Major hard drive and audio issues on new PC

[Jacoby1299]

Hello,

I bought a built PC from a friend I trust about 8 months ago. The computer has a RTX 3080 graphics card and an Intel Core i5 - 10600K CPU. I trust the person I bought it from as he is a close friend of mine so I know the PC didn't have any problems before I got it. After I got it however, it started having issues after a couple of weeks of losing audio. I noticed that at first it would only happen after playing specific games, but then it started getting worse until the point that no matter which 3.5mm jack my headphone were plugged into, the PC would lose audio within minutes of my computer turning on. This wasn't the only issue however. Eventually I got a new headset that plugs in to the USB port and I have not had issues of losing audio with that, but I still lose it in the 3.5mm jacks. I also had many problems where during certain games, my hard drive would disconnect and be unusable until I restarted my computer. Most of the games I was playing were on my SSD, but I would know when the hard drive would disconnect because it would display an error on my screen recording application saying that it is no longer to capture gameplay. After my hard drive disconnected, I would experience huge frame lags in my games and my whole computer would almost stutter. Everything from visual stutters to even audio stutters. All of the signs in my opinion lead to a bad motherboard. I just recently (about 2-3 weeks ago) bought a new motherboard and replaced it. I went from an ASRock Z490 PHANTOM GAMING 4 to an MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK. At first it seemed as if the problem was solved because nothing would cause my hard drive to disconnect. However, in the past few days the same problems persist. When playing games my hard drive will disconnect, however this time, I don't experience frame lag after this happens. I am not sure what the issue could be anymore since I replaced my motherboard. It shouldn't be an overheating issue because I monitor my temperatures and have never seen my PC get above 75 Celsius. I have liquid cooling in my PC too. I tried plugging my headset back into the 3.5mm jack too and still no audio if it's not plugged into the USB. I am not sure what is causing this and I don't see anyone online with my same problems. I have even completely set my PC to factory and reinstalled windows, and even did an in place install of windows to eliminate software issues. If anyone can help that would be amazing because I have no idea what the issue could be at this point.

 

[lunarlander]

Flaky hard drive it seems. Not too expensive now. $56 for 2 TB.

The headphone may have a non-working plug. If it doesn't work with the old mobo and it doesn't work with the new mobo, then I say the jack is not working.

 

[Jacoby1299]

Flaky hard drive it seems. Not too expensive now. $56 for 2 TB.

The headphone may have a non-working plug. If it doesn't work with the old mobo and it doesn't work with the new mobo, then I say the jack is not working.

I was wondering if it was a hard drive issue but would a hard drive issue really cause frame droppage? Also about the audio jack, the problem is that it is every audio jack on my PC. Even the ones in the back which are directly connected to the new motherboard. The other weird thing about the audio issue was I tested it about a hundred times and it originally would only go out when playing games and not at any other point. Watching videos or movies would never cause that issue. I don't know too much about computers to pinpoint what that problem could be outside of a motherboard issue but now that I have a new motherboard, I don't know what could be causing that.