Intermittent stuttering due to motherboard usb header adapter?

[cinnamoney]

I have had this issue where there will be random stutters in the windows desktop, chrome and games.

After tweaking all my components for a whole week of trial and error, I remembered I bought a usb header type c to usb header 3.0 adapter off amazon for around $10 (my mobo doesnt have a usb type c header). It did the job, allowed me to use my front panel io so I could plug in my headset dongle. So I thought of unplugging the adapter, leaving the front panel io disconnected, and instead insert the headset dongle in one of the rear io usb slots. All the stuttering is seemingly gone, for now. But why would this occur to begin with? I was starting to think I had a bad gpu and was gonna sell it to buy an intel arc, but I guess I won’t anymore, lol.

Also weirdly enough, every time I would reboot, my headset dongle wouldn’t be recognized by windows until I’d reinsert it into the front panel IO usb port, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem when its connected into the rear io.

 

[JWNoctis]

LatencyMon should tell you what driver that stutter is associated with. Maybe the adapter is degrading signal quality a bit too much or has other problems, as you have to reinsert what you connect to it every time you boot up.

One definite but expensive solution would be a motherboard with a native Type-C header next upgrade cycle. Or get rid of the headset dongle and use motherboard audio instead. I'm under the impression that the dongles are typically not of great quality - No better, if not worse, than motherboard audio.

 

[cinnamoney]

LatencyMon should tell you what driver that stutter is associated with. Maybe the adapter is degrading signal quality a bit too much or has other problems, as you have to reinsert what you connect to it every time you boot up.

One definite but expensive solution would be a motherboard with a native Type-C header next upgrade cycle. Or get rid of the headset dongle and use motherboard audio instead. I'm under the impression that the dongles are typically not of great quality - No better, if not worse, than motherboard audio.

Surprisingly, latencymon says my pc is fine for realtime audio processing (ran multiple tests on different days) and the biggest latency driver I believe last time was dxgkrnl at 327. All the bars were green though.

 

[JWNoctis]

Surprisingly, latencymon says my pc is fine for realtime audio processing (ran multiple tests on different days) and the biggest latency driver I believe last time was dxgkrnl at 327. All the bars were green though.

Even more weird if that's the case, visible stutters not even showing up.

Maybe keep using rear-panel ports if possible, or get rid of the dongle altogether.

 

[Ruru]

What's your headset? I just use an USB A-C adapter with my TUF headset (which was bundled with these) since I also don't have a header (I have the same case as you).

 

[cinnamoney]

Even more weird if that's the case, visible stutters not even showing up.

Maybe keep using rear-panel ports if possible, or get rid of the dongle altogether.

I realized I was plugging in the usb type c/e adapter into my usb 3 gen 2 ports but the adapter didnt seem to support usb 3 (it says it’s a usb type-e to usb 2.0). My mistake there most likely. I wonder if my bios didn’t automatically set the usb 3 gen 2 speed to usb 2.0 since the adapter doesnt support usb 3?

What's your headset? I just use an USB A-C adapter with my TUF headset (which was bundled with these) since I also don't have a header (I have the same case as you).

Its a razer barracuda headset. I dont have a usb-c rear io port, but the headset came with an adapter usb-c-to-a which I was plugging directly into the front panel io usb-a port. I kept it as such because I found I had to re-plug it every time I restarted my pc. Now that I have it plugged in the back, it works just fine and gets automatically detected in windows, so either my usb header adapter was bad, my usb3gen2 header is bad, or my front panel io is bad.

Well, just as I thought everything was fine, latencymon shows me this:

I also could feel mouse stutters while it was showing that, but not before it appeared.

It did it again:

 

[Ruru]

Looks like you just have to deal with using a rear USB for the transmitter. At least looks that I may not get a C to internal adapter since you're having problems so my front C will remain unavailable for now as well. :/

 

[cinnamoney]

Looks like you just have to deal with using a rear USB for the transmitter. At least looks that I may not get a C to internal adapter since you're having problems so my front C will remain unavailable for now as well. :/

Please check my updated reply i guess it wasnt the front panel io.. i posted the screenshots.

 

[Ruru]

Please check my updated reply i guess it wasnt the front panel io.. i posted the screenshots.

Interesting. I have the transmitter of my TUF H3 wireless headset on my monitor (it has a 4-port USB3 hub) and works flawlessly.

 

[cinnamoney]

Interesting. I have the transmitter of my TUF H3 wireless headset on my monitor (it has a 4-port USB3 hub) and works flawlessly.

It's weird because when I plug the headset dongle to the front io, i have to reinsert it on reboot for windows to recognize it's inserted to begin with, but in the rear io, it works fine, but im getting stutters still and they match with the interrupts of latencymon. Ive been having this issue for a while im getting confused and tired lol. Ia had it as well with an rtx card so i figure gpu isnt the cause.

 

[Ruru]

It's weird because when I plug the headset dongle to the front io, i have to reinsert it on reboot for windows to recognize it's inserted to begin with, but in the rear io, it works fine, but im getting stutters still and they match with the interrupts of latencymon. Ive been having this issue for a while im getting confused and tired lol.

I doubt that it's because of this, but is your motherboard BIOS up to date?

 

[cinnamoney]

I doubt that it's because of this, but is your motherboard BIOS up to date?

Yeah, I always keep it up to date, chipset drivers as well. I have a tuf b550 plus wifi 2. Latest version is 3607. I'm currently using ftpm but thinking of buying an SPI.

 

[Chomiq]

I used to get random stutter with my G400 logi mouse, turned out that it was faulty cable. While it was plugged into a USB hub there was nothing suggesting anything wrong, when I plugged it directly into the rear USB I could finally hear the disconnect and reconnect sound each time the stutter happened.

Example here:

It's probably some shoddy soldering on the cheapo adapter that's failing and causing similar USB dropouts.

 

[Ferrum Master]

1. USB is crap.
2. High speed data interconnects, radiating at 2,4Ghz or 5GHz is a bad idea. Prone to errata's and interference, thus it may throttle and jitter so hard as USB protocol does, it may cause interrupts CPU interrupts as the driver may even time out.

Possible mitigations are better shielding. Put the wire in a different way, no coils!!!

 

[JWNoctis]

I realized I was plugging in the usb type c/e adapter into my usb 3 gen 2 ports but the adapter didnt seem to support usb 3 (it says it’s a usb type-e to usb 2.0). My mistake there most likely. I wonder if my bios didn’t automatically set the usb 3 gen 2 speed to usb 2.0 since the adapter doesnt support usb 3?

Some but by no mean all USB audio does need USB3 speed. I'm not familiar with your specific headset, but if that's a problem, there shouldn't be much useful audio at all.

I wasn't aware there's a USB 2.0 to Type-C adapter. It sounds messy and it does get troublesome here. My recommendations are still the same.

 

[Chomiq]

I wasn't aware there's a USB 2.0 to Type-C adapter. It sounds messy and it does get troublesome here. My recommendations are still the same.

Companies want to market their hardware as "USB-C" simply because it is the latest plug variant when in fact the hardware is utilizing the USB 2.0 standard. I had the same thing with my Sennheiser mic, came with 3 meter USB-C to USB-C cable so I had to buy €6 USB-C to USB-A adapter.

 

[cinnamoney]

after unplugging my headset dongle, i went to latencymon and started a test, not too long after i get this

 

[Ruru]

after unplugging my headset dongle, i went to latencymon and started a test, not too long after i get this
View attachment 354451

Did you reboot after unplugging that? Weird how it went crazy like that.

 

[cinnamoney]

Did you reboot after unplugging that? Weird how it went crazy like that.

That was without rebooting. I have now rebooted with the dongle unplugged. This is what it shows:

After the initial 1ms spike, I inserted the dongle but noticed no further difference or spikes in latency.

I also tried disabling c-states in bios and reboot then I was greeted with another 1.2ms stutter in latencymon.

 

[Ruru]

How's your power profile in Windows, high performance?

 

[cinnamoney]

How's your power profile in Windows, high performance?

Well I use windows 11 and it has two separate ways to change the power plan. The new one is in the new settings app, and that one is set to best performance, though I get the same stutters in balanced. Regardless of what that’s set to, the old control panel power plan doesn’t change, stays in balanced always unless I manually change it there. Right now I have that one in balanced.

 

[Ruru]

Well I use windows 11 and it has two separate ways to change the power plan. The new one is in the new settings app, and that one is set to high performance though I get the same result in balanced. Regardless of what that’s set to, the old control panel power plan doesn’t change, stays in balanced always unless I manually change it there. Right now I have that one in balanced.

Me too. I use the old fashion way yet it stays at high performance

 

[cinnamoney]

Me too. I use the old fashion way yet it stays at high performance

The control panel plan never changes regardless of what I set in the settings app, lol.
Does it even make a difference? I find that nothing really differs in my experience.

 

[Ruru]

The control panel plan never changes regardless of what I set in the settings app, lol.
Does it even make a difference? I find that nothing really differs in my experience.

To be honest, I'm not even sure. I could actually use balanced since I'm running my custom loop with single radiator as a temporary solution and that's just barely enough for 5800X & 3080

 

[cinnamoney]

To be honest, I'm not even sure. I could actually use balanced since I'm running my custom loop with single radiator as a temporary solution and that's just barely enough for 5800X & 3080

I have a custom cpu ratio and plenty of headroom temp wise so I dont think either of the plans matter since my cpu auto boosts to max all core anyway and I get stutters no matter the cpu load. I was wondering if it had to do with SMT optimization with some drivers.. clueless here . My buddy has a 5800x with disabled PBO and has no issues.