[Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Separate area for niche lag issues including unexpected causes and/or electromagnetic interference (ECC = retransmits = lag). Interference (EMI, EMF) of all kinds (wired, wireless, external, internal, environment, bad component) can cause error-correction latencies like a bad modem connection. Troubleshooting may require university degree. Your lag issue is likely not EMI. Please read this before entering sub-forum.
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This subforum is for advanced users only. This separate area is for niche or unexpected lag issues such as electromagnetic interference (EMI, EMF, electrical, radiofrequency, etc). Interference of all kinds (wired, wireless, external, internal, environment, bad component) can cause error-correction (ECC) latencies like a bad modem connection, except internally in a circuit. ECC = retransmits = lag. Troubleshooting may require university degree. Your lag issue is likely not EMI.
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Nawafwabs
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[Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by Nawafwabs » 24 Mar 2020, 13:36

Chief Blur Busters wrote:IMPORTANT NOTE TO ENGINEERS / Ph.D's
While most of the time, this is a wild goose to red herrings, and EMI is definitely not the cause of most computer lag problems -- there are actual cases of EMI creating human-perceptible latencies because of the large amounts of error-detect-and-retransmit mechanisms inside NEWER computers. Even a modern PCI Express bus and a DisplayPort cable are both packet-data systems nowadays with error-detect and retransmit = LAG instead of CRASH! Death by a million nanoseconds. Please read this engineer post.

I did this test 2 days and i check it and it confirmed that the emi is the main issue

if you think power condition will fix it 100% this is wrong

You need to fix the hole house or you face this delay all your life or maybe you move to other house and do emi test over 24 hours to make sure not effect by other things


https://youtu.be/wGfhfayYfHU

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Re: I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 24 Mar 2020, 20:33

I can personally confirm Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) can sometimes be a source of lag/stutters -- it's also frustratingly wild goose chases for red herring very often -- but we've seen another forum member successfully fix things by fixing EMI.

Related EMI Threads:
-- You guys are my last hope for fixing my problem
-- 100+ ms frametime spike on 2 different pc builds.
-- Actual Success Story Reply by Chief Blur Buster

NOTE: EMI is a very rare cause of lag/stutters. Literally like 1 in 100 chance type cause. But cause exists. We've seen forum members fix lag via EMI fixes. It is very hard to troubleshoot, requires expert-league troubleshooting skills. However we've had actual confirmations of fixing EMI to fix stutters/lag. The short story is that computers are now full of error correction behaviours, and electromagnetic interference can slow down many electronics via error floods that is continually corrected by error correction, slowing things down. This includes SATA buses, PCI buses, M.2 buses, Ethernet cables, ECC RAM, and lots of other error correcting layers. Massive EMI can slow down a computer noticeably enough to create EMI-related latency.
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Re: I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by nuggify » 24 Mar 2020, 20:56

I do not think this is all that rare of a problem, more and more people are coming forth sharing the same observations. We continue to search for a solution for this particular problem- likely due to grounding issues. The case of the solar panels communicating to POCO causing frametime spikes was very interesting. Anyway tracking down these issues has been seemingly impossible but over time we have learned more. Hopefully in the near future we will be able to pinpoint the exact cause of the compromised grounding in our homes or to the transformer.

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[Power/EMI] Re: I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 24 Mar 2020, 21:25

Lag from EMI is definitely more common than it used to be.
There's massively more amounts of error correction today.
Whether it be a bus, or a cable, or memory.
Computers are (somewhat) more stable today than 1990s, thanks to OS and hardware, but that doesn't mean immune to lag-by-errors.

-- The 1990s ISA bus had no error detection, but the 2010s PCI Express bus is error detected (allowing error correction).
-- The 1990s IDE hard disk ribbon cable had no error correction, but 2010s SATA cable and protocol does.
-- The 1990s modem had no error correction (your BBS connection died), but the 2010s Internet router does (your Internet just lags)
-- Etc, etc, etc. A lot of a computer has various forms of error detection and error correction, including lots of local forms (not network).

Thus:
1995: Computer just crashed on moderate EMI spikes.
2020: Computer lags severely on moderate EMI spikes.

Many types error corrects are only microseconds, but a few does veer into milliseconds, and yet other times, there are chains/spikes (huge floods of errors) that just sums up thousands of microsecond-league error corrects into human-feelable multi-millisecond surges. I've seen 1000 near-consecutive microsecond events that coalesce into a human-visible momentary freeze/stutters -- for example LatencyMon can show some of these where lots of microsecond-league events in a row just blast consecutively with fast-increasing LatencyMon numbers, because of something mysterious -- whether an interrupt conflict or an EMI spike. It's so difficult to trace, but sometimes I've heard anecdotes with frametimes spikes going in parallel with light flickering, to other mysterious corroborations that is almost impossible for amateur reveiwer websites to try to trace. it takes so much professional electrician equipment just to track down.

This is a poorly tested and diagnosed science, that is very location specific (hard to reproduce in a test lab, but common in a house with bad grounding). But while rarer than other causes of lag, it is indeed more common than it used to be.

It's just cheaper to spend money on a high-rated power conditioner (with voltage regulation) with true sine-wave AC. The kind that can keep voltage high during brownouts. The kind that isolates power from power. Even a $500 to $1000 power conditioner is cheaper than the money you spend on some professional datacenter-grade electricians (the type Google and Facebook hires) to troubleshoot weird issues that most electricians don't even know how to troubleshoot. Do not skimp on a basic power conditioner. The $100 and $200 units will not always be good enough. Get one with good batteries, good voltage regulation that is brownout-proof and good sinewave AC. Many computer problems mysteriously magically disappear with a great top-of-the-line power conditioner.

[EDIT: Further discussion in subsequent pages mentions high-end permanently-inline UPS power supplies (brownout-proof + voltage regulation) along with Panamax power filtration equipment at the highest end for those "I can't fix or modify my apartment's electricity's wiring" situations. And things like distancing a computer away from EMI sources, even raised above the floor & away from walls hiding a huge noisy transformer in the next room, etc. Especially if your floor is above a "mechanical floor" in a condo tower and have a computer on the floor. Or room next to an electricity closet or big exterior power company equipment on the opposite surface of brick walls or your house's furnace/dryer/AC/200 amp circuit breaker panel in the floor immediately below your computer or on other side of wall your computer is sitting flush against, etc. Wireless EMI emissions (EMI injection) versus EMI on the power itself (dirty electricity). Keep in mind that every EMI problem is different from each other, or both can be happening at the same time.]
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Re: [Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by nuggify » 24 Mar 2020, 22:33

What I am getting at is my situation is not remedied by any power conditioner, Online UPS or otherwise. You cannot fix a bad ground with these devices. For this it takes much more in depth and costly solutions.

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Re: [Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by Nawafwabs » 24 Mar 2020, 23:04

Thanks chief for sharing great information


So to people who dont know me

I face this problem before 4 or 5 years ago

I tried Ups online , grounding , new PC , new mouse , new cables , i did over 500 registry tweak , all windows version , change isp , power condition, VPN

Power condition and ups fix 75% then sometimes everything become heavy again

So what I discover fix your house from emi because if you fix maybe one or two plug and your house full with noise , you are in emi range and you will stay with bad lag

I test my house not only one plug and give 80-30mV when my Pc running in zero lag

When i feel PC heavy and i cant play test give me about 700-1500mV

I hope this is helping you guys , i tried a lot and i think now time to stay away of lag

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Re: [Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 24 Mar 2020, 23:08

nuggify wrote:
24 Mar 2020, 22:33
What I am getting at is my situation is not remedied by any power conditioner, Online UPS or otherwise. You cannot fix a bad ground with these devices. For this it takes much more in depth and costly solutions.
Yes, bad grounds can be an issue too. So you'll also need a parallel solution to that if you have an EMI issue and a bad ground.

Electrical supply problems sometimes gets horrendously complex to troubleshoot. It's worse when you have both problems. You're lucky if it's only an EMI issue, or only a bad ground.
Nawafwabs wrote:
24 Mar 2020, 23:04
Thanks chief for sharing great information
I'm glad you fixed your electrical-power-related issues!

One of the most difficult types of computer problems to fix.

Appreciate the success report. Multiple reports of lag solved by fixing electricity problems, means I'm interested in seeing someone stu8dy this problem more closely. There would be a market for easier "semi-comprehensive" EMI/ground troubleshooting. I have a simpler ground fault detector, but it only detects a few ground issues, and it doesn't detect EMI.
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Re: [Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by alexander1986 » 25 Mar 2020, 03:48

very interesting stuff here, so again a bit of a long post here from me, first want to ask Chief about one specific thing:

"
Chief Blur Buster wrote:
24 Mar 2020, 21:25


It's just cheaper to spend money on a high-rated power conditioner (with voltage regulation) with true sine-wave AC. The kind that can keep voltage high during brownouts. The kind that isolates power from power. Even a $500 to $1000 power conditioner is cheaper than the money you spend on some professional datacenter-grade electricians (the type Google and Facebook hires) to troubleshoot weird issues that most electricians don't even know how to troubleshoot. Do not skimp on a basic power conditioner. The $100 and $200 units will not always be good enough. Get one with good batteries, good voltage regulation that is brownout-proof and good sinewave AC. Many computer problems mysteriously magically disappear with a great top-of-the-line power conditioner.
just want to ask you Chief if "true sine-wave AC" power conditioner that you mention, is this the same as a double conversion UPS or power conditioner, or they have nothing to do with each other? as I was reading a bit on this subject and thought that a double conversion is the same as isolating power from power, as it will more or less guarantee(?) clean and regulated 120 volt (or 230-240 volt in Europe I guess where I am?) coming out of the UPS/power conditioner no matter if the incoming power is "dirty" and so on ?



other than that, I have a long post incoming but this is more in general and anyone can feel free to reply to this if they want and think they can help me, so here goes:

I want to ask how I should connect pc and lcd monitor to a power conditioner either with, or without a double conversion online UPS in the same chain, to a grounded power outlet that is on my first floor ( I have my pc on second floor where we have only non grounded power outlets )

So lets say I want to connect my pc and my monitor in a room on my second floor in my house, to one of my grounded power outlets on my first floor, would I connect it something like this?


Grounded power outlet on first floor --> 10 metre grounded power extension cable to second floor where PC is --> Online double conversion UPS --> Power conditioner

and then connect lcd monitor + pc power supply in to the power conditioner ? would this work to at least improve EMI/RFI situations if not eliminate all of potential lag issues being caused by that, unless there is severe case of both bad grounding and/or EMI/RFI noise in my house for example?

was looking at this power conditioner which in its specs supposedly helps reducing EMI/RFI noise:

Image



the furman M10XE ( https://www.furmanpower.com/product/10a ... -M-10X%20E ) ,

but I guess it is one of the cheaper alternative at around ~130 euro or so, would this be a pointless choice or could it work?

was thinking, this setup, with also perhaps ferrite chokes on the end of the power cables, right where they connect to monitor and pc power supply, could perhaps be a solid setup in at least greatly reducing (if not eliminating) all RFI/EMI/bad grounding issues ?



main reason I am wanting to do this setup is that I also have problems with heavy mouse feeling for the past 2 years or so, fps and benchmarks are all great and there is no artifacts or monitor issues etc, only heavy mouse feeling that comes and goes at different hours of the day, but the times where it feels good can be very varying from day to day, sometimes longer windows of time with good feeling, sometimes shorter windows of time and so on, very late nights and early days seem to be the best in general though, but it has nothing to do with internet latency or usage as the mouse input is very heavy even on desktop/BIOS without ethernet cable connected, and I can instantly tell from how the mouse feels there how it will feel in a game for example, at that point in time,


(interestingly this was not a problem before then in the same house, but there has been multiple power blackouts and power issues which I believe is the root of these problems beginning to manifest for me)


and I have excluded the possibility of it being a hardware or software issue since every component has been replaced with the issue persisting, in my case I also have reason to believe it is very likely due to bad grounding, since if I touch my pc case, I can feel current flowing through it and my skin tingles whenever I touch it, and so I did a quick test to connect the PC to a grounded power outlet in my kitchen on the first floor, where the skin tingling goes away and there is no current flowing on the outside of the case (if that is the right way to word it anyway) although the input delay and mouse feeling did feel better here,


I have not yet concluded if its good enough and totally fixed as I only tested for a short period of time, to see if the skin tingling went away in these grounded outlets and it did, basically I just tested if the grounding worked at all in these outlets on my first floor, I guess it would be good if I tested the PC connected here for at least a couple of days or something, but I am more interested in going all the way and getting a proper power conditioner with or without a double conversion UPS (and again maybe ferrite chokes on the 2 power cables from pc and monitor too)


so, with all that said, would the way I described above be the proper way to connect pc and lcd monitor in a chain, together with UPS and power conditioner to a grounded power extension cable which then connects to a grounded power outlet on my first floor?

would appreciate any feedback on this, @nuggify since you seem to have tested a lot of these solutions, maybe you could also shed some light on how connecting this chain and setup is best done in my situation?


if this does not help I guess I will have to move to another place eventually, i'm just really not that competitive gamer anymore for it to be a huge problem these days since most of the time I have available to play games are late at night anyway, when the issue is *usually* not that big, but I would be very happy to get it 100% fixed of course and never have to worry about it.

Cheers for now !

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Re: [Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by Nawafwabs » 26 Mar 2020, 05:57

just i want to Add that my power condition generate emi and slow my pc

i wake up today and i play some games and i feel heavy

so i test all plug and it give me good result

then i test my power condition and i found out he cause my issue

so i plug my pc direct to wall and that immediately recover my pc from that input lag and slow motion

i didnt record that but if you want i will do it

mello
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Re: [Power/EMI] I discover why sometime PC become fast and low input lag and otherwise feel high input lag

Post by mello » 26 Mar 2020, 09:48

Nawafwabs wrote:
24 Mar 2020, 13:36
I did this test 2 days and i check it and it confirmed that the emi is the main issue

if you think power condition will fix it 100% this is wrong

You need to fix the hole house or you face this delay all your life or maybe you move to other house and do emi test over 24 hours to make sure not effect by other things

https://youtu.be/wGfhfayYfHU
I have looked into this and the device you used, which is a Greenwave EMI (Dirty Electricity) Meter. The company sells Dirty Electricity Filters which are supposed to fix the problem. There are other companies who do the same thing and provide exactly the same products:

- Stetzer Electric (US) / Stetzerizer Filters
- SOLS Society (Swiss / EU) / Dirty Electricity Filters Greenwave SOLS for Switzerland and EU
- EMF Protection (UK) / Dirty Electricity Filters for UK and EU

These filters and meters are not cheap, and i have seen comments and reviews that these are a scam, and either they do not work as advertised or they create magnetic field which may be causing other problems, see this video: Perils and Problems with Dirty Electricity Filters: What to be Aware of!

But on the above video, there is also this comment:
We have seen this video before and it is inaccurate and sadly misleading. Let me explain how magnetic fields are created in homes. The Live and Neutral wires have opposing currents which both create magnetic fields, but they neutralize each other when the wires are next to each other. When you separate the fields you get an independent magnetic field.

This misleading video sets up a wiring error by separating Live and Neutral wires and then puts a voltage on them which will always create a magnetic field under every situation. This is NOT a result from the filter, this is from the wiring error created. If instead of a filter you place a light bulb or a phone on charge in the circuit you would get the same magnetic field so its NOT caused by the filter but the wiring error.

In Australia we use twin and earth cables where the Live and Neutral cables are manufactured within the same cable so the magnetic field is neutralized. Only where the live and neutral are separated will a magnetic field occur.You will always measure a small local field around every powerpoint which has a device plugged in and is switched on because the wires are separated out in the back of the wall socket to supply the socket, so with any device including the filters you will read a magnetic field at the power socket or any place where the wires are separated, this is called a wiring error . This will typically diminish at around 30cm distance. You won't place the filters under bed heads to avoid sleeping spaces.

I hope this clarifies the situation and the video misleading the public.
So not sure what to think about that. Anyone here has experience with that kind of stuff ?

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