Random frequent stuttering

[grimconch]

Just built my first PC and have been having serious issues with stuttering (looping audio, brief freezing) about once a minute. This is without having anything running or any significant load on system resources.

Current build is as follows:
i7-2600k
Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline Stiletto 2x4GB RAM
Corsair 600W PSU
Seagate Barracude 1TB 7200.12
ATI Radeon HD3650
also, one older samsung HDD which is in there until I transfer everything off.

My primary concern has been the PSU, I thought ahead of time I'd need more but was assured by many sources that even less than 600W would suffice. However, I'd expect that to manifest in other ways. Any advice on how to start narrowing down possible sources of this problem would be appreciated.

 

[vvhocare5]

Which OS? Clean install? An ATI 3650 - really? Thats not a typo?

What are you freezing in?

Remove the older drive for the time being, turn off indexing on the drives and see how it responds.

 

[grimconch]

Clean install of windows 7 pro 64bit (and yes, I'm using a video card that I got 2nd hand over a year ago). Stutters occur everywhere, soon as windows boots even with nothing else running. I think it was happening before I even installed drivers, though without audio going it was harder to tell for sure.

At any rate, I've got the older drive unplugged and indexing off, and so far I haven't had any further issues (for about 20 minutes now since boot). So, symptoms resolved, but I would hope that this system can handle having a second hard drive in it. It seems nearly as implausible that a default windows setting was that crippling (okay it actually sounds fairly plausible but I'd like to be sure). Anyway I'll call this concluded in a little bit... stress the box out a bit and see if it comes up again. Thanks for your help so far.

 

[grimconch]

Best answer selected by grimconch.

 

[grimconch]

The problem actually returned on boot today.

Brief update for anyone who reads this in the future, the issue was huge DPC latency spikes and the apparent cause (now) seems to be network adaptors. A wireless card I had in place with no driver installed. I installed + updated the driver for it, the issue continued. But as soon as I disabled the driver, the spikes vanished immediately without even a restart. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the end of it, but the problem is more or less pinned down now so I guess it's just a matter of messing around with drivers whenever further issues spring up.