Question Games started stuttering out of nowhere

Dec 18, 2024
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Specs:
  • CPU: Ryzen 5 7500f
  • Motherboard: ASRock B650M Pro RS Wifi
  • PSU: Seasonic B12-BC-750 80Plus Bronze 750W
  • RAM: Patriot Viper Venom DDR5 2x16GB 6000MHz CL36
  • Cooling: Endorfy Fera 5
  • GPU: PNY GTX 4070 Super 12GB Verto
  • SSD: Lexar 1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe NM620
  • OS: Windows 11

I'm at my wits' end here: this PC has been working fine for the past year until a few days ago most games started freezing for a split second.

I don't think it's GPU related - it happens even in low demanding titles, or when I'm emulating PSX games (that ran smoothly before.) In some games (Honkai Star Rail, My Time at Sandrock) I'm not getting FPS drops, but the audio cuts out for a split second instead, or some things seem to take a second to load.

The only thing that jumps out to me is that when the freezes happen SSD usage briefly shoots up to 100%, but it's so fast that I can't catch which process is doing this in task manager. Also in resource monitor when the freeze happens the game goes red "not responding" for a second or so.

Things I've tried:
  • I checked temps, they're fine - under load CPU sits at around 50C, SSD at around 40C, and GPU up to 70C.
  • I checked the SSD in CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark, it's at 99% health and seems to be fine
  • Loaded a Windows restore point from a point where everything was working
  • ran SFC (it said it fixed some stuff, but that didn't help with the stutter)
  • Installed new GPU drivers (without Nvidia's new app) after DDU in safe mode
  • Installed new chipest drivers from AMD
  • Updated BIOS
  • Updates Windows to 24H2
  • Ran a Malwarebytes scan (found nothing)
  • Tried a clean boot of Windows (games still stuttering)
  • Tried running just the game with no other programs open
  • Ran 3D Mark (no stuttering here!)
  • Tried reinstalling the games themselves (seems to help for some, but not all)

The only thing I haven't tried yet is a clean install of Windows, but if that also doesn't help, then I'm all out of ideas.