Question Slow Internet speeds after replacing PSU & GPU?

[mushu999]

Windows 10 Professional 21H2, latest patches
Motherboard: ASRock P67 Fatal1ty Professional
BIOS: AMI, ver L3.21A 03/18/2013 (latest available)
Monitor: my large screen TCL television via HDMI-to-DVI cable using the DVI-D (data) connector on graphics card
Graphics: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 (not "super") PCI-e, 6GB GDDR6 memory, 192 bit bus width, GPU core 300MHz, Mem 405MHz
Power supply (PSU): Gigabyte 850W UD gold
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500 Sandy Bridge, socket 1155 LGA running at 3.30GHz (not overclocked)
RAM: 12GB DDR3 Dual channel, CAS latency 7.0 clocks
Network on mobo is wired (no wi-fi) with Ethernet CAT5e cable to router
Router: Netgear Nighthawk R7000 with latest firmware installed
Modem: Motorola MB8600 DOCSIS 3.1
Internet: Comcast 500MB plan

Self-built computer that's been working perfectly for over a decade. Until the other day I used to have an EVGA GTX 970 video card and Antec 900W PSU. Was working fine with high Internet speeds the other night on a website and suddenly the entire computer just shut down as if someone had flipped the on/off switch on the back of the computer PSU.

Couldn't power it on at all. Mobo has a debug LED that shows POST codes and it was blank. Even CPU fan wouldn't power on. After a lot of trial-n-error I removed the GTX 970 video card and the computer booted up just fine up to the point of POST code on the mobo LED saying "no output device" which made sense. Turns out one of the two 6-pin power plugs on the video card had blown when the PSU blew. That's okay, the card was at least 6-8 years old. Went to a different older video card and computer still wouldn't power on. Took the PSU to get tested and it was bad also. That's okay, it was 11 years old and computer was usually on 24/7.

Took the opportunity to completely clean out the computer of dust and crap, pulled the fan off CPU and cleaned the old dry gunk of both surfaces and put on new thermal goo and reassembled. I was grounded at all times. Replaced bad PSU & GPU. Went into BIOS setup and went through all settings to ensure nothing had changed and hit save and rebooted.

So now I have a new power supply and video card (see specs at top) and Windows booted up after its automatic "chkdsk/f" thing and I get back into everything I have, but soon notice that youtube videos are choppy. And Internet speed tests show I never get more than 50-60MB down but it should be well over 400MB. Using another computer plugged into the router via CAT5e shows same speed test at 500MB or higher. Thus the problem is on my old computer. I tried both of the ethernet RJ45 plugs on the mobo and get same results. I tried different web browsers and get same results. I called Comcast (FWIW) and they tested the line and modem and said nothing is wrong.

EDIT: already ran DDU and fully uninstalled all video drivers, rebooted, installed latest nVidia WHQL driver (only driver not the other crap) so that's not the issue. QoS is not enabled in Windows or in the router:

C:\>netsh interface tcp show global
Querying active state...

TCP Global Parameters
----------------------------------------------
Receive-Side Scaling State          : enabled
Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level    : normal
Add-On Congestion Control Provider  : default
ECN Capability                      : disabled
RFC 1323 Timestamps                 : enabled
Initial RTO                         : 1000
Receive Segment Coalescing State    : enabled
Non Sack Rtt Resiliency             : disabled
Max SYN Retransmissions             : 4
Fast Open                           : enabled
Fast Open Fallback                  : enabled
HyStart                             : enabled
Proportional Rate Reduction         : enabled
Pacing Profile                      : off
C:\>

Help! I need more ideas on what to try and what to test! What could be causing the Internet speeds to be slow but everything else to work properly??

 

[Darkbreeze]

Try resetting the BIOS first, then go to the product page for your motherboard and download/install the latest network adapter driver for your board. Then restart. Also, given the age of your motherboard it might be a really good idea to replace the CMOS battery at the same time since you will need to remove it anyhow to do the hard reset AND since on a ten year old board it is almost certainly either weak or dead. CR2032.

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 hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

If that fails to make any change in the network adapter performance, then it's very possible that the network adapter was zapped when the PSU and graphics card died, as network adapters are generally one of the more vulnerable components on most motherboards. In that case you might want to look at buying a new PCIe network expansion card. Might not be a bad idea anyhow.

 

[mushu999]

Thank you for responding. If you would, what specifically in the BIOS could affect only the ethernet speeds? Buying a PCIe 1Gig ethernet card was a great idea that didn't occur to me and is a pretty cheap test!

 

[bill001g]

There is not a lot in the bios but there are a couple of stupid things that some have. green/power saving settings is one that tends to cause strange errors at time.

In windows check the status screen and see if the port is running at 100mbps or 1gbit. 100mbps generally means a defective cable but it could be a defective port in your case.

You could also try a linux USB boot image. These run 100% from the USB stick and have browser preinstalled so you can run simple speedtest. If it also shows slow speed then it is even more likely you have a hardware issue. If it does not you start to suspect some strange setting in windows causing it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

There is not a lot in the bios but there are a couple of stupid things that some have. green/power saving settings is one that tends to cause strange errors at time.

In windows check the status screen and see if the port is running at 100mbps or 1gbit. 100mbps generally means a defective cable but it could be a defective port in your case.

You could also try a linux USB boot image. These run 100% from the USB stick and have browser preinstalled so you can run simple speedtest. If it also shows slow speed then it is even more likely you have a hardware issue. If it does not you start to suspect some strange setting in windows causing it.

Listen to Bill. He has forgotten more about networking than I'll ever know.

 

[mushu999]

In windows check the status screen and see if the port is running at 100mbps or 1gbit. 100mbps generally means a defective cable but it could be a defective port in your case.

Network Properties screenshot:
View: https://i.imgur.com/is7VAS8.png

 

[bill001g]

Not sure about your image link but does it show 1000 or 100.

If it shows 1000 then it is going to be more complex. Again would try the unix boot since that is pretty quick to test and it quickly eliminates a lot of stuff. You could I guess try to copy files between your 2 machines and watch the speed on the resource monitor network tab. Be careful some things on the screen are MBYTES and not Mbits.

 

[Darkbreeze]

How to PROPERLY post images on the Tom's hardware forum


.​

 

[mushu999]

Not sure about your image link but does it show 1000 or 100.

If it shows 1000 then it is going to be more complex. Again would try the unix boot since that is pretty quick to test and it quickly eliminates a lot of stuff. You could I guess try to copy files between your 2 machines and watch the speed on the resource monitor network tab. Be careful some things on the screen are MBYTES and not Mbits.

I fixed the image link. It shows 1000/1000 so the new ethernet card isn't going to do much I'm afraid, but always good to have a spare in the drawer I guess.

Your idea to boot another O/S was a good one so I did Ubuntu off USB and Firefox in there on the same hardware gets me over 500MBps d/l, so now I know it is something in Windows or in the web browsers that is causing the speed problem.

It's just weird that a PSU/Video blowout caused the Internet to run slower...

 

[bill001g]

I hate these because there are so many setting in windows.

You could try the brute force wipe the disk and reinstall windows and hope to get lucky.

A couple ways to see if it is the web browser. You could try something like steam....remembering steam is MBYTES/sec. Still steam can be very strange at times, some games download fast and other slow on the same exact internet connection. If you have a second machine you could I guess try to copy large files between them. You can also try a old line mode program called IPERF. You should see 900+mbps between machines in your house. This though only tests the nic and the drivers so you may still be stuck trying to figure out what else in windows is messing stuff up.