Hey guys. Looking to see if I can find a solution to an issue I’ve been having. As stated, my computers have a very quick stutter that occurs every 1 minute, on the dot. I first noticed the issue in game (World of Warcraft Classic) and then realized that it’s actually happening on my desktop and while internet browsing. Also of note, the sound also gets warped when the stutter happens. I notice this most when friends are talking in Discord when the stutter happens and their voice stutters as well. I s’pose to start off, my specs are:
Ryzen 7 1700 @ standard clock speeds with NZXT AIO cooler
Gigabyte AX370 gaming 5 MOBO
ROG STRIX GTX 1080ti @ standard clock
16gb (2x8gb) Gskill Trident Z RGB RAM
3440x1440 widescreen, 100Htz, Gsync enabled
Built early 2017
The most recent change I’ve made to my computer was installing a new 1TB M.2 SSD and copying my previous SSD over to that using EaseUS. From what I recall when I played WoW retail half a year ago, I would experience the same problem but way less frequently. The thing that trips me out the most is that I can start a stopwatch soon as I see the first stutter and exactly 1 minute after that I’ll get the next, then that will just continue on indefinitely. This is INCREDIBLY annoying when I’m in game. Initially I thought this was just an in game issue and did multiple things to try to fix it:
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-Uninstalled and reinstalled the game
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-Ran the game with no mods installed to rule out that possiblity, exact same stutter happened.
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-Ran the game at “Optimized” settings via NVIDIA GeForce Experience, but also at complete low settings. No differences seen.
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-Uninstalled and reinstalled the latest NVIDIA driver, no changes.
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-Turned off all streaming services that might be enabled and turned of some various settings in Win10, as suggested in multiple other posts.
Then I decided to time the stutter, found out it was literally every 1 minute, and started to think it was a hardware issue vs an in game issue. Also realized here that it would happen on my desktop, which I’d test by moving my cursor back and forth and catching the stutter every minute. So then I:
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-Uninstalled and reinstalled GPU drivers again.
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-Reinstalled Chipset drivers
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-Reinstalled audio drivers
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-Reupdated my BIOS to the latest (I thought I was on the latest but my Dxdiag showed I wasn’t, so I went through the steps of updating again)
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-Previously had RAM, CPU, and GPU all overclocked. I’ve taken off all overclocks, deleted MSI afterburner, and am at stock everything.
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-Ran disk cleanup/defrag on my new SSD
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-Ran a Memtest86 over night, it completed all passes with no errors found.
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-Constantly monitor temps with NZXT CAM software at idle and in game, temps never surpass maybe 40’s on the CPU and 60’s on the GPU, memory usage never gets close to approaching max.
As stated, this occurs on my gaming laptop as well. So different hardware, same software, same problem. Leads me to think it’s a windows 10 issue. My last stitch effort is to do a clean windows install, but I was avoiding doing that and redownloading everything until I maybe found another solution from you guys.
Last thing I’ve done is catch the stutter and time it, seeing it happen every 1 minute, then opening Task Manager and seeing what might be going on. Noticed under my CPU usage, “Windows explorer” would pop up to the top of the list at 3-9% CPU usage (WoW is about 4-5%.) I read that corrupt desktop items can cause CPU usage to be high, but those posts described 30+% usage. I deleted all my desktop items nonetheless, but no improvement. What else could cause this Windows Explorer to use more CPU and presumably be causing my rhythmic stuttering?
I’d really appreciate any input at all as this has been driving me crazy and honestly ruining the nostalgia of playing WoW Classic! If any other info is needed or if I remember any other troubleshooting I’ve done, I’ll chime right back in. I appreciate any help!