About to give up..

ProStreet · 8 Jan 2021 at 21:50

I am running into this intermittent issue where my pc stutters on the desktop and games. I then do a complete reinstall of Windows, sometimes it fixes the issue, sometimes not.

Intel Core i7 9700k
Asus maximus xi hero z390 motherboard
32gb 16gb x 2 3200mhz DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung Evo Plus 1TB M.2 SSD
RTX 3080 10GB

The stutter will be so bad sometimes just on the windows desktop, and i have nothing open. Usage is not really high across anything. I was so close to just buying a 5600x and new amd motherboard, as i have a feeling its either the processor or motherboard causing this, as ive had it before with different gpu, different ram, different ssd.

Also have this weird issue where sometimes on my samsung odyssey g9, it reverts to 6 bpc colour in the nvidia control panel, when i never clicked on it..?

sideways14a · 8 Jan 2021 at 22:04

Have you installed all and i mean ALL of the manufacturers drivers. and i dont mean visiting your supplier i mean AMD/Nvidia/intel

ProStreet · 8 Jan 2021 at 22:20

sideways14a said:
Have you installed all and i mean ALL of the manufacturers drivers. and i dont mean visiting your supplier i mean AMD/Nvidia/intel

Yep motherboard chipset drivers, intel drivers through the utility. But I will have a look again to see if I've missed any but wouldn't have thought a LAN driver etc would cause this issue.

Diddums · 8 Jan 2021 at 23:14

smeemi said:
Yep motherboard chipset drivers, intel drivers through the utility. But I will have a look again to see if I've missed any but wouldn't have thought a LAN driver etc would cause this issue.

Pull all the RAM sticks out and try them one at a time. If it works, remove it and try again. My money's on the RAM being borked.

Donnie Fisher · 9 Jan 2021 at 08:21

Sounds like memory issues as diddums suggested. That being said, I had similar with a bios level once and it took an upgrade to the bios to sort.

varkanoid · 9 Jan 2021 at 09:40

Have you got the RAM running at the right speed ? Using XMP profile ? In the BIOS ? Checked you have latest BIOS ?

Nvidia control panel showing correct hz for your monitor in "Change resolution" and "adjust desktop size and position"

Have you had Task Manager open and checked what is taking the most CPU time etc ?

ProStreet · 9 Jan 2021 at 22:16

Thanks guys.

I think I've figured what it is. My m.2 ssd, samsung evo plus is overheating. I checked the temp when it was stuttering and it was 56 degrees. The monitor had a red indicator next to it. Touched the heatsink on it and it was extremely hot. Would you think this is the main cause for it? Also, how do I go about resolving it, already have a heatsink so expect it to remain cool.

What's the best heatsink you can buy for m.2?

Finners · 9 Jan 2021 at 22:19

56 degrees is on the warm side for just idle use but not at throttling temperatures that i think would cause stuttering. Do you have any mechanical drives in the system?

ProStreet · 9 Jan 2021 at 23:02

Finners said:
56 degrees is on the warm side for just idle use but not at throttling temperatures that i think would cause stuttering. Do you have any mechanical drives in the system?

Nope none just two m.2 ssds. It was really intense stuttering and all that was different was the temp of the ssd. As I had the computer on most of the day and it wasnt stuttering.

Donnie Fisher · 10 Jan 2021 at 08:12

A heatsink will only work well if it has something to dump the heat into ... I.e. cool fresh air.

If they are sitting right under a GPU, then rather than cool air they may be getting the hot air expelled from there GPU, or the GPUiggt be preventing air getting to it, so not being cooled that much. Maybe worth trying a bodger fan pointing right at the SSD to force colder air across it and see.

ProStreet · 10 Jan 2021 at 14:12

Thanks all. I've bought this pci e x4 m.2 adapter which has a heatsink. Hopefully that helps as further away from cpu and gpu.

ProStreet · 11 Jan 2021 at 21:50

So I got the m.2 adapter. It's literally just a m.2 slot on a pci x4 board with a heatsink. I plug it in and it just screws up my pc, when I can get into windows I get inaccessible boot device. The ssd shows up in the bios. Sometimes I cant even get in the bios, as it doesn't post...

One problem after the next, it wasnt cheap either, any help would be grateful.

Donnie Fisher · 11 Jan 2021 at 22:52

Doesn't sound great. So I take it that without the suspect SSD plugged in the system runs peachy?

What about some of the SSD tools from Samsung that might be able to query the drive and give it a health check.

ProStreet · 11 Jan 2021 at 22:57

Donnie Fisher said:
Doesn't sound great. So I take it that without the suspect SSD plugged in the system runs peachy?

What about some of the SSD tools from Samsung that might be able to query the drive and give it a health check.

The Samsung SSD is the one that is overheating and is my boot drive. The SSD tool from Samsung was working initially and then showed the device as blank so something is going wrong with it, it seems.

Although the SSD is working from the m.2 slot directly, just not with the PCI x4 adapter. I've tried changing uefi/legacy settings, csm etc to no avail.

Feel like something is iffy with my motherboard anyway... May just do a complete rebuild with AMD.

Tinkers2004 · 12 Jan 2021 at 16:41

Install a program called HWinfo and run the sensors in the background, when it start stuttering have a look at CPU temperatures and check it hasn't got hot and started throttling, it will also tell you max temperatures that things like your SSD has reached. Also have you installed the samsung NVME driver direct from their site.