Getting micro stuttering over increasing amount of up time

It's actually an issue going on for months now. Like the title says, the longer my computer stays up, the worse the stuttering gets. Apart from that, I get audio pops here and there too (they coincide). I usually just put my computer on hibernate after being done using it, but even on shutdowns (with fast startup). To make the issue disappear I have to make the up time reset to zero (restarting or abrupt shut down). The issue happens whenever the up time reaches 96H/4D and it just goes worse from there.

I also have LatencyMon to monitor my situation. Apparently it's ndis.sys causing the issue. I get higher latency readings in the tool over a higher number of up time, while everything will be in the green if the up time isn't that high yet (around 72H/3D or below).

This has never happened to me before even when I have a way higher up time (14D or more).

W10 Edu x64 v1909 (B18363.900)
Ryzen 5 1600X @ 3.7 GHz
Gigabyte AB350 Gaming 3
Trident Z RGB 16 GB @ 2933 MHz
Palit GTX 1060 6GB
Samsung 850 Evo 250 GB (boot)

Plankton said:

Have you checked your mobo for driver updates and maybe a BIOS update?

I haven't touched the BIOS since last updating it in late 2017. The only thing I updated is the network driver, which happened months before my issue appeared and it's currently the latest driver available.

dalchina said:

There are quite a few threads referring to
stutter
LatencyMon

- if you care to search the forum you will find approaches used to try to discover the problem, and a number of fixes some have found. Don't assume the cause is necessarily ndis.sys.

Yes, I did search here and somewhere else for a while. But what I do not understand is why does this issue happen to me days later, instead of on fresh boot up. It's the relation to the computer's up time that I'm really puzzled at. The issue consistently happens at around 4 days of up time, anything earlier than that and my computer behaves finely.

Windows is known to have issues with long up times, more precisely the issue happens mostly when waking up from sleep.

Known and most common symptoms are:
1. UI freeze or unresponsiveness
2. slower network throughput
3. slower rendering

If you're gamer you want to reboot often!

I don't know if there is some fix for this, I clean reboot OS at least once a day, and that gives the best performance.

I'm only replying now because I restarted my computer over the weekend and the issue is just appearing (around 4 days later). I suppose any diagnostics that I will do to this computer will take time because the issue is not immediate.

Plankton said:

What PSU do you have? It could be a power efficiency issue or low qualilty PSU or the PSU going bad.

Do you have your RAM set/OC to 2933mhz? If so on the RAM...do you need to increase the voltage of the RAM.

I have Gskill Trident X DDR3 2400mhz and to OC (over clock) it I have to change the stock voltage from 1.5 to 1.65. Once that was done my system became stable and error free.

I'm using the AMD Ryzen Balanced power setting. Actually, I have been keeping power diagnostic reports for like 2 years now, though I don't know if that would be of any help.

My PSU is the Seasonic G-550 550W 80+ Gold.

My RAM (F4-3200C16D-16GTZR) is OC'ed but it's actually under the XMP spec. XMP spec is 3200 MHz/16-18-18-38 @ 1.35V, while my OC is 2933 MHz/16-18-18-37 @ 1.35V. I used the Ryzen DRAM Calculator tool to find out what OC values I could have. I went with this route because XMP on my RAM isn't working with my CPU/Mobo.

zebal said:

Windows is known to have issues with long up times, more precisely the issue happens mostly when waking up from sleep.

The slowness never happened to me until now. The longest up time I had was like 28 days without any noticeable issues/slowness.

dalchina said:

You may be able to see what is happening using the possibly technically daunting Windows Performance Toolkit and Recorder from MS which is referred to in some of the threads I indicated you could find- tenforums tutorial available - search the forum for examples of screenshots from it- perhaps only 1 or 2 members are familiar with it.

You might also try experiments like switching user when it starts to happen- does the same thing happen when logged in as a different user - i.e. is it user profile related.

Try Disk Cleanup when it starts to happen. Try minimising other running processes.

I.e. see if you can find something that has an effect on it.

I tried creating a new user and logging in, but the issue is still there.

I'll try other tools like the Driver Verifier and the Performance Recorder this weekend.

So I actually have the Performance Recorder tool and only did a 30 second record (I forgot how big the files can get), but I can do longer if required. Is there anything in particular than I need to find?