC, but after months of chasing dead ends, I eventually rebuilt the entire system from scratch — part by part — with only the GPU carried over at first. Here's a breakdown of everything I've tested and replaced:

Software Troubleshooting

• Performed clean driver removals using DDU, and tested multiple NVIDIA driver versions (both old and new)

• Reinstalled Windows 11 multiple times (fully clean install, latest updates)

• Also tested with Linux  — issue persisted even there

• Disabled hardware acceleration in browsers and media apps

• Disabled Windows Game Mode, HAGS, Fast Startup, and other common culprits

• Adjusted and reset power plans

• Turned on/off V-Sync — tested both

• Ran sfc /scannow, DISM repair, no issues found

Hardware Tests

• Ran FurMark, OCCT, and 3DMark stress tests — no crashes, thermal throttling, or power issues

• Replaced SSD after noticing my previous drive showed 40% health in CrystalDiskInfo — no change

• Ran MemTest86 overnight, no errors

• Used LatencyMon extensively — sometimes DPC latency is clean, other times I get high ISR/DPC routines and lots of page faults, depending on what’s running

Full Hardware Replacement

• Built an entirely new system: New CPU, motherboard, RAM, PSU, cooler, case, SSD

• Replaced the GPU as well after a repair tech observed screen tearing and suggested it might be the issue

• All drivers and BIOS updated directly from manufacturer websites

• Issue still persists on the fully rebuilt system

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Environmental & External Testing

• Took my PC to my mother's house and even to a local PC repair technician’s home — the issue still occurs

• Had my brother bring his full PC setup (tower, monitor, cables) to my house — and surprisingly, his PC also stutters here, even though it runs fine at his home

• Stuttering observed even at idle, or when playing a simple 1080p YouTube video

• Tried plugging into different wall sockets — no difference

• Measured wall voltage with a power monitor — seems stable around 230–233V

• Removed everything but power, Ethernet, and wired peripherals — no wireless dongles, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi — issue persists

• Purchased and tested with fully wired keyboard and mouse to rule out USB wireless dongle interference — still stutters

• Tried different monitors and cables (DisplayPort & HDMI) — doesn’t fix the issue

• Even removed front panel cables from my case that connect to my motherboard to see if that was the issue  — no change

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Other Strange Clues

• My TV and my girlfriend’s phone both exhibit slight stuttering behavior while in my home — even when her phone is not connected to Wi-Fi or Bluetooth

• Brother’s PC, which runs fine at his house, shows stuttering/screen tearing when used here

• Yet, my own PC also shows the issue at other locations

• Unplugging a USB dongle mid-session (like mouse or keyboard) causes brief but very obvious stutter spikes, especially visible in games like League of Legends

• My keyboard lighting randomly switches profiles or resets, suggesting possible USB power or signaling instability — even on the new system

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Current System Specs (All New Components)

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5070

• Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2

• RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MHz

• PSU: Corsair RM750x 

• Storage: WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD 1TB

• Cooler: Corsair iCUE LINK H100i RGB 240mm AIO 

  
  I’m open to any and all suggestions, no matter how “out there” they may sound. I’ve put a ridiculous number of hours and money into fixing this issue and I'm seemingly no further into resolving or even diagnosing the issue.
  
  I've asked chatgpt to clean this up and make it easier on the eye for people to read.

   

  Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and help — it means a lot.

[OddOod]

Welcome to the forums!
Wow, that is a fantastic set of things tested. 
One thing that could be happening is transient voltage drops from the wall. That would explain why it happened on your brother's PC but you didn't see a drop with the multimeter. I'd get a UPS. It might not fix the problem, but it's always a nice to have with your caliber of hardware. A good cyberpower unit (I usually recommend the 1500VA models) should smooth out the power delivery
It happening on phones? That's insane. Do you happen to live close to a massive radio aerial or a large power station?
Also, do you own your router? Or is it an ISP provided combo box? It could also be having issues with power fluctuations or even just overheating.

 

[v Rybo x]

1 minute ago, OddOod said:

Welcome to the forums!
Wow, that is a fantastic set of things tested. 
One thing that could be happening is transient voltage drops from the wall. That would explain why it happened on your brother's PC but you didn't see a drop with the multimeter. I'd get a UPS. It might not fix the problem, but it's always a nice to have with your caliber of hardware. A good cyberpower unit (I usually recommend the 1500VA models) should smooth out the power delivery
It happening on phones? That's insane. Do you happen to live close to a massive radio aerial or a large power station?
Also, do you own your router? Or is it an ISP provided combo box? It could also be having issues with power fluctuations or even just overheating.

 

Thank you for your welcome and reply.

I didn't see any drops in voltage with the power meter at all to be honest, I know you're saying that they could just be transient drops so maybe the monitor isn't picking it up I guess but that still doesn't answer why this could be happening when I take my pc to other households. I've been recommended a UPS before but as I've spent a lot in recent weeks I wouldn't want to spend more on an item that would bring me no difference so a UPS could be something I look into for the future for sure.

But yeah it seems to be happening on my TV and phones too. Not sure if those issues are related to my pc though but its certainly fishy. I live about a mile away from a power line but I've lived in this house for 3 years and I only started getting these issues about a year ago. Also I used to have an ASUS router but since I upgraded my download speed my ISP provided me a different router but these issues were happening before the router swap out anyway.

Just feel as if I've tried almost everything at this point but I'm clearly missing something, just don't know what it could be.

[The K-Man89]

Is your TV through Internet as well? Sounds like a service provider issue or there is some frequency interference happening at your house. I would call your Internet service provider and have them come out and inspect the connection to your house and it's source terminal for them. Do you have any satellite dishes on or close to your house?

[OddOod]

4 minutes ago, v Rybo x said:

why this could be happening when I take my pc to other households

Voltage changes could cause long term damage. Not sure that's a thing, but could be.
 

5 minutes ago, v Rybo x said:

I live about a mile away from a power line but I've lived in this house for 3 years and I only started getting these issues about a year ago.

A mile is EASILY far enough. Even 100ft would likely be fine. There's a reason substations have a large distance from the equipment to the fence. 
Anything happen around that time a year ago? 

I am afraid we may not be able to find the cause. Your house may just be haunted

[v Rybo x]

11 minutes ago, The K-Man89 said:

Is your TV through Internet as well? Sounds like a service provider issue or there is some frequency interference happening at your house. I would call your Internet service provider and have them come out and inspect the connection to your house and it's source terminal for them. Do you have any satellite dishes on or close to your house?

No satellite dishes near my house, my pc does this when offline too and phones do it whilst not connected to the internet.

[v Rybo x]

13 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Voltage changes could cause long term damage. Not sure that's a thing, but could be.
 

A mile is EASILY far enough. Even 100ft would likely be fine. There's a reason substations have a large distance from the equipment to the fence. 
Anything happen around that time a year ago? 

I am afraid we may not be able to find the cause. Your house may just be haunted

No changes or events in the last year to my knowledge at least.

Just weird as its causing screen tearing too on multiple pc's as it happened on my brothers and multiple displays and it happened on his display too.

[The K-Man89]

1 hour ago, v Rybo x said:

No satellite dishes near my house, my pc does this when offline too and phones do it whilst not connected to the internet.

Oh wow, this definitely sounds like a leaky phantom power issue. Have you tried plugging into a UPS?

[v Rybo x]

18 minutes ago, The K-Man89 said:

Oh wow, this definitely sounds like a leaky phantom power issue. Have you tried plugging into a UPS?

I haven't no, but my pc has done this at two other houses so wouldn't that rule out any issues with my power?

[The K-Man89]

11 minutes ago, v Rybo x said:

I haven't no, but my pc has done this at two other houses so wouldn't that rule out any issues with my power?

Good point, that would normally rule it out but this is affecting other devices so it could be bad power coming from the grid.

The only other thing I can think of is electromagnetic interference, try walking around your place and near your PC and other electronics with an am radio on low frequency and see if you pick up buzzings as it can indicate an interference that could be causing these issues. Poorly sheilded PSUs can also cause this 

[v Rybo x]

4 minutes ago, The K-Man89 said:

Good point, that would normally rule it out but this is affecting other devices so it could be bad power coming from the grid.

The only other thing I can think of is electromagnetic interference, try walking around your place and near your PC and other electronics with an am radio on low frequency and see if you pick up buzzings as it can indicate an interference that could be causing these issues. Poorly sheilded PSUs can also cause this 

My girlfriend was just at work and she asked one of her work colleagues if their phone was doing it and she told me it was. My girlfriend thinks perhaps thats just a normal thing that happens on iphones maybe.

I don't own an AM radio currently, I wonder if it would be worth going to a pc repair shop and asking them? I'm not sure if issues like these would be out of their scope though to be honest. 

As this happened on my old pc build too which had a different PSU, I would say that PSU shielding wouldn't be the case. 

[The K-Man89]

1 hour ago, v Rybo x said:

My girlfriend was just at work and she asked one of her work colleagues if their phone was doing it and she told me it was. My girlfriend thinks perhaps thats just a normal thing that happens on iphones maybe.

I don't own an AM radio currently, I wonder if it would be worth going to a pc repair shop and asking them? I'm not sure if issues like these would be out of their scope though to be honest. 

As this happened on my old pc build too which had a different PSU, I would say that PSU shielding wouldn't be the case. 

Fair enough, maybe this is a more wide spread problem for the area you live in. iPhones or electronics don't just do this for no reason but it really does sound like interference of some sort causing this problem 

[v Rybo x]

11 minutes ago, The K-Man89 said:

Fair enough, maybe this is a more wide spread problem for the area you live in. iPhones or electronics don't just do this for no reason but it really does sound like interference of some sort causing this problem 

Potentially It could be yeah, depends really on whether the issues on other things are directly linked or just coincidence really.

I've already done a lot of troubleshooting to be honest, do you know of any ways that I could perhaps test to see if there is EMI or something? 

Also could that cause screen tearing/audio distortions as well?

[The K-Man89]

4 hours ago, v Rybo x said:

Potentially It could be yeah, depends really on whether the issues on other things are directly linked or just coincidence really.

I've already done a lot of troubleshooting to be honest, do you know of any ways that I could perhaps test to see if there is EMI or something? 

Also could that cause screen tearing/audio distortions as well?

 Honestly picking up a cheap old am radio is the easiest, set it to the 500-600 frequency range and it'll pick up what's emitting EMI and the louder and clearer it is the stronger the EMI. 

 

I feel for you man it's an odd issue and you've don't everything and then some to trouble shoot it, hopefully this helps narrow it down for you

[OddOod]

16 hours ago, v Rybo x said:

I don't own an AM radio currently

Who does?
I mean, I do, but only because I have the el cheapo SDR

[OddOod]

14 hours ago, v Rybo x said:

do you know of any ways that I could perhaps test to see if there is EMI or something? 

Any chance you could borrow someone's laptop, then test with it while it's not plugged in?
Also, if you can get a video of the problem (particularly outside a videogame) that might be useful

[v Rybo x]

4 hours ago, OddOod said:

Any chance you could borrow someone's laptop, then test with it while it's not plugged in?
Also, if you can get a video of the problem (particularly outside a videogame) that might be useful

I have a few videos here inside the video game. Stutter seems minimal in these but its mostly showing the screen tearing. I have a video of a random youtube video of lines crossing the screen where the stutter is more apparent. 

I have a laptop here but its about 15 years old and hardly works as it is, so the results might not be too conclusive.

[OddOod]

Hmmm, 495 definitely shows micro stutters. That's ODD. 
I'm sorry, but beyond a UPS, I'm kinda tapped out. 

[v Rybo x]

50 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Hmmm, 495 definitely shows micro stutters. That's ODD. 
I'm sorry, but beyond a UPS, I'm kinda tapped out. 

Wouldn't power be ruled out considering I've taken it ot 3 different homes (including my own).

Also having issues with internet drop outs too, other devices in my home will stay connected to my internet but my pc disconnects from it for a few seconds.

[OddOod]

17 hours ago, v Rybo x said:

Wouldn't power be ruled out considering I've taken it ot 3 different homes (including my own).

Again, potentially there has been damage to the parts. Not certain. You'd have to test each component individually to see. If your brother has a compatible system you could test each part, but it might take an entire day or even a weekend of testing which would be utterly gutting 

17 hours ago, v Rybo x said:

Also having issues with internet drop outs too, other devices in my home will stay connected to my internet but my pc disconnects from it for a few seconds.

If the dropout is just a couple seconds, it's possible other devices have problems but don't notice. 
Or maybe it really is some **weird** EMI where the ethernet cable is acting as an antenna which shouldn't be possible because twisted pair. 

I'm seriously flummoxed. I have ZERO idea what could really be going on. The phone thing is bugging me so much. 

[v Rybo x]

Weird thing is, my girlfriend works about half a mile ish away from our house and her colleagues phone does the same thing. My girlfriend just said that perhaps phones just do this and I thought thats not really possible because phones in todays day should run smoothly with no issues. So I called my mobile provider to ask if they could perhaps come out to the local area to check for issues with power lines/5g towers if there are any around here and they're going to get back to me within 72 hours.

Odd thing is that my next door neighbour doesn't experience this with her TV so I'm really not sure either.

Very frustrating scenario.