computer stuttering from network activity

[zooba]

For months now I've been trying to narrow down the cause of computer stuttering during certain download scenarios. I can use browsers fine, and download several megabytes at a time without any issues, but as soon as I start client-based downloads(torrent, steam, blizzard app, etc) my computer slows down severely, my mouse and audio begins stuttering and it feels like my computer is about to crash, though it never does.

My CPU, Memory and Disk usage vary depending on what I'm doing, but more often than not are still well below 40-30%(with the exception of Disk depending on how big the download is) and my CPU temp is stable below 40. I've tried a new ethernet cable, an ethernet card, bypassing my router to work straight from the modem, disabling and uninstalling anti-viruses as well as several windows 10 tweaks.

So far nothing has worked but rebooting, which stops the download lag for a few hours before it arbitrarily starts up again. This makes me think it's a memory leak somewhere, but none of my hardware is being overworked according to task manager and HWMonitor so it might be a windows issue. I don't believe it's an installed third-party program issue since this problem happens from clean formats as well.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ralston18]

This: "(with the exception of Disk depending on how big the download is)".

What make and model disk, capacity, how full?

In Resource Monitor use Overview to watch what your system is doing for awhile then start your downloads. See what changes and where the bottleneck starts. Expand the window so you can view the individual processes etc. within CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network.

You should be able to narrow down the cause/source.

 

[zooba]

The disk is new-ish(less than 6 months old), diagnostic tools say it's working fine and it's only half full(~500gb/1tb). I tried a clean boot this morning and left the pc running for several hours before coming back and trying a download and it worked without issue, so I guess that's where I'm at now. Slowly increasing the number of services on boot, leaving the computer to run for a few hours and then trying to update a steam game and seeing what sticks. Just to be consistent I'm going to need to do a regular boot and leave it running without any usage to see if the download lag pops up in that scenario too. That is going to take a while and is something I was hoping to avoid.

As far as watching the task manager resources, besides the application itself, the only process that increases usage is "System" and I haven't had any luck narrowing things down from there.

Thanks for replying.