Severe lag and audio issues on a brand new custom build

[HardinThePaint]

Hey all. I've been troubleshooting this problem for around 2 weeks, and have not been able to fix it. It's really bumming me out to have a brand new PC that should be making gaming a blast, but to have spent the majority of my time with it so far trying to fix these problems.

Every day since I've had it, I've had intermittent issues with mild to severe lag during both normal desktop functions as well as during gaming. When gaming, it's prior to any online play, so the internet speed shouldn't be a factor I'm assuming. When I launch a more graphically demanding game (Helldivers 2, for example), it either runs smooth like butter or so slow that I have to hold inputs to get them to register for things like the start menu to pop up. The fact that it will play like nothing's wrong occasionally but like the PC isn't powerful enough to handle the game other times is what confuses the hell out of me.

I've also had a lingering issue with audio, where it will distort and crackle. This mostly occurred through my TV speakers (which would work fine with the consoles hooked up to it), and then would be totally normal without any distortion through my headset. However, I've had a couple times recently that the audio has still been messed up through my standalone speakers.

The problems seem to get significantly worse after the PC has been in sleep mode and tries to wake up, but this isn’t consistent.

I have tried the following:
-Swapping out the TV I had been using as a display (TCL 29hz and no drivers to help it) to a 1440p 144hz monitor with drivers
-Adding standalone speakers to my setup instead of using the TV speakers
-Updating everything that I know of (monitor driver, AMD Adrenalin drivers, motherboard drivers, Windows Updates)
-Clean booting
-Unplugging and replugging HDMI cable
-Check the Task Manager for performance, where everything has always been in a normal range whether I'm experiencing the issues or not
-Power cycling
-Restarting ad nauseum
-Leaving the PC off for awhile before using it

Things I'm planning to do:
-Reseat the GPU
-Swap to Display Port cables instead of HDMI
-Take pictures of the PC as the guide suggested, when I'm doing the other steps so I have decent lighting

I am at a loss, especially since it sometimes decides to function normally when I haven't taken any new steps to fix it, or when I haven't done anything at all. I have never had this much trouble with a PC, either custom or pre-built, and I just want to get these issues fixed ASAP. I'm wondering if it could be a Windows driver issue, or maybe something that didn't get connected correctly during the build. Any and all help is HUGELY appreciated, thank you!

 

[Waldorf]

crackling noise in audio means ground issues, maybe defective sound chip or cable.

moni drivers arent that important, i had a 1440p/10bit/75Hz screen geared towards "content",
and used it for that as well as gaming, without a mfg driver.

if your using win (i assume), turn of hw gpu scheduling (settings->system->display-> gpu scheduling),
just to see if it makes a difference.

with above FHD res/newer gpus, i prefer to buy a brand name hdmi cable certified for 2.1,
as it not always needs a "broken" cable, to have issues.

the few times i had it on my rig without any defective stuff, it required a clean install of win,
to get rid of it.

uninstalling drivers isnt always working properly, so its usually good to uninstall (cpu/chipset/gpu/audi),
clean with something like DDU (in safe mode), and THEN install drivers bit by bit, with reboots after each,
while physically DISCONNECTED from internet, better, with win update (for drivers) turned off.

ignoring some win updates can be the cause, so when there are issues,
its usually better to install win/drivers first (while offline), and see if it works properly, BEFORE updating.
its just easier to see where it comes from/not introduce multiple points of cause from the beginning.

lastly, are you using XMP/AMP for ram?
can you try a different psu just to see? i know the RMx can handle gpu transients pretty good, cant say for the e-version.

i recommend you also dl some benchmarks, even if older, unigine heaven/valley and 3Dmark Vantage,
just so you can compare/verify stuff easier/more consistent, without having to rely on games (changing load depending on scenes etc.)

if you want, start with a clean win install, driver only, then test with those benchmarks to see what happens.
if not, get DDU, go offline, uninstall ALL drivers you installed, reboot into safe mode, clean with ddu, reboot, clean again, shutdown.
then chipset/gpu/audio drivers ONLY, before testing with benches.

and:
dont make too many changes in between testing, its a lot harder to pin point cause that way...


DDU

in the options, set to turn off win (driver) updates..

 

[Dia01]

A motherboard BIOS update might be worthy a look into. Run the ram at default rather than EXPO/XMP if possible as well to rule out that issue. Reseat the GPU as well as you had suggested

 

[Waldorf]

bios usually doesnt cause intermitted issues, and the socket was designed for the 7xxx cpu, not an add-on for existing boards,
similar for ram settings, i just included it to be on the safe side during troubleshooting,
as i had seen some boards in the past (am4), that applied incorrect voltage(s) (chip/ram/soc) on "auto", when using xmp/amp.

 

[HardinThePaint]

crackling noise in audio means ground issues, maybe defective sound chip or cable.

moni drivers arent that important, i had a 1440p/10bit/75Hz screen geared towards "content",
and used it for that as well as gaming, without a mfg driver.

if your using win (i assume), turn of hw gpu scheduling (settings->system->display-> gpu scheduling),
just to see if it makes a difference.

with above FHD res/newer gpus, i prefer to buy a brand name hdmi cable certified for 2.1,
as it not always needs a "broken" cable, to have issues.

the few times i had it on my rig without any defective stuff, it required a clean install of win,
to get rid of it.

uninstalling drivers isnt always working properly, so its usually good to uninstall (cpu/chipset/gpu/audi),
clean with something like DDU (in safe mode), and THEN install drivers bit by bit, with reboots after each,
while physically DISCONNECTED from internet, better, with win update (for drivers) turned off.

ignoring some win updates can be the cause, so when there are issues,
its usually better to install win/drivers first (while offline), and see if it works properly, BEFORE updating.
its just easier to see where it comes from/not introduce multiple points of cause from the beginning.

lastly, are you using XMP/AMP for ram?
can you try a different psu just to see? i know the RMx can handle gpu transients pretty good, cant say for the e-version.

i recommend you also dl some benchmarks, even if older, unigine heaven/valley and 3Dmark Vantage,
just so you can compare/verify stuff easier/more consistent, without having to rely on games (changing load depending on scenes etc.)

if you want, start with a clean win install, driver only, then test with those benchmarks to see what happens.
if not, get DDU, go offline, uninstall ALL drivers you installed, reboot into safe mode, clean with ddu, reboot, clean again, shutdown.
then chipset/gpu/audio drivers ONLY, before testing with benches.

and:
dont make too many changes in between testing, its a lot harder to pin point cause that way...


DDU

in the options, set to turn off win (driver) updates..

Thank you so much for the detailed response! Working on it today and will get back to you as I have updates. Something I didn’t originally include in the post is that it seems to get significantly worse after it’s been in sleep mode and tries to wake up. Again, not consistently, but it’s something I’ve noticed.

 

[Waldorf]

turn off sleep and hibernation, more or less useless on desktops (no battery use),
introduces potential issues (power outage will crash OS, maybe even brick nand drives),
and will only cost money.

turn it off when you dont need it, leave it running if a "break" is less than 20 min..

 

[GerKNG]

easiest way would always be to buy a 20 dollar SSD, remove everything that is not Mouse, Keyboard and one monitor, fresh install windows, GPU drivers, Chipset Drivers and a game to test.
if it's still a thing it's obviously a hardware defect. otherwise it's your setup/software configuration/OS.

 

[Waldorf]

@GerKNG
depending on location, there might be no option for a "cheap" one..

 

[Chrispy_]

I have tried the following:
-Swapping out the TV I had been using as a display (TCL 29hz and no drivers to help it) to a 1440p 144hz monitor with drivers
-Adding standalone speakers to my setup instead of using the TV speakers
-Updating everything that I know of (monitor driver, AMD Adrenalin drivers, motherboard drivers, Windows Updates)
-Clean booting
-Unplugging and replugging HDMI cable
-Check the Task Manager for performance, where everything has always been in a normal range whether I'm experiencing the issues or not
-Power cycling
-Restarting ad nauseum
-Leaving the PC off for awhile before using it

That's a pretty good start; I just want to confirm you're not running the standalone speakers from the TV's output jack, but from the audio jacks at the back/front of the PC? - ie, you've ruled out HDMI audio and tried other DACs and drivers such as those in USB headsets or your motherboard's onboard audio DAC.

I've had a few issues with HDMI audio on a whole range of Radeon 5000, 6000, and 7000 series cards that never existed with 400, 500, and Vega series GPUs. For the 5000-series they introduced some kind of driver bug where audio cuts out and sometimes stammers between on and off rapidly - and I've flagged that with every Radeon I've tried on 3 different TVs and one monitor that had speakers. It's not true of every monitor but definitely something that's a known issue and has popped up in AMD's driver patch notes as "fixed" or "known issue" with plenty of forum threads on AMD.com forums.

If you've ruled out the audio device (ie, confirmed the exact same issue is present with USB speakers/headphones or analogue speakers/headphones to the onboard audio jacks) then the next thing to ask is what is your software loadout? Are you using a clean Windows install or did you install the audio drivers provided by Asrock, any additional tuning/control/monitoring software from Asrock, or any third-party tuning/control/monitoring software? Several of these have been proven to cause hitching and interrupts that can affect DPC latency and create both framerate stuttering and audio issues.

Waldorf is right, crackling is typically a hardware fault involving a ground short somewhere. Not always, but definitely the first suspect to investigate.

 

[dgianstefani]

System specs as in your signature?

AMD resume from sleep can have issues.

I'm travelling at the moment but when I get home I'll detail the steps you can take to mitigate these and other issues, as I also run a AM5 platform.

 

[Chrispy_]

easiest way would always be to buy a 20 dollar SSD, remove everything that is not Mouse, Keyboard and one monitor, fresh install windows, GPU drivers, Chipset Drivers and a game to test.
if it's still a thing it's obviously a hardware defect. otherwise it's your setup/software configuration/OS.

Doesn't have to be an SSD. There are plenty of Linux distros that will boot off a USB stick. I typically recommend DSL (Damn Small Linux) but I'm not really a Linux expert, I just know that's quick and easy to test.

 

[HardinThePaint]

easiest way would always be to buy a 20 dollar SSD, remove everything that is not Mouse, Keyboard and one monitor, fresh install windows, GPU drivers, Chipset Drivers and a game to test.
if it's still a thing it's obviously a hardware defect. otherwise it's your setup/software configuration/OS.

SSD on the way, will report back! Thanks for the tip, should be faster and easier for sure.
I have had a lingering suspicion that it might be the MB for awhile now, especially since it's been having so much trouble with audio, as well.

 

[HardinThePaint]

That's a pretty good start; I just want to confirm you're not running the standalone speakers from the TV's output jack, but from the audio jacks at the back/front of the PC? - ie, you've ruled out HDMI audio and tried other DACs and drivers such as those in USB headsets or your motherboard's onboard audio DAC.

I've had a few issues with HDMI audio on a whole range of Radeon 5000, 6000, and 7000 series cards that never existed with 400, 500, and Vega series GPUs. For the 5000-series they introduced some kind of driver bug where audio cuts out and sometimes stammers between on and off rapidly - and I've flagged that with every Radeon I've tried on 3 different TVs and one monitor that had speakers. It's not true of every monitor but definitely something that's a known issue and has popped up in AMD's driver patch notes as "fixed" or "known issue" with plenty of forum threads on AMD.com forums.

If you've ruled out the audio device (ie, confirmed the exact same issue is present with USB speakers/headphones or analogue speakers/headphones to the onboard audio jacks) then the next thing to ask is what is your software loadout? Are you using a clean Windows install or did you install the audio drivers provided by Asrock, any additional tuning/control/monitoring software from Asrock, or any third-party tuning/control/monitoring software? Several of these have been proven to cause hitching and interrupts that can affect DPC latency and create both framerate stuttering and audio issues.

Waldorf is right, crackling is typically a hardware fault involving a ground short somewhere. Not always, but definitely the first suspect to investigate.

Initially I was using the TV's built in speakers, purely through HDMI, no audio jack usage. Now I've swapped to standalone speakers (audio jack) and monitors (TV no longer in the equation), and I'm still having times where all audio is crackly through the speakers as well as through my headset (USB). I'm also no longer using HDMI, but DP now, and the issue persists.

I downloaded ASRock's drivers from their list both before the clean boot and after. I don't believe I downloaded any software for tuning/control/monitoring.

How would I go about finding/fixing a ground short? Is that something I'd be able to fix, or a faulty piece of hardware to RMA?

Thank you!

 

[HardinThePaint]

System specs as in your signature?

AMD resume from sleep can have issues.

I'm travelling at the moment but when I get home I'll detail the steps you can take to mitigate these and other issues, as I also run a AM5 platform.

Yes, specs in sig! I will say that because I noticed it potentially happening after sleeping all day, this week I've been turning it off during the day, and these issues still occur right on normal startup. But only sometimes! Ugh.

 

[Dia01]

Turn off sleep and hibernation as Waldorf has stated then report back if that was the culprit causing issues

 

[dgianstefani]

Yes, specs in sig! I will say that because I noticed it potentially happening after sleeping all day, this week I've been turning it off during the day, and these issues still occur right on normal startup. But only sometimes! Ugh.

Enable SOC/Uncore OC mode (prevents downclocking of infinity fabric and other dynamic clocks to increase stability and performance)
Set Global VDDG voltage to something sane like 1050 mV
Disable DDR Power down
Disable ECO mode
Disable TSME and Data Security under DDR Security
Set Disable Memory Error Injection to True
DDR Power Options - Power Down Enable - Disabled
DF common options-Memory Addressing-Memory interleaving size 256 Bytes, DRAM map inversion enabled, rest Auto
AMD CBS/DF common options-DF Cstates- disabled
CBS settings-prefetcher settings-L2 Stream HW Prefetcher - disabled, rest Auto
CBS-CPU common-Core watchdog - Core watchdog timer enable-disabled
SMEE-Disable
AMD CBS- IOMMU disabled, ECC-disabled, SMT control (you can disable this to force threads to run on physical cores, for slightly higher boost residency, but it will cut your MT performance, so only recommended if you have enough performance without hyperthreading/SMT).

Tune your voltages and RAM to static settings, not whatever your motherboard algoritm decides, then validate with OCCT. Karhu if you want to be extra thorough.

Basically these steps disable various useless security options that cause latency/performance issues (such as memory encryption etc.), downclocking of clocks to save a watt or two (irrelevant since Zen idles at 30 W anyway, and downclocking/upclocking can be bugged on resume from sleep, which is what you're experiencing), and sets some typical problem causing voltages to stable ones.

You can do other tweaks as well that will cause known good manual settings to replace questionable auto ones, but start with these.

As an example (DO NOT COPY these timings, you will likely crash) here's my settings, the voltages are wrong because I'm using high voltage mode in my motherboard to access DDR voltages above 1.6, and Zentimings/AMD has a bug where it can't read them. But these are 24/7 stable under Karhu.

Ultimately Zen has some power saving "features" designed to try and compensate for the chiplet architecture which fundamentally has higher idle power draw (they could fix it with more advanced packaging/interposers, but won't till Zen 6 for cost reasons), however these "savings" often translate to stability issues, performance/latency problems and USB drop outs (mostly fixed now with BIOS updates),

 

[Chrispy_]

HDMI audio using the DAC in the TV is crackling.
Analogue audio using the DAC on the motherboard is crackling.
USB audio using the DAC in the headset is crackling.

So you've effectively ruled out all of your audio hardware, and you've ruled out your windows install. Try downloading and running LatencyMon to make sure it's not some software process causing enough interrupts to screw up your audio.

Resplendence Software - LatencyMon: suitability checker for real-time audio and other tasks

LatencyMon: suitability checker for real-time audio and other tasks

www.resplendence.com

For ground faults it's hard to know where to look first. If you have a multimeter you can start probing points but you need to know enough basic electronics to know what voltages should be and where, but more importantly how not to cause damage by probing the wrong thing or shorting something with the multimeter.

Sometimes ground faults aren't even the device, but the circuit/power strip that you're plugging stuff into. If you have another PC (not laptop), try running that in place of the one that's crackling. If it also crackles, you can stop trying to troubleshoot the PC and start unplugging things on the same circuit. Failing that, temporarily move the PC to a completely different circuit to do a quick audio test (kitchens are usually separate circuits to everything else) and see if you still get the crackling audio down in the kitchen. If you find you have crackling only on that one circuit and you can't work out which device is causing it, it's probably time to call an electrician.

Failing hardware could cause a ground fault - either your motherboard or PSU are likely culprits, but it can also be faulty house wiring and/or other faulty devices with earth leakage that's enough to interfere with your audio but not quite enough to trip the RCD breaker at your fusebox.

 

[dgianstefani]

Oh yeah, get a Pure Sinewave/Online double conversion UPS, that will eliminate any issues with poor quality power from your grid/house. Good to have anyway to protect your system, and it leads to slightly better component temperatures and performance, since a more "perfect" voltage signal is being delivered with no cutouts or brownouts under load.

Personally I use a Riello Sentinel Pro 1500 VA.

 

[Chrispy_]

Oh yeah, get a Pure Sinewave/Online double conversion UPS, that will eliminate any issues with poor quality power from your grid/house. Good to have anyway to protect your system, and it leads to slightly better component temperatures and performance, since a more "perfect" voltage signal is being delivered with no cutouts or brownouts under load.

Personally I use a Riello Sentinel Pro 1500 VA.

Nice to have but it shouldn't be necessary. Over 99.9% of PC users don't use a UPS and they are neither required nor are they the correct fix for something like faulty house wiring or a faulty device on the same circuit as the PC.

Realistically, you shouldn't be considering a UPS unless you live in an area that has electrical grid instability. OP's RM750e has excellent voltage regulation and decent hold-up time, so it should be more than capable of handling even lower-quality, poorly-maintained electrical grids without a UPS (looking at you, state of Texas!)

 

[dgianstefani]

Nice to have but it shouldn't be necessary. Over 99.9% of PC users don't use a UPS and they are neither required nor are they the correct fix for something like faulty house wiring or a faulty device on the same circuit as the PC.

Realistically, you shouldn't be considering a UPS unless you live in an area that has electrical grid instability.

There's literal advantages to performance and component life besides the simple benefit of mitigating electrical grid instability/old house wiring. You can OC slightly harder, and parts run slightly more efficiently with the borderline perfect voltage delivery you get from a pure sinewave double conversion UPS.

Even after conditioning from a high end PSU, the power delivered to components is of better quality when first isolated and preconditioned through a pure sinewave/online double conversion UPS, and I wouldn't be surprised if it prolongs the lifetime of the PSU too.

It's a bit like the £2k PC in a £50 case argument. You're already spending thousands on monitors, PC towers, other componentry etc, might as well protect them from any power issues and get slightly better performance/efficiency while you're at it. The only downside is the stock UPS fans are typically noisy, but you can replace them with a decent Noctua of the same voltage like I did.

 

[Chrispy_]

There's literal advantages to performance and component life besides the simple benefit of mitigating electrical grid instability/old house wiring. You can OC slightly harder, and parts run slightly more efficiently with the borderline perfect voltage delivery you get from a pure sinewave double conversion UPS.

Even after conditioning from a high end PSU, the power delivered to components is of better quality when first isolated and preconditioned through a pure sinewave/online double conversion UPS.

It's a bit like the £2k PC in a £50 case argument. You're already spending thousands on monitors, PC towers, other componentry etc, might as well protect them from any power issues and get slightly better performance/efficiency while you're at it. The only downside is the stock UPS fans are typically noisy, but you can replace them with a decent Noctua of the same voltage like I did.

As I said, "nice to have" but not necessary unless OP is trying overclock to the limit and has exhausted all of the (much) lower-hanging fruit already.

Hundreds of millions of PCs run around the world with complete stability without a UPS, and a UPS will not solve earth faults in your house wiring circuit. I categorically don't think recommending a $600 UPS is the correct step at all until a certified electrician has confirmed that the issue is electrical grid quality, having ruled out potentially more obvious and dangerous faults first - and it's a long way down the list of more likely and cheaper things that should be tried first.

I'm glad you're happy with your UPS, but needing a UPS is unfortunate, rare, and unrelated to this thread unless OP lives in an area with poor power delivery, or is trying to get that last 1% out of his record-attempt overclock.

 

[Waldorf]

@dgianstefani
troubleshooting should start with jedec/stock, not tweaked settings,
or you cant tell if instability was caused by tweaks, ort was there before.
ignoring that not every MB/brand will have identical options.

as Chrispy said, no UPS will ever fix any existing ground/issues, related to the house/wiring,
ignoring a pure sine-out is really only relevant if you plan on running the rig on battery,
and not an issue if using the UPS for proper shutdown (vs crash) of the OS.

besides that there are many in locations where even a basic 500VA brick without
AVR/display will cost more than a 1500VA pure sine unit somewhere else..

 

[dgianstefani]

As I said, "nice to have" but not necessary unless OP is trying overclock to the limit and has exhausted all of the (much) lower-hanging fruit already.

Hundreds of millions of PCs run around the world with complete stability without a UPS, and a UPS will not solve earth faults in your house wiring circuit.

I guess your and my definition of "complete stability" is slightly different, and the stress put on most of those systems will never go past the point where the instability would start to present. Just like how Linus rages about most PCs not using ECC memory. But that's OK, it's fine to have different opinions.

There's millions of phones out there too, running software just fine, but I wouldn't trust them for any important calculations.

@dgianstefani
troubleshooting should start with jedec/stock, not tweaked settings,
or you cant tell if instability was caused by tweaks, ort was there before.
ignoring that not every MB/brand will have identical options.

Most of these options are under the AMD submenu, which is present in every AGESA BIOS.

no UPS will ever fix any existing ground/issues related to the house/wiring,
ignoring a pure-sin out is really only relevant if you plan on running the rig on battery,
and not an issue if using the UPS for proper shutdown (vs crash).

An online double conversion UPS completely isolates the original power source from the output, it's not running on battery, it's converting the voltage from 230 V to 12 V, then back to 230 V, but this time with a perfect sinewave and other metrics (whether on mains or on battery power), kind of like an inverter system does, but with other benefits. Much more comprehensive than a simple battery backup system that switches to that when power cuts.

 

[Waldorf]

while i recommend ppl use a UPS, no system thats instable with stock settings, gets cured by using a UPS.

and i actually use pure sine units for almost 10y now, so yeah.

 

[dgianstefani]

while i recommend ppl use a UPS, no system thats instable with stock settings, gets cured by using a UPS.

Hence why I first suggested replacing stock (motherboard algorithm defined) settings with manual voltages and disabling downclocking/certain useless security features. All of which have been repeatedly proven to cause instability by many AM5 users, not just myself.

It's less of a "tune" (implying going for higher performance), and more of a "lets manually set voltages and parameters to what they should be if a competent human had set up this computer, not an algorithm that is designed to work "good enough", most of the time.