Question Intermittent downloads and Blue Screen

Jun 16, 2024
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Looking for advice solving a two part question (I suspect both might be related to storage) -
I have a home PC which I use almost exclusively for gaming. Specs as follows (new to forums, please let me know if extra is needed)
Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
MSI Gaming Edge Wifi
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor 4.20 GHz
16 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (upgraded to this from 2070 super about a year ago)

Problem 1
I have had issues for several years regarding downloads on essentially every launcher (Steam, Epic, Xbox, Ubisoft, etc.) dropping to zero for several seconds. Note, this is not a slow download issue, just a download crawls up to full speed, then drops to zero, repeat. Does not appear to be an issue downloading anything online via Chrome or (god-forbid) Edge.
Fairly certain it's not an ISP issue - no issues on any other devices. Confident it's my PC, I just don't know enough about where to check.

Problem 2
Multiple games crash regularly (sometimes just to desktop, occasionally blue screens).
About a month prior to the onset of Problem 2, I did an annual-ish complete reset of my PC (including all drives), which has not worked in the past for Problem 1. Updated bios about a week ago, no apparent change in either problem.

My C drive housing Windows is a 512GB M.2 nvme, and my D drive where most of my games go is a sata 2.5" SSD. I believe the read/write speeds shouldn't be the issue, but would have to double check. No other storage devices.

Any help or pointers to other threads addressing either problem would be greatly appreciated. I have tried more than my post indicates over the course of the past couple years, so all of the usual first-stops from Google and various forums don't seem to have been the problem.
I'm not a computer expert, so please be specific with any proposed steps. 😊

Respectfully,
Getting Tired of This
 
If by a "complete reset of my PC (including all drives)" included you deleting all partitions on the boot drive, and then installing onto the unallocated space, with only the boot drive connected, and it still has issues... then it must be a hardware problem or a driver issue of some kind.

Same with your NIC issue - if you're not being throttled by your router, then there's something wrong with the NIC itself or driver.