Question Audio crashes but only when starting modern games. Mobo sound card damaged?

[Filos]

Hi.
Got a problem for a few days now. I'll try to be brief.
I can watch youtube, movies, anything, until I start up a game. Usually then audio glitches and after few seconds it diappears whatsoever until I restart my PC. If I turn off the game while audio is glitching it comes back to normal. It happens for both front and back audio ports on my PC case, but audio via monitor (HDMI) works fine.
It's strange and I have no convincing idea what may cause these problems.

Few games that causes problem:
-Starfield, EfT(in menu it's fine, when I go into raid it breaks), RDR2, BG3, AC6, Remnant 2 CoD:MW
Games that are fine:
-CoD 4, Warhammer, STALKER

What I have tried:
-Reinstall audio drivers
-Totally delete everything audio related and reainstalled (DDU, DriverStoreExplorer)
-Reinstall Directx
-Overclocked and burned cpu to see if temperature/cpu clockwork increase may be important
-Bluetooth connected devices work just fine
-Unplugged recently installed wifi card from pcie port and swabbed mobo pcb around it with alcohol - same problems.
-Installed fresh Windows and still same problem applies

My PC:
-Mobo: ASRock B550M PHANTOM GAMING 4
-AMD Ryzen 5 3600
-RAM: DDR4 16 GB 3800MHz
-Geforce RTX 3070 Zotac
-Case: MSI MAG FORGE 100M RGB LED
-Win 10 pro

 

[dudio]

I'd be suspicious of the PSU and the possibility it can't provide enuff power for your system. The fact you don't mention the PSU make/model makes me more suspicious of that.
You could download and run HWInfo then launch a game. When the fault starts, quit the game and see what HWInfo has recorded for min/max voltages for 3 volt, 5 volt, and 12 volts. I suspect it's crapping out on high demand

 

[Filos]

I'd be suspicious of the PSU and the possibility it can't provide enuff power for your system. The fact you don't mention the PSU make/model makes me more suspicious of that.
You could download and run HWInfo then launch a game. When the fault starts, quit the game and see what HWInfo has recorded for min/max voltages for 3 volt, 5 volt, and 12 volts. I suspect it's crapping out on high demand

My PSU is SilentiumPC Vero M2 Bronze 600W, so rather low end, if not crappy.
It would be strange though that just onboard mobo audio suffers, but it is a possibility.
Here are results - righ before crash on top and right after crash on bottom.

They seem to dip a bit, especially 3.3V. Enough to shut off sound card?

 

[dudio]

+/- 5 % of rated voltage is considered fine, so I'd say at both those readings, things appear fine. If you know the PSU is poorly rated, it'd be nice to rule it out by trying a better one, but it may well not be the issue. Another alternative is to get a dedicated sound card and see if that resolves the issue. Sorry I couldn't help more.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

BIOS up to date?

What about chipset drivers? Did you reinstall them?

 

[pete_101]

Your GPU can affect audio. When you launch a game, the Nvidia drivers will optimize for performance in the given game, and as the GPU can output audio too, this can interfere with the on-board audio.

If you haven't already, install the latest display drivers. Otherwise, check your audio settings, and make sure you're not outputting through the GPU.

 

[Filos]

First of all, thanks to all of you.
Right now it seems to work all fine. I had updated chipset drivers and in the meantime of preparing for bios update I have fiddeled a bit with nvidia settings so I am not 100% sure what helped, but I think it rather was chipset driver.
Oh, I also replugged mobo power connector, maybe this? No idea now, but problem seems to be resolved.
Thank you once again and I hope I won't be coming back with it

 

[Filos]

Bad news.
Due to some unrelated problems I had to revert windows to some recovery point and as expected audio problems came back too. But this time none of the things I tried are helping.
I've installed chipset drivers, updated bios, reinstalled graphic card, unplugged and plugged again everyting on mobo and mobo too, messed with audio and graphic settings and still every time audio glitches and dies in games.
I have no idea what the hell is going on.

 

[Filos]

So I found a culprit - or at least some evidence.
When I connected second monitor and disconnected first one, it's okay. So I have changed hdmi-hdmi connection to DP-HDMI via some adapters. I have lost ability to play sounds via monitor, but souds are fine in games.
I will try today or tommorow a few things and maybe I will find what exactly is a problem. Maybe faulty HDMI cable, GPU or monitor problems. Will let you know.
I think @pete_101 was really onto something with his ideas in this topic.

 

[Filos]

So I found a culprit - or at least some evidence.
When I connected second monitor and disconnected first one, it's okay. So I have changed hdmi-hdmi connection to DP-HDMI via some adapters. I have lost ability to play sounds via monitor, but souds are fine in games.
I will try today or tommorow a few things and maybe I will find what exactly is a problem. Maybe faulty HDMI cable, GPU or monitor problems. Will let you know.
I think @pete_101 was really onto something with his ideas in this topic.

Nope. Worked for like 15 minutes, and went back to glitching. No combination of monitors/cables seems to be good now.
Back to the grind.

 

[stonecarver]

go to your Device manager -----sound, video and game controllers click>
When to tree opens find----- NVIDIA High Definition Audio

Right click and disable. This will kill the HDMI audio going from GPU to monitor but will not effect the front or rear audio for head phones. See if this is a work around and let us know.

 

[Filos]

go to your Device manager -----sound, video and game controllers click>
When to tree opens find----- NVIDIA High Definition Audio

Right click and disable. This will kill the HDMI audio going from GPU to monitor but will not effect the front or rear audio for head phones. See if this is a work around and let us know.

Hey. Thanks for reply.
Unfortunately this didn't help. Tried that before, right now I'm on freshly installed windows and did this again - same problem.

 

[pete_101]

Do you have a pair of headphones that use USB which you could try? The reason I mention this is because my audio in one game (PUBG) is messed up....I can hear what's happening to the front and sides but not behind, it's a dead spot.

I was going crazy with divers and checking settings, making sure it didn't think I had a surround sound 7.1 setup, then I swapped headphones to a USB pair, and while the sound quality isn't as good as my onboard audio, it doesn't suffer from the same issue. Because the USB is feeding the audio instructions to the headset, it must be bypassing whatever is causing the issue. Just something for you to think about.

 

[Filos]

Do you have a pair of headphones that use USB which you could try? The reason I mention this is because my audio in one game (PUBG) is messed up....I can hear what's happening to the front and sides but not behind, it's a dead spot.

I was going crazy with divers and checking settings, making sure it didn't think I had a surround sound 7.1 setup, then I swapped headphones to a USB pair, and while the sound quality isn't as good as my onboard audio, it doesn't suffer from the same issue. Because the USB is feeding the audio instructions to the headset, it must be bypassing whatever is causing the issue. Just something for you to think about.

Yea, I've bought cheap usb sound card and it's working all fine. I would like to have onboard stuff usable, but it doesn't seem that I have any other choice.