GPU frame drops every 5 minutes.

[Droid8Apple]

I don't know what to do anymore. As the title states, its systematically every 5 minutes the GPU acts like I'm no longer gaming; resulting in a multiple-second complete freeze as it drops to 2 FPS then shoots back up like it just needed to catch it's breath (which I know... immediately sounds like a hard drive issue but I switched a 55 Gb game from all 3 of my drives and witnessed the exact same thing)

This entire system is new (a month and a half old) with the exception of the SSD & Hybrid SSHD. Less than a month old. Yes both drives are reading good health, no need for optimization, and no need for de-fragmentation.

• 
  Specs:
  
  i7-7700k @ 4.8 Ghz (yes tried stock speeds as well)
  
  Aorus Gaming K7 Z270X Motherboard
  
  16Gb G.Skill Trident Z RGB 3000Mhz DDR4 w/XMP on (tried without as well where it's 2400 IIRC)
  
  NZXT Kraken X62 AIO liquid cooler with 240mm radiator
  
  Asus Strix GTX-1070 8Gb OC Edition (not using GPU Tweak, I use MSi Afterburner and have a very minimal overclock of around 100Mhz core and 100Mhz Memory)
  
  EVGA Supernova 750G2 750-watt 80+Gold PSU
  
  Samsung 840 SSD 128Gb- OS drive and is still perfectly good
  Seagate SSHD 1Tb- Games drive, never had a problem before, even until a month ago when I switched from RX480 to GTX1070
  Seagate Barracuda 3tb 7200 RPM 3.5" drive for other stuff and gaming as well for the less used games (brand new)

Graph from Afterburner showing what I see:
http://imgur.com/PU9MgNT

 

[pohemi]

Did you try using GPU Tweak II and not Afterburner?

 

[Droid8Apple]

Did you try using GPU Tweak II and not Afterburner?

Thanks for the reply!

Yes I did at first (and always install it first, before switching to another, because it's an Asus GPU), and the problem with it is that it makes Windows Explorer (desktop) hang and lag randomly... so badly that I have to "sign out" and "sign in" to windows to get it to respond. Even restarting windows explorer from task manager doesn't work.That's the only reason I switched to Afterburner because other than that I like GPUTweak better.

 

[Droid8Apple]

I'd give just about anything for some help here. Of all these members (including the moderators) I was really hoping someone would have had this issue before.

 

[bishopi5]

Are you playing battlegrounds? if so its the servers / game, not you, feels like complete system freeze every few mins, more in certain areas

 

[Droid8Apple]

Are you playing battlegrounds? if so its the servers / game, not you, feels like complete system freeze every few mins, more in certain areas

No, but thanks for the response. It was Forza Horizon 3 which is the worst port ever to begin with. But then I noticed it was happening on all kinds of games. Notably Ghost Recon Wildlands and Subnautica, not to mention my 3Dmark score went from 16,600 to 15,500; I even tried switching to the drivers that gave me that score with no luck. I recently reset windows and honestly I might again. Just to be sure it isn't software related.

 

[bishopi5]

Ok well in this situation it usually has nothing to do with the GPU, More commonly heat, If heat is fine which i assume it is, it might be your motherboard / ram causing the lockups, can you run prime95 or any CPU stress test and post your temps please

 

[Droid8Apple]

Damn lost what I typed. The heat under load is in the picture I posted in OP. It has both cpu and gpu under load. Though I will post prime95 temps tomorrow. I don't care how loud my system is I always have fans set to performance with my own curves that put fans at 100% at 75*c for gpu and kraken keeps the i7 below 65*c load and 24*c idle. Kabylake runs hot but I've never had it thermal throttle me.

 

[Droid8Apple]

From the picture I posted...

The maximum CPU temp recorded was 74 though not during that game from the looks of it

The max GPU was 64 I think it said. On mobile so this is hard.

Im not arguing, I want the help, just working together to diagnose. It defintely seems like it could be motherboard somehow. I can't roll back my bios because Intel Optane crap, I've had F5 from gigabyte for a couple weeks and it never had a problem until I refreshed windows a few days ago to the same exact version I was on.

 

[Droid8Apple]

Ok well in this situation it usually has nothing to do with the GPU, More commonly heat, If heat is fine which i assume it is, it might be your motherboard / ram causing the lockups, can you run prime95 or any CPU stress test and post your temps please

And here's the Prime95 run MIN-MAX FFT's @ 1344 ran for a quick 5 minutes just to show, and absolutely no game whatsoever that I play hits temps this high. When I first set this clock I ran it for 3 hours with very similar results. Keep in mind too, it's 86*F outside today in good ole' Pennsylvania with enough humidity to kill a cat.

 

[bishopi5]

Temps are great, i would be looking towards your motherboard. You could run a mem test to be triple sure. Only thing i can suggest other then replugging everything into the mobo, is to do a clean install of windows, if the problem still persists with fresh windows / drivers we are deffintely looking at your motherboard, only other thing it could be is the HDD and since they are great quality and new, i doubt its that. Motherboards love to die, i have never seen a CPU or SSD die in my life

 

[Droid8Apple]

Temps are great, i would be looking towards your motherboard. You could run a mem test to be triple sure. Only thing i can suggest other then replugging everything into the mobo, is to do a clean install of windows, if the problem still persists with fresh windows / drivers we are deffintely looking at your motherboard, only other thing it could be is the HDD and since they are great quality and new, i doubt its that. Motherboards love to die, i have never seen a CPU or SSD die in my life

THanks! I've never once cared about noise before performance so I definitely pride myself on my temps lol. Maybe because I'm old and grew up thinking if I can't hear it; it's not on. That's what I'm leaning on too as just before I posted this question I changed every SATA and unplugged/re-plugged every single wire. I even switched the gain on my OP-AMP on the motherboard. I did however get Forza working perfect today and am about to test other games, heres to hoping the combination of settings/voltage changes I've been trying will actually fix this issue. I have never had such a hard time troubleshooting and I've been doing this a long time. Hell, I even put a brand new CMOS battery in to replace the CMOS that was only a month old.Anyhow I'll report back and let you know what and if the problem is fixed. Thanks for the input! Always helps to hear from someone else that you didn't miss something along the way.