Cursed System: 5 years and still nobody can fix my system, any advice is appreciated (Unexplainable stutters)

[gordonn]

Hi all! From the title you already gathered that my system nobody has been able to fix my system for 5 years, so really any advice I receive now is very much appreciated.

Btw sorry for the really long post it's just been a long time

So starting from the beginning I built my PC in 2013 and the components as listed below are -

GPU - GTX 660 OC
CPU - i5 4670k
RAM - DDR3 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
Motherboard - Asus Z87-A
PSU - Corsair GS 800w
CPU Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
Storage - Western Digital 1TB Black Hard Drive
OS - Windows 8 64 bit

Now from the get go the system was working perfectly for a year no stutters at all, it was an awesome experience compared to PS3. Time went by and Nvidia released the latest flagship gpu the GTX 780 Ti. I knew I wanted this GPU, my GTX 660 OC was doing me great but I wanted to experience the highest fidelity that a card could offer so I went out and got a GTX 780 TI. This is when I started to noticed stutters and performance which really for some reason lower than my previous card. I tried everything back then to solve stuttering issues and performance issues like low fps but couldn't solve it so i chalked it up to it being broken. If you wondering what "Sutters" I'm referring to it basically my games would freeze for a second up to 5 seconds

Then i waited for a bit of time again and Nvidia brought out there latest flagship card the 980TI
I went out and bought this card and sold my previous card. Lord behold stuttering was still there I made sure to uninstall my previous drivers using DDU and formatted the hard drive upgraded to Windows 10 did any optimisation you see on those YouTube videos, but this card was still stuttering on my GTX 780 TI the game Ryse: Son of Rome was running at 30 fps or lower max settings at 1080p and so was my GTX 980 TI, I would say that the performance was worse I was encountering really nasty stutters where the game would stop for 5 seconds just a massive drop 98 or 99% usage down to 0% and this was happening in every game. I did a year worth of research and troubleshooting but nothing solved it so i gave up.

Then in 2018 I decided to yet again try so bought a GTX 1070 TI, so all together I've had 4 GPUs over the years. Again stutters are still there but this time the performance of the card was representative of it's power. So I put my head down and started to troubleshoot even more looking at things like is my memory the problem or maybe the CPU is the problem. I can not make a list of how many things I've tried over the years because I just simply don't remember anymore because i've done so many like simple things like memtest to obscure fixes to regedit.

I said screw it and bought a cpu bundle which is a -
CPU - i7 8700K
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 16GB 3200MHz DDR4
Motherboard - ASUS PRIME Z370-A Motherboard
Cooler - ID Cooling FrostFlow 240mm Liquid Cooler

Bought a new 1TB 7200rpm Hard drive. So everything in this system has been changed now and LORD BEHOLD STUTTERS INBOUND, Games are still suffering from stutters when the games just stop in mid gameplay sometimes for a second or sometimes up to 5 seconds and this is happening all throughout the games any title I run it will just stutter, even Fallout Stutter just freezes for 5 seconds when I start rushing rooms like what?

So I got a professional to have a look at my computer, he's got 20 years of repairing computers under his belt and offers custom builds so I took it to him waited 5 days and got an email back saying he can't fix it. I went into the store to pick it up and he explained to me he has no clue what's wrong with my system he tested all my components and everything is working fine, I did tell him I think it might be my PSU but he tested that and that is working flawlessly it's outputing the correct amount of voltage under load. He also said he's never seen a problem like this before because I've changed everything in this system but the PSU but as the guy said the PSU has no problems and basically explained to me my system was suffering from huge stutters where games would freeze for 5 seconds and then I would have small ones and he couldn't link it to any component in my system.

So now I'm sat here gone through 5 years worth of troubleshooting and eventually taking it to someone and I'm out of ideas IT'S A CURSED SYSTEM. So seriously any advice is a good advice I would sell my soul to the devil if he could fix this damn system I just don't understand changing everything in this system I even bought a new keyboard, mouse and Monitor thinking it was the problem NOPE.

So anybody out there that can help me out please do give a comment this must be the weirdest system I have ever played on all I want to do is play Video games smoothly I could go back to PS4 for that but then again I won't have those high framerates.

 

[asoroka]

Have you run perfmon to collect system metrics while you are paying games.

You can then go back and analyse what is happened on your system.

So given that you have changed all of your hardware and there is nothing in common (please verify).

Your system will typically pause because it is blocked on some sort of IO (keyboard, mouse, sound ??) or the CPU is too busy doing something else to service your game.

Do you experience freeze when doing other things, eg web browisng, email?
What OS are you running?

 

[profoundnoah]

The OP clearly states that he upgraded to windows 10. A few questions.

The only constants in your system appear to be your install of windows and a PSU, correct? Or did you reinstall windows with the new HDD? Also, have you tried installing drivers directly instead of from DDU? I want to eliminate as many intermediaries as possible.

Have you tried using your PC in another location?

 

[Wayfall]

For me stutter has been software on most cases but GPU and HDD can both be causes. That or bad ram timings.

 

[gordonn]

Yes I have run perfmon to see statistics of components and everything looks good.
Yep everything has been changed but my PSU but like like I said I got that tested and was told that wasn't the problem.
Nothing else freezes only when I'm inside a actual video game that's when the stutters start appearing
I'm running Windows 10 Home 64 bit and I very much doubt it's my CPU there's no spikes in graphs and while it's idle it's running at 0% and depending on games like Fallout 4 cpu usage is around 35% to 45% ish from what I found.
The only spikes in graphs are my GPU just a massive spike downwards because it's essentially frozen for a bit

 

[profoundnoah]

Sounds like a software issue to me then. When you got the PC looked at, did the repairman run the entire system together? If he didn't experience any loss in gaming performance, there could be some bad wiring/power delivery stuff going on at your place. Highly doubt that's the issue, but it is possible. Can you run a GPU benchmark such as Unigine valley/heaven and report your findings? If it runs smoothly, then I'd definitely suspect drivers to be at fault here. This would coincide with you still keeping the copy of windows that you had with the previous builds.

 

[gordonn]

The OP clearly states that he upgraded to windows 10. A few questions.

The only constants in your system appear to be your install of windows and a PSU, correct? Or did you reinstall windows with the new HDD? Also, have you tried installing drivers directly instead of from DDU? I want to eliminate as many intermediaries as possible.

Have you tried using your PC in another location?

I reinstalled Windows 10 formatted my drive to see if it was truly bad drivers or not and just run on the updated drives from Nvidia and decided to run download steam and download a few games one at a time. So with a brand new drive and nothing else downloaded but updated drivers from Nvidia and Steam to really pinpoint if the problem is software or not games still suffer from big stutters. I have tried using my PC at another house hold and problem is still there.
I have a friend who has the exact same PC as me as I helped him build it and his one works perfectly fine.

 

[profoundnoah]

The only thing I could think of would be your PSU then....is it possible your friend would let you borrow his just to test very quickly? It's one of those things that you don't know until you try.

 

[gordonn]

Sounds like a software issue to me then. When you got the PC looked at, did the repairman run the entire system together? If he didn't experience any loss in gaming performance, there could be some bad wiring/power delivery stuff going on at your place. Highly doubt that's the issue, but it is possible. Can you run a GPU benchmark such as Unigine valley/heaven and report your findings? If it runs smoothly, then I'd definitely suspect drivers to be at fault here. This would coincide with you still keeping the copy of windows that you had with the previous builds.

Here is a photo from the email I got back from him testing my PC. I will certaintly run a GPU benchmark and get back to you and also thank you for your time in offering advice it's very much appreciated https://ibb.co/jvo4Eo

 

[profoundnoah]

Looks quite interesting. Yeah, go ahead and run that GPU benchmark. I still definitely think it's worth testing a different PSU out, because you've practically tried everything at this point. The repairman isn't that far off though; this could also be a hard drive issue. Just see if you can borrow someone's PSU for a little, and if you still have the issue, then we can proceed with something like getting an SSD.

 

[gordonn]

The only thing I could think of would be your PSU then....is it possible your friend would let you borrow his just to test very quickly? It's one of those things that you don't know until you try.

Looks quite interesting. Yeah, go ahead and run that GPU benchmark. I still definitely think it's worth testing a different PSU out, because you've practically tried everything at this point. The repairman isn't that far off though; this could also be a hard drive issue. Just see if you can borrow someone's PSU for a little, and if you still have the issue, then we can proceed with something like getting an SSD.

So I run Heaven Benchmark 4.0 and I experienced huge stutters big shots from 99% down to 0% for a couple of seconds and this felt alot worse than actually playing games there was small stutters then about 5 or 6 huge stutters where it just freezes and my gpu has no OC on it so I know it's not a unstable overclock affecting the benchmark.
It could be a hard drive issue but I've got another Hard drive with no bad sectors and it still stutters and freezes on that so that has to eliminate it being my hard drive.

 

[profoundnoah]

This is pointing more and more to either bad power delivery or just some weird, screwed up GPU driver. I believe it's more than likely the former, as you've been quite diligent in ensuring that you're running the correct version, and frequent reinstalls of windows could probably rule the latter out. Not to mention, this is true among different GPUs as well.

 

[gordonn]

Here is the photo of the Heaven Benchmark Graph https://ibb.co/mwDMuo
This was my second time running it because the first time for some reason the screenshot didn't save.

 

[gordonn]

This is pointing more and more to either bad power delivery or just some weird, screwed up GPU driver. I believe it's more than likely the former, as you've been quite diligent in ensuring that you're running the correct version, and frequent reinstalls of windows could probably rule the latter out. Not to mention, this is true among different GPUs as well.

I get back to you after this weekend and see if it's truly my PSU or not but nevertheless you have been very helpful and hopefully I don't have to cough out more money to get a SSD now

 

[Wayfall]

If its only in games then its a driver, GPU or PSU issue or maybe HDD.