demolition wrote:notfred wrote:Do you have a UPS? Does the issue happen if running direct from the wall power without the UPS? Does it happen if you unplug the UPS from the wall and run from the UPS battery?
I'm still suspecting something else stealing cycles like a graphics card or even a bad USB device where the processor has to keep retrying.
No, I do not have a UPS.
I would also consider the graphics card or a USB device if it hasn't been for the fact that I had already tried stripping the system down to the bare minimum without it resolving the issue. That means removing the gfx card and just using the onboard (Intel Gfx), only having a single SATA device connected with a fresh Win10 install, and no USB devices except keyboard and mouse. And also replacing the PSU with a brand new Seasonic one that I was able to borrow for the test.
I found posts in several forums about people having similar issues with the audio (mostly with the onboard Realtek audio) and some of them were able fix it by disabling some CPU power saving features. One method which seemed to help many was to create a new power scheme in Windows and set the minimum processor state to 100%. I tried this with no improvement. I also went through the BIOS to try and find and disable any power saving / throttling features there as well, but could not find much.
We're rapidly approaching the point of needing a young priest and an old priest.