Computer Freezing/Stuttering / GPU performance drops

[hardykid]

After having built a brand new computer I am running into an issue where my GPU (and sometimes CPU) performance drop for about a second or two. This is expressed in freezes as some component tries to catch up. The best I can describe this as is if CPU was at 100% and is bottle-necking.

My Specs:
ASUS Prime Z370-A
I7 8700k (base clock; close loop water cooled)
Gskill Flare X 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 3200 MHz (14 CAS timings)
MSI Geforce GTX 1080ti DUKE
850W p2 80+ platinum PSU
Samsung 860 EVO SSD
Seagate 4TB 6Gb/s HDD
Windows 10

The CPU runs at about 30% when gaming and the GPU at 40-50%. I tend to get a large number of Hard Faults when playing games however this doesn't always line up with the stutter.

My initial thoughts were that I had a bad drive however it seems that the issue persists even if my HDD is unplugged and there does not seem to be a difference if the game is installed on the SSD vs the HDD.

I have run both memtest86 and Windows ram check and both have come up with 0 errors.

The graphics card itself does not appear to be the issue as this can occur when watching videos with other applications open as well but I suppose this still could be part of it.

There seems to be no voltage changes when this occurs so I do not suspect a PSU issue.

All that is left is the motherboard and CPU (or maybe a bad windows install). I am thinking about just RMAing the board and seeing if that fixes it but even with the Advanced RMA I am not looking forward to taking the time to rebuild the entire machine.

Does anyone else have any suggestions of tests or possible issues? I am not really sure where to go from this point.

 

[Lutfij]

Are you on the latest BIOS update for your motherboard? Have you ruled out the GPU, by uninstalling and reinstalling the GPU drivers? You also forgot to mention what sort of titles you've taxed the system with to come to the conclusion that your motherboard might need RMA'ing.

 

[hardykid]

I am on the latest BIOS version, I checked that first. The GPU previously ran in another computer fine and I have been updating the drivers as new ones come out but I can fresh install all of them. The problem can occur on any game or when a large amount of RAM is being used like when watching videos on chrome. I have used memtest86 to check RAM and have stress tested the GPU and CPU (with various tests) and have seen no issues when those run. I think I believe its the motherboard because its the only thing I don't really have any data on.

I have noticed the longer the computer is on the more frequent the issue is however GPU temp does not go above 60 the entire time.
The performance drop on the GPU is specifically 3d rendering and recently programs will crash and 3d rendering will spike to 100%.

 

[drijakralj002]

Have you tried downclocking cpu and trying to play then?

 

[hardykid]

I have not underclocked the CPU because recently it has not dropped at all but I have underclocked the GPU and it seemed to be a little less frequent but it seems fairly random so hard to test. However I have run stress tests on the GPU and have not had a single issue when running them

 

[hardykid]

Update: Underclocking does not help the issue. The issue happens in cycles and the longer the computer has been on the shorter the time between the occurrences (but the time is fairly consistent between each one). Also even if a program is running in the background (like being tabbed out of league) will cause freezing in other applications so it is most likely not GPU because when typing the computer attempts to catch up rather than just refreshing the image with all text and also causes sound freezing.