Question Crashes followed by extreme latency post BIOS update

[5ik3]

Hi! I'm a little out of my depth and would appreciate some help! It's a lot, and I'm not sure if these issues are even related, I just want to give a full picture. Sorry for the complete brain dump, trying to make it as coherent as possible.
Specs:
CPU - i5 13600k
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 6000MHz 16GB
GPU - RTX 4070
PSU - Corsair SF750
MOBO - AsRock Z790M-ITX Wifi
I built a small form factor build and am using a PCIE 3.0 riser with my GPU which came with the case (might be relevant later).

I have had my processor for 11 months now (purchased it new back in May 2023). Around 3 months ago I starting experiencing system instability in the form of blue screens. In the event viewer the root cause seemed to be "volmgr 161" followed by kernel power 41 and a WHEA error. The crashes occur when the PC is under a high load (while gaming) and have only increased in frequency as time has passed.

I heard about the issue 13th generation processors have with some motherboard manufacturers (including AsRock) recently. Thinking this was the issue, I flashed my motherboard's BIOS with the latest version which fully addresses the issue. After the update, I started experiencing extreme latency issues from my nvidia gpu driver; nvlddmks.sys, as well as a number of other drivers (verified later with latencymon). I reverted the bios to the version prior to the update, same thing. I shut my PC down to make dinner and magically the latency stopped an hour later on the old BIOS version. I hopped on to play a game only to get greeted by a blue screen a couple mins later (same volmgr 161 error). I decided to switch back to the new version of my bios to hopefully mitigate the crashes after I sort out the latency issues.

I reinstalled most of my device drivers on the PC (focusing on the GPU). Nothings works

Whilst using my PC now with the stutters, I sometimes get black screens for a couple seconds. Most recent seems like the GPU driver was restarting for 30 seconds.

My biggest questions right now are:

1) If it is a CPU issue (due to damage from improper use because of this motherboard thing) would it be causing issues with these drivers?
2) My GPU has been working fine prior to the BIOS update (atleast I thought the crashes weren't related to it). Has the GPU been the culprit the whole time?
3) Any chance its a faulty power supply? (would make sense for crashes, not for driver issues?).
4) Any chance its a bad RAM stick? (wouldn't my system be a lot more unstable?)

Hoping someone can help provide a second set of eyes to help me sort through these (maybe related?) issues. As I said I'm a little out of my depth and would appreciate any help. Happy to provide whatever other info I can

 

[5ik3]

Just a follow up, here's the things I tried.

1) Flashed multiple BIOS versions. Latency appeared in all (besides the original for a bit).

2) Disabled the nvidia driver in the device manager. Latency stopped, cool!

3) Fully uninstalled the nvidia driver using DDU while in safe mode. Reinstalled the driver (with and without geforce experience). Latency after reboot.

4) Reinstalled all intel device drivers (WLAN, etc,). Still latency.

5) Used NVCleanstall to install only the basics needed to operate the GPU (no PhysX or nvidia container). Latency after reboot.

6) Made sure my preference was set to high performance in the nvidia control panel and power plan. Even enabled debug mode for my GPU because why the hell not. Latency after reboot.

7) Formatted my SSD and installed a fresh windows version. Latency after installing the nvidia driver. (well crap is it a hardware issue with my GPU now too?)

8) Switched gears to thinking of it as a power issue. Disabled the use of C-states for my CPU (I don't know why this would work, someone online said it might improve performance so why not!). Still latency.

9) Set my GPU to MSI mode with MSI utility V3, and set its priority to high. Still latency.

 

[SkyNetRising]

GPU - RTX 4070
MOBO - AsRock Z790M-ITX Wifi
I built a small form factor build and am using a PCIE 3.0 riser with my GPU which came with the case (might be relevant later).

You have to force PCIE mode to gen3 in BIOS for this.
Board and GPU are 4th gen.
Raiser cable working in gen4 mode will cause PCIE signalling errors.

1) If it is a CPU issue (due to damage from improper use because of this motherboard thing) would it be causing issues with these drivers?

It's raiser cable issue.

2) My GPU has been working fine prior to the BIOS update (atleast I thought the crashes weren't related to it). Has the GPU been the culprit the whole time?
3) Any chance its a faulty power supply? (would make sense for crashes, not for driver issues?).
4) Any chance its a bad RAM stick? (wouldn't my system be a lot more unstable?)

Probably not.

 

[5ik3]

You have to force PCIE mode to gen3 in BIOS for this.
Board and GPU are 4th gen.
Raiser cable working in gen4 mode will cause PCIE signalling errors.

It's raiser cable issue.

Probably not.

Thanks for the reply! I'm an idiot. I had it set in my BIOS settings manually, but it must have been returned to default when I flashed the update (and I forgot to do it again while focusing on the crashes).

Prior to the updates I still was experiencing crashes. Not sure if the latency issue above would be the culprit. Here's an example from event viewer:

Changing the data to ASCII from the details section, only thing I can make out is the name of my SSD. Ran a couple disc checks and repairs (sfc & DISM commands), nothing was found or repaired. Am I correct in thinking that this issue (One of the articles I found) is the culprit?