Question Help! Computer Stuttering & Random Restarts

[kaurloto]

Hi all, I'm finally reaching out for help after months of troubleshooting on my own. Made an account here just for this. I built my computer back in December 2010, with some upgrades along the way (components listed at bottom).

There is a constant audible and freezing stutter that occurs every few seconds. Also, it will occasionally hard-reboot without warning; no BSOD, all Event logs are gone several hours prior to the restart after recovering.

Here is a link to a recording I made of the stutter. I am playing an audio tone so you can hear it, and hopefully you can see it happening in VLC as well.

View: https://youtu.be/DOuyFA7qi3s

Troubleshooting:
Have done a fresh (full erase and reinstall) of Windows 10 on 2 different SSDs, issue still comes back.
Intel Processor Diagnostics Tool comes back good.
Ran memtest86 for 4 hours without any errors.
Crystal Disk Info reports all drives are good.
Ran Display Driver Uninstaller and it still occurs, with & without fresh drivers.
Using 3 different graphics cards across 2 different PCI slots results in the same issue.
Stuttering even occurs in Safe Mode.
All temps look good, reapplied fresh thermal paste on CPU within the last year.
No overclocking.

Components:
Motherboard: ASUS P6X58D-E
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07GHz
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 6x4GB (24GB) RAM
Storage: 250GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD, 500GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD, 4TB Samsung 860 Evo SSD
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SC
Main Monitor: Samsung 32" LCD 1080p 60Hz HDTV, LN32C530 via HDMI
Sound Card: None (Built in Realtek HD Audio)
Operating System: Windows 10 Enterprise 64-bit
OS Version: 1809
OS Build: 17763.1098

Any help is GREATLY APPRECIATED!!! I'm at a complete loss, not sure what else to do before giving up on this rig...

 

[TheOcelotGamer]

This is quite the issue. My first thought would be maybe its the power supply, maybe its power delivery is fluctuating. if your mother board gives your the option you could try under clocking your cpu to see if the alleviates the issue at all. This is unlikely to have an effect and i wouldnt recommend it if youve never over/under clocked.
If you have a known good psu you could try that.
You could also try running a malware scan from malwarebytes or something if you havent already.
To be honest with you im kind of making educated guesses here, ive never seen this kind of issue at stock speeds.

 

[kaurloto]

@TheOcelotGamer - Thanks for the input!

The only components I haven't been able to explicitly test are the PSU and the motherboard so my latest hunch is that it could be either, but I've never seen anything online that would indicate a bad PSU could cause stuttering like this. Unfortunately I don't have a spare PSU to try out so I bit the bullet and bought a new one yesterday, I'll try that out when it arrives later this week.

If it still occurs with a new PSU then I've lost all hope lol.

 

[kaurloto]

I ran hwinfo64 to get more detailed data, and it looks like the CPU clock keeps jumping from 1604 MHz x12 Ratio to 3208 MHz x24 Ratio every 2-3 seconds. Is this just Speed Step?

View: https://youtu.be/xZlmC8PFcM0