Glaring Desync Issues Fixed With PSU Swap

[AMoistCake]

Hello, I am a lurker of the BlurBusters forum who just recently made an account to start actively participating in the conversations instead of simply leeching off of everyone's discourse.

I first encountered the issue of memorable desync after upgrading to a new computer in 2022. The new computer and all of its parts were working quite well until the power went out in my home during an electrical storm only 2 months after acquiring the new hardware. Since the power came back on relatively quickly, I paid little mind to it and it didn't cross my mind to check for any complications that may have arisen from this event. However, one thing that I had immediately noticed was that the CPU suddenly wasn't running "as good" as it previously did (random stutters, audio dropouts, OS hang, etc.), but the biggest issue that seemingly appeared out of thin air was this strange phenomenon presenting itself with the symptoms of network related problems, sans...well...network related issues.
If I had to explain it, it felt like opponents were seeing me, shooting me, and then sending me to the shadow realm all in one tick.

The so-called "Magic Bullet".

Shots weren't landing on targets even though I was within spitting distance, fire first on someone not looking at you and having them snap 180 degrees and give you a haircut anyways, weapons felt like bad Chinese knock-offs in the way that the spray would not go where they were supposed to, and the amount of times I would hose someone down with bullets and switch to the next thinking I killed them and then being reminded that it was a grave mistake in thinking that I was even remotely close to having a normal gaming experience do things to a man's psyche.

I was in the middle of a very busy part of my life at the time so even though these issues bothered me, I just thought that I was losing my touch. I started playing video games on the PC my late father built for me at a very young age and the FPS genre has been a consistent mainstay for the better part of my youth (Global Elite on CS:GO, Official Clan Roster for a Korean FPS game called Sudden Attack). It was under my impression that I was simply hitting a mental and physical decline from the amount of challenges life chucked in my general direction. So I took a break.

When I returned to gaming in 2024, I knew that within that span of time, game sense, general population aim skill, trends in game design and strategy had been shaped into a sculpture with grooves and chips that were unfamiliar to me. Therefore, I came back with an open mind to start again at the fundamentals. I swapped out the CPU I thought was the issue to a different one, I bought new peripherals and dove headfirst into the foray of online gaming. ONLY TO BE KNOCKED, KILLED, ELIMINATED, BEATEN TO A PULP AND CREAMATED WITH MY ASHES SPREAD ACROSS THE PACIFIC OCEAN.

If I had held on to any amount of hand-eye coordination over the countless years I've spent honing it, then it was lost on me. The exact same issues. Exact same symptoms. Desync showing its ugly head in the form of network related troubles but with no ping, packet or latency issue in sight.

In my country of South Korea, we are proud to say that the internet here is a great example of clean efficiency. I thought so too. So when I began my journey to eliminate this foul thing via Google-fu and scouring every inch of this here forum, I immediately ran for the hills of hardware related issues.

I swapped the CPU to a different one again. I bought a new GPU. I bought another new GPU. I bought a new monitor. I bought new peripherals again. I bought new RAM.

Everything anyone had ever said could have been a problematic component, I had swapped out. Except for the PSU and the Motherboard.

I'd like to take the time here to make known that I had fallen deep into the rabbit hole at this stage, I was searching for any and every answer I could find at the bottom of a bottle (filled with snake oil mostly). The one thing that kept me hooked onto that was the fact that sometimes, when changes were made, THERE WAS A DIFFERENCE. SOMETHING CLICKED AND I COULD PLAY CLOSER TO WHAT I ENVISIONED MY SKILL LEVEL TO BE AT. This blinded me to the fact that in early 2022, I didn't have to make any of these tweaks to play.

I tried my best to minimize "placebo effects" from constantly running games with different people on different pings in different matches, so I made it a point to gather a small group of people in different servers and connection environments to tighten the curve of variables as much as possible. Sometimes when changes were made, whether it be in the Registry Editor or a change to the MSI mode or Interrupt Priority or even something in the bios, I would notice it for up to a day or two before it just plops right back to where I started. A common issue I see come up in this forum again and again and again.

After a while, whether it be a single change or a culmination of all of the individual tweaks that were applied, I noticed that I was finally able to comfortably play video games somewhat. That was satisfactory to me. However, it didn't last.

Recently, I called someone in to cut down some branches off of a tree in my backyard that was overgrown. The man cut my fiber optic cable clean in half. So I called my ISP to make a new connection. After this happened, I once again was faced with this egregious desync and thought it could have been the new cable, but nothing during testing pointed remotely towards the internet being an issue. Ping Plotter tests, checking Wireshark while gaming, checking the fiber installation, calling a techie, absolutely nothing pointed toward there being an issue with the new cable.

I grew exasperated and wiped my SSD and installed a fresh copy of Win11. Nothing changed. Still desynced. I began digging through the electricity posts and realized that I may be experiencing issues that were in line with those of whom were suffering from EMI. So I thought to buy a separate high quality power outlet for my PC. Did nothing. I tried running the power through a filter made for high quality audio (stolen from a good friend's recording studio and then promptly returned after seeing no difference). I tried putting a lamp on my PC. I tried making skin contact with it while playing. I stuck a metal pole outside my window and connected a grounding cable to it via screws. Nothing. Worked.

Then I remembered the outage. I don't throw away or sell old PC parts so I had a graveyard of them lying around and I thought to change out the PSU that was in the PC when the outage happened (Micronics Classic II Full Change 600w) and was still using to one that I had used before the initial upgrade (Antec Earthwatts 650w 80 plus) and that seemed to have fixed it.

I have never had any issues regarding input latency so I never thought to look towards electricity. There could have been no logical correlation I would have been able to make that would point me there. No mouse lag, no screen issue, no audio issue, no unreasonable FPS drops. So you can imagine how much I am (mentally) beating myself up over not checking to eliminate it as a culprit sooner. It seems as though, in my moments of exasperation and desperation, I focused too much on the trees before scoping out the forest.

It's been going good for the month so far, I am not touching anything else in regards to software tweaks to once again, minimize the variables at play. I am constantly playing (matchmaking in various games) and testing (same group of specific people) . The frustration I've felt for a year and a half is slowly dissolving and any engagements that I do lose are almost solely due my inability to react or aim properly, and for once, I am okay with that. Skill is meant to grow and stagnate and rise from the ashes throughout the years of effort put into it. Getting a chance to actually FIGHT the enemy and not just get decimated the microsecond the photons from their player model on my monitor reach my eyes is a wonderful sensation I can only equate to coming home after school and having mom's cooking.

I realize that this situation could be entirely unique to my case. I realize that this is not the be-all-end-all solution. I realize this could be a figment of my imagination and I might be in a padded room with a straight-jacket (too far?). I know that this somewhat reads like a schizophrenic ramble but something is better than nothing.

I am looking for people who have had similar experiences. If anyone else has had any success fixing issues related to "Network Lag Without The Network Issues" desync via minimizing electrical interference or general equipment malfunctions ON THEIR END, NOT NETWORK, please feel free to join the discussion. What caused it and what pointed you towards the solution?

[kriegsnake]

It has been a pleasure reading your story. I've switched psu from Thermaltake 750w to Asus rog 1000w , but in my case it didn't help at all. But previously the guy named Christopher from Germany fixed his problem with swapping psu either. Glad to hear it is all done for you.

[MaleGigolo]

Your problems were caused by faulty hardware not niche issue at all and PSU issues are pretty common. You didn't have symptoms like "clown cursor" or keyboard input lag either so clearly was a hardware/network problem. Here is for the people who might read this post and that have similar issues- If you go to your BIOS and move your cursor around and if your cursor movement is precise and 1:1 than you have a hardware problem and you don't have to waste time on subforums like this that do more harm than good by misleading users that their problems are caused by EMF/EMI/Dirty power bullshit that was never even proven to be possible to cause such issues.

[dervu]

Your problems were caused by faulty hardware not niche issue at all and PSU issues are pretty common. You didn't have symptoms like "clown cursor" or keyboard input lag either so clearly was a hardware/network problem. Here is for the people who might read this post and that have similar issues- If you go to your BIOS and move your cursor around and if your cursor movement is precise and 1:1 than you have a hardware problem and you don't have to waste time on subforums like this that do more harm than good by misleading users that their problems are caused by EMF/EMI/Dirty power bullshit that was never even proven to be possible to cause such issues.

You could say same thing that it was not proven that PSU could be faulty in such way. Where is proof? Words?

[MaleGigolo]

Your problems were caused by faulty hardware not niche issue at all and PSU issues are pretty common. You didn't have symptoms like "clown cursor" or keyboard input lag either so clearly was a hardware/network problem. Here is for the people who might read this post and that have similar issues- If you go to your BIOS and move your cursor around and if your cursor movement is precise and 1:1 than you have a hardware problem and you don't have to waste time on subforums like this that do more harm than good by misleading users that their problems are caused by EMF/EMI/Dirty power bullshit that was never even proven to be possible to cause such issues.

You could say same thing that it was not proven that PSU could be faulty in such way. Where is proof? Words?

Not even close to being the same thing. Cheap & faulty PSUs can cause plethora of issues in components and those components can INDIRECTLY cause such issues not the PSU itself.

[ablemor]

i tried expensive, hx1200i and 0 difference!

[dervu]

Your problems were caused by faulty hardware not niche issue at all and PSU issues are pretty common. You didn't have symptoms like "clown cursor" or keyboard input lag either so clearly was a hardware/network problem. Here is for the people who might read this post and that have similar issues- If you go to your BIOS and move your cursor around and if your cursor movement is precise and 1:1 than you have a hardware problem and you don't have to waste time on subforums like this that do more harm than good by misleading users that their problems are caused by EMF/EMI/Dirty power bullshit that was never even proven to be possible to cause such issues.

You could say same thing that it was not proven that PSU could be faulty in such way. Where is proof? Words?

Not even close to being the same thing. Cheap & faulty PSUs can cause plethora of issues in components and those components can INDIRECTLY cause such issues not the PSU itself.

I mean, where is the proof? I don't say it's not true, but to have clear proof to say it can cause such issue like desync in games you need to really specific recordings and not just words.

[MaleGigolo]

Your problems were caused by faulty hardware not niche issue at all and PSU issues are pretty common. You didn't have symptoms like "clown cursor" or keyboard input lag either so clearly was a hardware/network problem. Here is for the people who might read this post and that have similar issues- If you go to your BIOS and move your cursor around and if your cursor movement is precise and 1:1 than you have a hardware problem and you don't have to waste time on subforums like this that do more harm than good by misleading users that their problems are caused by EMF/EMI/Dirty power bullshit that was never even proven to be possible to cause such issues.

You could say same thing that it was not proven that PSU could be faulty in such way. Where is proof? Words?

Not even close to being the same thing. Cheap & faulty PSUs can cause plethora of issues in components and those components can INDIRECTLY cause such issues not the PSU itself.

I mean, where is the proof? I don't say it's not true, but to have clear proof to say it can cause such issue like desync in games you need to really specific recordings and not just words.

Proof of what? That a faulty PC component can cause system instability? Lol.

[AMoistCake]

It has been a pleasure reading your story. I've switched psu from Thermaltake 750w to Asus rog 1000w , but in my case it didn't help at all. But previously the guy named Christopher from Germany fixed his problem with swapping psu either. Glad to hear it is all done for you.

Thank you for reading.

I'm sorry to hear that the PSU wasn't the root of your issue, I will look into the forum post you referenced with Christopher and cross reference any info I come across.

[AMoistCake]

Your problems were caused by faulty hardware not niche issue at all and PSU issues are pretty common. You didn't have symptoms like "clown cursor" or keyboard input lag either so clearly was a hardware/network problem. Here is for the people who might read this post and that have similar issues- If you go to your BIOS and move your cursor around and if your cursor movement is precise and 1:1 than you have a hardware problem and you don't have to waste time on subforums like this that do more harm than good by misleading users that their problems are caused by EMF/EMI/Dirty power bullshit that was never even proven to be possible to cause such issues.

Indeed, it seems as though the problem was hardware related seeing as how swapping the PSU, even to an older model, has alleviated my problem.

The goal I had in mind when posting, a goal I am sure resonates with many of those on this forum, is not to gloat about fixing the issue. It is to gather and contribute to a better understanding of how these problems arise. I agree with the point that you make, the amount of red herrings and wild goose chases people get led on here is substantial.

However, this is a place that has people who suffer from similar plights with varying reasons and even more varying solutions. Some may have been mislead into thinking that they have an issue and it may be a figment of their imagination, a mental roadblock. And yet, some do have very real problems.

I believe we are here to compile symptoms, solutions, and some playful banter somewhere in between.

My issue could very well not have been niche, but it is fixed. But that's it. I just know that it's fixed, not what was broken or what could have caused a faulty power supply to spit out network problem related symptoms. That's what I'm here to find out.