[SOLVED] Random ping spikes on a new PC

[CreepingDeath]

Hey guys,

At the start of July I got a new custom built PC, something that was long overdue, and I've not had any problems with it so far... except for this. Every online game I play I get random ping spikes. It'll suddenly shoot up from a stable 30ms to anywhere between 100 -300ms. It doesn't impact download or upload speeds and I'm not experiencing any packet loss when it occurs. In terms of impact on the game, it's just enough to knock my character out of sprint for example. I'm on a wired connection.

I've tried just about everything I can think of to fix this.

• I've checked all the odd Windows 10 settings (automatic updates, p2p update hosting, power management etc)
• I've tried rolling back lan drivers (and updating them again when that didn't work)
• I've tried a new ethernet cable
• Reset the router
• Disconnected every other device from the router
• Disabled the firewall
• I tried reconnecting my old PC, to the same router, using the same ethernet cable, playing the game games on the same servers at the same time, and the issue just doesn't exist there.

I'm left thinking perhaps this is a hardware issue? Could this be caused by a faulty ethernet port/motherboard?

My specs, if they are at all relevant;

Windows 10 Home
i9-10900k
Asus Rog Strix B560-F motherboard
32GB Ram
Nvidia 3070Ti
1TB Samsung 970 nvme ssd
Cat 6 cable
Plusnet Hub One Router

I hope someone here can help. The only option that I can think off that's left is calling up the manufacturer and getting a replacement part. But that seems like the extreme, no choice left option.

 

[bill001g]

Open a background cmd window and leave a constant ping run to your router IP.

It will be very rare to see a ping spike on a ethernet connection. The only way you get a ping spike is if something is holding the data in a buffer. It can't be the cable itself so a ping spike on the local connection would likely be the pc but there is a rare chance it can be the router.

If this sees nothing which is what I suspect try to run a constant ping to a ip like 8.8.8.8 both on this machine and on another device if you can. This is to see if you are getting problems past your router. If it shows nothing then it might be the games blaming the network when it is some other problem. Many times it is video driver issues and the game telling lies

2 common things that cause people issues. I think your motherboard has a 2.5g ethernet port. A lot of people have reported strange issues. Not sure which driver is best but I would try the latest from the intel site. Next many asus motherboard come bundled with some crappy "gamer" network stuff. They have changed what they call this but make sure there is no QoS type software running. Anything that talks about network priority should be uninstalled. This also comes with some video cards.

 

[CreepingDeath]

So I pinged the router for a while, both while trying a game and with the pc just idling, and they both ended up showing sporadic ping spikes up to 1032ms. Pinging a random ip from the machine seems stable. That seems odd to me. Surely if there is an issue arising between the machine and the router that should also show while pinging another ip? Already running the latest Intel driver and the only Asus software I've got is Armoury Crate, which is there primarily for fan control, temp monitoring and RGB control.

Should I just save myself a lot of pain and buy a standalone ethernet card? And if so what should I be keeping an eye out for/what to avoid? I'll be honest, Networking is easily the weakest part of my PC tech knowledge.

 

[bill001g]

At least a network card is not real expensive. Pretty much there is no problems with almost any of them. Most people get intel. The 1gbit cards have been around so long they seem to have no issues. The 2.5g ones you would think they would be more stable already.

Check to be sure that the wifi is disable. The ethernet should always be preferred but sometime the priority setting gets changed.

To verify it is not something stupid with the router try to ping another device in your house. This will only use the switch ports and will not run through the router cpu chip. What would be even more strange is if only this machine had issues ping the router IP but you could ping the other pc with no problems.

Since this is prebuild machines I would check that no software with a name similar to cFos was installed. This is some gamer network accelerator but it does not really do anything much....other than cause lots of problems.

 

[CreepingDeath]

I decided to give up and bought a network card. Unfortunately, it has not solved the problem. Meaning, I guess, that it wasn't a hardware fault at all but is instead somehow down to how this specific machine is communicating to the router.

Pinging another device on the network I did have one single instance of the ping spiking, but it was only 1 in a half hour of it running so... I don't know how much that helps. Pinging from that device to this pc resulted in no problems.

While it is a prebuilt machine, it is one I installed Windows on myself. So there is no extraneous software nonsense.

Edit: Rebooted into Safe Mode with Networking and left it pinging the router for 45 minutes. Still getting the ping spikes.