System stutter???

TheWayForward · 31 Mar 2011 at 10:14

A few months ago I upgraded my CPU, motherboard, ram, HDD, PSU to:

Asus P8P67 LE
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge)
G.Skill RipJawsX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
OCZ Vertex 2E 60GB SSD
Antec TruePower New 650W Modular PSU

I also have an M-Audio Delta44 sound card and Hauppauge TV tuner.

Since rebuilding with these new parts I have had some sort of stutter of the overall system. This is noticable when audio/video is playing. I have watched the windows performance monitor and can see that the stutter occurs at the same time as a small surge in CPU usage. The spike in CPU seems to be related to whichever application is playing audio/video at the time. I have tried playing audio/video while applying heavy loads to the CPU from other applications and this doesn't seem to worsen the problem.
Another symptom of this problem is that when I load an audio/video file into windows media player, the GUI will be visually responsive, but locks out control with the wait cursor for anywhere between 3 seconds and 3 minutes and then becomes responsive again.
When I have Cubase open, the stutter occurs in time with a massive spike in the 'ASIO time usage' meter.
Originally I thought that there was a problem with my sound card that needed adjustment, but this hasn't solved it and the problem still occurs with onboard sound.
I also thought it may be linked to CPU throttling but can't seem to resolve by playing with that either.
I also suspected I may be having problem with the RAM, but I have tried scanning it many times with no errors found and playing with the BIOS config and moving to different slots.
I have tried closing all kinds of applications/services in the OS. I have tried playing with every setting in the BIOS. I have made sure that the CPU heatsink is fastened down tight. I have tried taking TV Tuner out, disconnecting extra hard drives. I have replaced my graphics card with a new one.

BUT STILL...I have this horrible stutter.

Also, sometimes one of my SATA drives dissapears and I have to shutdown and fiddle with SATA connection to get it to reappear when I reboot. But thats probably got nothing to do with it. I think thats because I have to stretch the SATA cables right across my Lian Li case and they only just reach.

Anyway, does anyone have any ideas what I can do about this stutter?

I'm now wondering if its dodgy CPU or PSU. I hope not.

Ch3m1c4L · 31 Mar 2011 at 10:56

Ive had a dodgy sata connection on one drive in my raid array before, it would cause total system pausing of up to 10 minutes at a time. I never even noticed for months as I thought it was just crashing and was RAM related or something. Re doing all my storage setup and as such re doing all connections means that the backplane I thought had a faulty port on it now works 100%s again and I do not experience the hang, unless I hot swap a drive, and then its only for a few seconds as it spins up the drive.

So, try with alonger cable, or just physically move the drive closer for testing.

TheWayForward · 31 Mar 2011 at 13:39

Thanks I'll give that a try. I did disconnect some SATA drives but maybe not all.

I've got 60GB SSD, 320GB SATA-II, 1TB SATA-II, 1TB SATA-II, 2TB-SATA-II

When I looked at the live voltage monitors in the EFI BIOS I noticed that the 12v rail was often moving a bit above 12v and the 5v rail was going a bit above 5v. I would have thought that the PSU would deliver a clean and consitent 12.0v and 5.0v, but I'm not sure if its normal for this to fluctuate.

Ch3m1c4L · 31 Mar 2011 at 13:57

ATX spec is for something like 5% variance, and its pretty rare for a PSU to be exactly on the mark. From memory mine sits at something like 12.04 and 4.97, I thought the sensors had broken for quite a while but once I have seen them move to other readings for a few seconds lol. But yea, fluctuating is fine, as long as its within 5%

eddyc · 31 Mar 2011 at 14:35

Sounds like the SATA cable is causing the problem.

But one other idea just in case:

I had a similar problem a while ago and managed to narrow it down to a video driver that had been installed when I installed logmein. I disabled the driver and all was fine (logmein still worked). So I guess have a dig around in Device manager and see if any thing looks odd.

TheWayForward · 31 Mar 2011 at 14:50

I do sometimes hear the windows sound for 'hardware disconnected' and think why am I hearing that... When it happens I checked my hard drives and all are still accessible. Its quite rare that it happens and the stutter ranges from every 3 seconds to every 20 seconds. I can't see any problems in Device Manager either.
I will try disconnecting all drives except my SSD and see if the sounds stops. I have also ordered some longer SATA cables.
It could be that stretching the cable has loosened the SATA port on the board and slight movements are causing it to disconnect and reconnect very quickly.

I see Asus have just released an update for the Intel Rapidstore driver for the P8P67 so I'll install that too and see if it helps.

I'm sure I had this same problem when I built a computer about 5 years ago but I can't remember exactly what happened.

Ch3m1c4L · 31 Mar 2011 at 14:54

eddyc said:
Sounds like the SATA cable is causing the problem.

But one other idea just in case:

I had a similar problem a while ago and managed to narrow it down to a video driver that had been installed when I installed logmein. I disabled the driver and all was fine (logmein still worked). So I guess have a dig around in Device manager and see if any thing looks odd.

I remember having that issue after installing log me in, although uninstalling it didnt fix it, and it turned out my SLI bridge had got some crap in it, somehow....after a year of use.....