[SOLVED] New Computer Stuttering

[stuperstrong]

So I built a new computer a couple nights ago and it freezes and stutters every couple seconds, the internet appears to stutter too during this, causing all websites/apps to lose connectivity and the 2nd monitor won't come on.
The lights on my CPU cooler all flash various times when booting and while fully logged into windows while computer is stuttering.
The computer WAS functional for a solid 12 hours until I turned it off for the night and booted it back up the next day, this was after removing 1 stick of ram and just running with one, but upon booting back up with just 1 the issues started again and no combination of the ram sticks 1 or 2 would make it stop stuttering this time.

My BIOS is up to date to the most current version.
I did not change any settings in the BIOS other than updating the current version.
AMD Radeon software is installed and GPU drivers are up to date.
I've updated all my drivers on the device.
I tried swapping the DP cable for both monitors and using just one.
Tried using 1 stick of ram.
Unplugged every USB device 1 by 1 to see if it stopped the stuttering.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fMw478
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X3D 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Asus ROG RYUO III 240 ARGB 70.07 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX X670E-E GAMING WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory
Storage: Western Digital Black SN850X 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Video Card: XFX Speedster MERC 310 Black Edition Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24 GB Video Card
Case: Asus TUF Gaming GT502 ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair RM1000x (2021) 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

 

[Darkbreeze]

So you haven't enabled the XMP/EXPO/DOCP/A-XMP memory profile in the BIOS, and are likely running at the default native speed for the platform? That should be your first order of business is going into the BIOS and enabling the D.O.C.P profile so that your memory is running at the correct advertised speed of 5600MT/s and the correct tested timings for your kit as hard coded into the XMP, A-XMP, D.O.C.P or EXPO profile. On ASUS boards it is generally called D.O.C.P as ASUS refuses to pay Intel for the use of the XMP terminology.

Perhaps more importantly though, after building this system did you do a FULL, CLEAN install of Windows or are you using a Windows installation that existed and was in use with a previous system than the current one? And did you make sure that you selected Windows 11, and not Windows 10, when downloading those drivers from your motherboard product support page?

And, when you say you've "updated all my drivers on the device" do you mean you actually went to the actual product support page for your motherboard on the ASUS website and downloaded the latest drivers for chipset, network adapters, audio controller, onboard AMD graphics (VGA) and Bluetooth, and then installed them, or do you mean you used either Windows update or some third party driver tool to check for driver updates. Because one of those ways is the correct way and the others are not.

As for the memory, make CERTAIN you are installing them in the DIMM_A2 and DIMM_B2 slots, which are the second and fourth slots to the right of the CPU socket. It is important that for two DIMM operation you use ONLY those two slots.

You might also, before making any changes in the BIOS, want to do a hard reset first, in order to force recreation of the hardware tables after having updated the BIOS. We OFTEN see users who have updated by have not done a hard reset, tend to experience continued issues that are resolved after doing a hard reset due to settings that want to "stick" despite having updated. It's always worth a try, and then after the hard reset you can go ahead and go back into the BIOS, set your memory D.O.C.P or EXPO profile, select or create the desired case and CPU fan profiles or custom curves and any other settings that might need to be configured.

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the BIOS to fully reset and force recreation of the hardware tables.

 

[stuperstrong]

So you haven't enabled the XMP/EXPO/DOCP/A-XMP memory profile in the BIOS, and are likely running at the default native speed for the platform? That should be your first order of business is going into the BIOS and enabling the D.O.C.P profile so that your memory is running at the correct advertised speed of 5600MT/s and the correct tested timings for your kit as hard coded into the XMP, A-XMP, D.O.C.P or EXPO profile. On ASUS boards it is generally called D.O.C.P as ASUS refuses to pay Intel for the use of the XMP terminology.

Perhaps more importantly though, after building this system did you do a FULL, CLEAN install of Windows or are you using a Windows installation that existed and was in use with a previous system than the current one? And did you make sure that you selected Windows 11, and not Windows 10, when downloading those drivers from your motherboard product support page?

And, when you say you've "updated all my drivers on the device" do you mean you actually went to the actual product support page for your motherboard on the ASUS website and downloaded the latest drivers for chipset, network adapters, audio controller, onboard AMD graphics (VGA) and Bluetooth, and then installed them, or do you mean you used either Windows update or some third party driver tool to check for driver updates. Because one of those ways is the correct way and the others are not.

As for the memory, make CERTAIN you are installing them in the DIMM_A2 and DIMM_B2 slots, which are the second and fourth slots to the right of the CPU socket. It is important that for two DIMM operation you use ONLY those two slots.

You might also, before making any changes in the BIOS, want to do a hard reset first, in order to force recreation of the hardware tables after having updated the BIOS. We OFTEN see users who have updated by have not done a hard reset, tend to experience continued issues that are resolved after doing a hard reset due to settings that want to "stick" despite having updated. It's always worth a try, and then after the hard reset you can go ahead and go back into the BIOS, set your memory D.O.C.P or EXPO profile, select or create the desired case and CPU fan profiles or custom curves and any other settings that might need to be configured.

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the BIOS to fully reset and force recreation of the hardware tables.

Hey, thanks for the response.

1. I tried with and without the expo profile turned on.
2. This was a new install, all parts were new so I created a new USB Windows 11 install drive for it the same day I built it.
3. I downloaded them using the Armoury Crate software that Asus pushes.
4. Ram is in the A2 and B2 slots (2nd and 4th from the CPU).
5. I did the CMOS/BIOS reset using the button on the motherboard.

6. Idk why, but I left it unplugged for a bit while I ate dinner and came and everything is working fine now. I tried to reboot it to see if the issues would happen again but they haven't so I have no clue.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Do yourself a favor, get rid of Armory crate. It's the biggest piece of garbage, well, it's EQUALLY a piece of garbage as the equivalent utilties (Viruses, malware) from all the other board manufacturers. And if you have any reservations about that, just ask around. It's absolutely NOT necessary and it's absolutely the cause of MANY problems people with ASUS boards have. In point of fact, EVERY SINGLE ONE of these bundled utilities is nothing more than a way for them to get you to let them watch basically everything you do while that software is installed, and that included Armory crate, Gigabyte control center, ASRock live update and app shop and MSI Dragon center.

They are all phone home apps just like NZXT's CAM software, but even if they weren't, they are ALL buggy as hell and I can point to dozens and dozens of threads that I myself alone have been involved with where removing them was basically all that was necessary to fix whatever was going on for that user. So my advice is, don't use them. Any of them.

You don't need them, in any way. If you need to update the BIOS, then download the BIOS image and update it in the BIOS or using whatever version of Flashback like feature your board has IF it has it. If you need to update drivers, and you WILL need to do that periodically, GO to the motherboard product page and download the latest version, and manually install it. That is my advice even if your system is currently, seemingly, self corrected.

And for the record, the CMOS reset button on ANY motherboard does nothing more than using the menu options to reset to default values does while IN the BIOS. It is not even marginally the same process as doing a hard reset and will not EVER force a reconfiguration of the hardware tables if there is a problem with a setting that is stuck or refuses to change despite resetting the default values or updating the BIOS and yes, it is VERY common to update the BIOS and still have a problem that you had before because of this. Which, is WHY we often recommend doing a hard reset if the other methods don't show any success as a hard reset will often be successful where other methods have failed.

Also, I get that you did a clean install on the 4TB drive. Are there ANY other drives attached to the system that have EVER had Windows installed on them, because IF there are it is a very good idea to download the community edition of Paragon partition manager and find the (Likely) hidden Windows partitions including the boot and EFI partitions, and potentially also any still remaining recovery partition that are all in addition to the primary C: partition Windows creates, and remove them, because having multiple Windows partitions due to previous OS installations where somebody has removed the C: partition thinking that is all they need to do is a very common reason for problems, but not usually the exact ones you are having. I always like to mention though so users are aware of this potential issue if they have older drives attached.

 

[stuperstrong]

Everything seems to be working without issue even after a couple shut downs. Idk what the problem was tbh, but I'll get rid of Armory Crate and just download any future updates from the Asus MOBO page.

Also, there are no other drives, just the 4TB.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Cool man. Glad you got it all sorted and good luck to you. Actually, if it happens again you might take a look to see that it is not automatically running any processes like defragmenter/TRIM, disk cleanup, system restore, etc. that might take up significant resources and maybe cause some lag while trying to do other things, but if you don't have any further problems I wouldn't worry about it. Good luck.