Question Windows 10 - Intermittent system lag

Clive Staples

Distinguished
Apr 11, 2008
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I'm not sure which forum is most appropriate for my question, but I could use some guidance in troubleshooting an issue I'm having with my Windows 10 rig. I'll post my system details below.

The symptom is that I'm seeing periodic lag in the system, which affects at least the following:

mouse cursor tracking
all audio output (like garbled/distorted audio)
graphics?

It seems like this might get worse when the system has been running longer (since last reboot). At worst, this happens as often as every 5 seconds or so.

For example if I'm playing music through iTunes, every so often I'll get garbled audio and then the music continues normally. It doesn't appear to be at regular intervals.

If I'm using a web browser or playing a game, every so often the cursor stops moving mid motion (ignoring mouse input) and then resumes after a second or two.

I've attempted some diagnostics but I'm not really sure where to look. Windows memory checker reports no memory issues at all. If I have Task Manager running and I'm checking the Performance tab, sometimes I can see a spike in CPU usage coinciding with the the symptoms, and other times the symptoms happen and the CPU usage appears to be unaffected.

I'm not sure if I have a hardware problem or possibly a driver issue, but I've updated drivers for my video card and audio device and that hasn't helped.

Any advice or suggestions on where to look to troubleshoot this further would be appreciated.

Thanks!

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Windows 10 Pro Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Gaming X-99 Gaming 5
CPU: Intel Core i7-5930k @ 3.50GHz, 6 Cores, 12 Logical Processors
BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. F23c, 6/15/2018
PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1200 P2 220-P2-1200-X1
Cooling: CORSAIR Hydro Series H105
Memory: XPG Z1 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 2400 (PC4 19200)
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 1080 GTX
Storage: System volume is 2x Crucial 128 GB SSDs in a RAID 0 array
G: INTEL SSDSC2BW240A4 (250 GB)
H: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 1TB
E: (external) Seagate Backup+ USB 3, 5TB
F: (external) Seagate Backup+ USB 3, 5TB