Audio crackling and freezing/jumping cursor

[Howsler]

PC Specs:
I7 6700k stock speed
GTX 980
16gb ram
asus z170a
windows 10
hdd and sdd with the game installed on the ssd (was on hdd switched to see if it helped)
1000w psu

Out of the blue 2 nights ago while playing PUBG my computer started freezing up on fast mouse movements accompanied by audio crackling. I tried yesterday and any loud sounds in game (planes, spawn area, jumping/falling out of plane) were crackling and instead of every minute or so it freezes up for about 1-2 seconds every 15 seconds approx. It's starting to effect my computer with other games now (it originally wasnt but it's happening in gtaV) and has now started effecting watching videos. I've tried everything to fix it including:
completely resetting windows (deleted everything on my storage hdd even)
malware bytes scan
ended realtek audio driver
disconnecting other displays (running 3)
updated all drivers
updated asus bios

After restoring windows i just reinstalled my drivers (just razer drivers for mouse, gpu drivers and windows updates) and installed steam+pubg to see if it helped. youtube doesnt seem to cause any issues now but gaming is still impossible.

 

[Frag Maniac]

You said you updated all drivers, but in the next paragraph when describing reinstall procedure, you didn't mention whether you updated the Realtek HD Audio driver? Also, setting it to 24bit 48,000Hz in the Windows Sound Panel Properties yields best sound quality.

Also check to make sure your mouse driver is updated if using a gaming mouse with it's own software.

 

[Howsler]

You said you updated all drivers, but in the next paragraph when describing reinstall procedure, you didn't mention whether you updated the Realtek HD Audio driver? Also, setting it to 24bit 48,000Hz in the Windows Sound Panel Properties yields best sound quality.

Also check to make sure your mouse driver is updated if using a gaming mouse with it's own software.

I updated all the drivers, didnt help. Then restored windows completely and wiped everything. Downloaded and updated all my drivers again (including my mouse drivers). I actually disabled realtek as i use and external soundcard (komplete audio 6) which is also on the latest firmware and drivers and it is set to 24 bit 48000hz

I made sure it wasn't an external soundcard issue before I installed the drivers for it as well.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Ah, I see, and maybe that's the problem.

1. Audio cards are notorious for being poorly software supported.
2. Sometimes their driver updates are dependent on whenever the DSP chip manufacturer gets around to it.
3. Clicks and pops can be common, including even on the infamous Creative Labs cards, and this one you mentioned, from reviews I've read.
4. Installing drivers for them can be finicky and often results in conflicts with other software.

These are the reasons many just either use onboard sound (especially since it's fairly good quality HD audio now), or use the onboard to pass through to a receiver, which is the way I went. You can get a decent AVR for about the same as a high end sound card, and they're actually more compatible with gaming than most musician's sound cards like the Komplete 6. I paid literally the exact same price for my Yamaha RX-V371 as Amazon's price on the Komplete 6.

Now I understand fully it depends what you use your PC for, but if it's for games and movies like most, you can't beat a pass through to an AVR. There are also many MBs now that support DTS naively. They'll encode any stereo signal with DTS, but you need something like an AVR to decode it before sending it to the speakers.