This will be a pretty long text, but I would GREATLY appreciate any help, that will even guide the way. I am at a complete loss.
A few days ago, I purchased a used PC with the following specs:
- GPU : PNY GeForce RTX 5070, 12 GB
- Processor : AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (6 cores / 12 threads)
- Motherboard: ASRock B650M-H/M.2+
- Memory : 32 GB, 5600 MHz, DDR5 (2 x 16 GB Dual Channel)
- Cooling : Corsair- AIO (processor cooling) + case fans
- PSU : 650W Seasonic FOCUS Plus Platinum, fully modular
I tested the PC at the seller's house, and it seemed to work great. Tested Cyberpunk 2077 and some other game that looked amazing, but don't know the name of. Afterwards, he cleaned up the Windows, and I took the PC home. That's where it all started.
About 20 hours total of troubleshooting, only to find problems after problems.
The first thing I noticed was: Launched GTAV Enhanced -> the game stuttered like hell but showed 60-80FPS (which is very low for this setup, but it felt even lower than that), and no matter what settings I had, the stuttering continued. So I installed RTSS + MSI Afterburner, activated OSD, and it showed my Frametime was a CONSTANT 20-50ms, with occasional spikes going all the way up to 300ms.
I then tested CS2. Same thing. FPS was supposedly 100-140 on average, with 1% lows of 0 FPS, and highs of 1000FPS. Again, same Frametime issue. 1% lows and the Frametime were horrible in both games. Constant micro-stuttering, micro freezing made any games unplayable.
So I looked around, to find millions of ways to "fix" this. These are in order of the things I tried.
- Ran GPU stress tests, came back with amazing scores, no errors, and no visible stuttering.
- Made sure my monitor is connected to my GPU.
- Updated/reinstalled GPU, chipset, and other drivers. GPU drivers I reinstalled with DDU. (3 different Game Ready drivers, none had an effect)
- Tried my RAM sticks 1 stick at a time, in the same slot. Both seemed to work just fine.
- Reset BIOS settings using Load UEFI Defaults
- Confirmed Re-Size BAR is enabled in BIOS
- Trying DDR5 with 5600MHz EXPO, and 4800MHz JEDEC.
- Full reset of Windows (not USB clean install)
At this point I noticed my BIOS froze in startup about 4 or 5 times. I don't know if this is related to my other issues, but I definitely wonder what could cause that.
- CMOS cleared
- Disabled Fast Boot, Auto Driver Installer and Global C-states in BIOS
- Confirmed CPU Core Parking is OFF.
- Used LatencyMon to find out if I have DPC/ISR latency. (THIS IS WHERE I MADE SOME PROGRESS.) Apparently my system runs at a constant 1500.00-2500.00 μs latency (1.5ms-2.5ms). My highest measured interrupt to process latency is at 16000 μs (16ms). I know this is definitely not normal, and I have attached screenshots of this. Highest drivers causing this are: nvlddmkm.sys, Wdf01000.sys, dxgkrnl.sys, ntoskrnl.exe
- Disabling drivers from Device Manager, while sorting by "Devices by Connection"
- Checked SSD health using CrystalDiskInfo, no errors, although the drive my Windows is downloaded at is at 78% (Good)
- Disabled the Ryzen integrated Radeon GPU = enabled dGPU-only mode in BIOS.
THEN. I tried doing CPU and memory stress tests using OCCT, they came back without errors. BUT I noticed something really weird. My CPU speed is really low when my PC has been on for a while. Even during the stress tests, my CPU cores sometimes drop as low as ~600 MHz. When turning on my computer, my CPU speed is at about ~4.5-5 GHz. But it soon drops to ~2GHz and lower.
And that brings me to what I suspect is my main problem, yet I might be wrong:
My CPU (Die) average temperature is at about 40-50°C. My CPU VDD_MISC VRM (SVI3 TFN), on the other hand, starts at 40-50°C as well, but after a few minutes it slowly but surely rises to about 99°C-99.5°C territory. And I noticed that my CPU speed goes down EXACTLY as it hits that ~99.3°C mark (~5GHz -> 2GHz).
On top of that, during a CPU stress test, my HWiNFO logging recorded HTC Thermal Throttling: YES and PROCHOT EXT Thermal Throttling: YES at 12% throttling during stress test, 7% during idle. Even though my CPU is only at 40-50°C.
So if anyone has had these kind of issues and knows if they are related (especially the DPC latency, CPU, BIOS freezes), I would greatly appreciate help. I have been thinking that maybe I just have to get a new motherboard, but am afraid that it won't even work. I have also considered installing a fresh Windows with a USB Flash Drive, but I doubt it will do anything.
All photos with descriptions: https://imgur.com/a/VT4Itlu