Identifying the reason for this stutter

Hardware
1

Hey,

So for the past 5 months I’ve been getting a stutter at random times when I’m using my machine. I can’t tell if it’s GPU, CPU, mobo or RAM related as it’s completely random. I’m watching a video - boom half a a second stutter. Playing a game - boom it’s back. Using excel - Mr. Stutter is at the door.

It’s more noticeable when I’m playing a game or watching a video as the audio, you know, stutters as well. However it also happens when using windows, usually I can see a small delay in moving the mouse courser when it happens.

The intervals it happens at are also random. Could be once a day, or once an hour. Completely random. I’m leaning toward it being GPU related, as twice in the past 5 months, when I’ve gone to boot up my system, it doesn’t post and I get a error beep that sounds like [beeeeeeeeeeep beep beep], which according to my mobo manual is “1 long, 2 short - Monitor or graphics card error”.

A part of the pci-e connector on my card is black, like it’s been burned. Pretty sure it wasn’t like that when I got it.

I don’t see any leaks on any of the caps on the mobo. There’s adequate airflow in my build. I’m getting a i7-3770 on Monday to test with to see if it makes a difference. Not sure how to even start diagnosing this.

In terms of age, my mobo and chip and one 4gb ram stick are from launch day. The 960, SSD and the other 4GB stick are from May 2015 - I upgraded to play Witcher 3. :smiley: The HDD’s are going into my NAS this weekend so they won’t be part of the equation for much longer.

My specs are:
Fractal Design R5
i5 2320
BeQuiet ShadowRock Topflow
Gigabyte GA-P61-USB3-B3
8GB DDR3 1333
GTX960 - 382.05 drivers
Crucial BX100 128GB SSD
WD 4TB HDD
2x Seagate IronWolf 4TB HDD
Windows 10 Pro - 10.0.15063 Build 15063
SATA config in the BIOS is in AHCI mode.
LG 29UM68-P FreeSync Ultrawide

Worst case scenario, it’s impossible to figure out and I wait until next year when I upgrade to a 1700 / Vega56 based system.

2

Hmm, the burn mark doesn’t look good. Is there any damage on the motherboard? Any singe marks? I suppose you don’t have a spare motherboard around to toss in? Too bad you don’t have a spare pcie slot either.

Also, what is your power supply? How old is it?

3

I don’t see any damage on the board. Also doesn’t have onboard graphics otherwise I would have tried to test with that.

PSU is a SeaSonic S12II, 520w, 80 PLUS Bronze, purchased on the 15th of May 2015.

4

Have you reinstalled the OS yet?

I would try to look through the Processes in the Task Manager for any unfamiliar processes. A virus could cause the issues you describe.

5

I’ll a try clean OS install on the weekend. It’s definitely not a virus, I’m not an idiot. Nothing I’ve got running looks dodgy.

1 Like
6

So… I was checking out a YouTube video, and the vid starting flashing green with some major black artifacting. So yeah… I think I know what the cause it. :confused:

I could be lucky and maybe it’s just bad drivers. Will try a fresh driver install and a fresh windows install if that doesn’t fix it, but I think this is a GPU hardware issue.

7

So after building my NAS and completely disassembling my main machine, upgrading my BIOS, installing a 3770 and a fresh Windows install…

It went away. :smiley:

My machine has been running great, with none of the issues I was experiencing before. It’s actually likely not a hardware issue that caused it. I didn’t run qBittorent for a few days before I rebuilt, and noticed that the stutter wasn’t there. It seems that there’s something with qBit that might directly or indirectly cause it.

Who knew?

Anyway, I now use Deluge on my NAS that runs OMV3. :stuck_out_tongue: