Question Game stuttering out of the blue ?

[Ghostyy]

First of all I'd like to mention I checked other threads and nothing helped so far, I have all of my drivers updated and I honestly do not remember if I installed anything new (most likely not).

I'm not a techie but my hardware is fairly okay, I am still updating it so please do not be judgy, I just really expect to get straightforward answers here.

Specs:
i5-10400 2.90 GHZ
8GB RAM (I KNOW it isn't much for gaming and I am soon getting 2nd stick, till not it didn't have negative impact)
ADATA SU650 SSD (two of them, one is where the system's at and other is for games)
ST4000VX013-2XG104 HDD (only used for media storing)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX3060 GPU

Not sure what else I should put here but if you start questioning build choices let me mention that this was initially pc for online school and I just updated it a tiny bit to play games

I believe it is close to bottleneck but I've had this gpu for last 6 months or so and it never ever stuttered before. I don't remember making any changes or anything but one evening my game just started randomly freezing completely and reloading (?) GPU using ctrl+shift+b didn't help. I updated my GPU drivers to latest and checked everything else to be up to date as well, I had also reinstalled windows last winter and I own legitimate windows 10 pro copy to avoid EVERY possible malware or viruses. Speaking of those I have also run a full scan and personally went through each folder to see if there's anything new and suspicious, my cpu usage is always around 70-80 (by always I mean whenever I checked while gaming) and I always keep track on my background usage so I am more than sure there are no viruses involved.

I thought my PSU might be faulty but I bought it last year and I don't really know any ways to check that, it doesn't make any suspicious noises and my whole pc is always clean from dust as I care for it deeply.
My next thought was CPU being too weak for the processes as I always keep discord and opera GX running in the background, listening to youtube but again, my CPU usage isn't that horribly high.
I doubt it could be my GPU as it's new and pretty powerful to this day, at the end of the day I do not play any really demanding and heavy games, I spend whole day playing Dota 2 / genshin or overwatch, sometimes valorant and my game settings are usually either system recommended or customized for best performance
Overheating? Not the case really, my pc is approx at 60-70 degrees while playing games and if I feel like the top of the case can cook eggs I take a break completely
Also my game ssd isn't even half full, my system ssd has 30GB free (it aint much but it used to be even worse)

I have read almost every article on this matter and none of them suggest any fixes that I haven't tried :/

P.S. The stutters are so incredibly long and horrific, it's like the whole system freezes for 10-20sec, no sound, nothing but a frozen screen.

 

[cdrkf]

It would be helpful if you also provide motherboard make / model and your PSU make / model as they can both have a big impact on performance and stability.

With regards to temp you say is 'approx. 60 - 70 degrees' - what measurement is that exactly? Thermal throttling would explain the issue you are describing, if your CPU is getting too hot it will drop clocks to prevent damage, which will lead to a big lag spike when it does. If you have had the machine for a few years its possible the thermal compound between the CPU and cooler might need changing. Motherboard VRM temps can also lead to thermal throttling if they get too hot, do you have any fans in your system besides the cpu cooler?

I suggest using the free CPUID HWMonitor tool to keep an eye on all temps in the system. Load that up then fire up a game - it lists all temp sensors in your system including cpu, motherboard and gpu temps. If any of them are getting above 80C or so that could indicate thermal throttling - HWMonitor also shows CPU clock speeds, so you can see if the CPU frequency drops when the stutters occur.