House causing PC Stutter/LAG, EMI/RFI?

[kryztripleb]

I've shared multiple technical explanations in this thread (as well as a highly reputable source on netcode: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7771&start=30#p60074), and you've discounted them all in haste and with very little reason.

Your expectations are off-the-charts, and it's evident by now that much of that is due to a lack of experience and familiarity with fundamental technical subjects that provide an understanding on the inherit failings and limitations of current-gen technology.

For those of us who are more acquainted with how all this works, all of these obnoxious (oft unavoidable) technological and infrastructural limitations are simply par for the course, and short of partial mitigation on the user-side, we're at the mercy of their originators, and any breakthroughs said originators make, iterate on, and implement over time.

Your latest and previous videos don't "show" anything abnormal, and everything you've shared thus far has pointed to entirely known per-game performance, netcode, and ISP issues, all of which can create problems that come and go.

As for you having tried cellular connections, those are even worse for online games, and if all the ISPs you've tried are running on cable, then those companies are all using the same infrastructure of your neighborhood, as is the neighbor's connection you tried, which doesn't rule out internet issues in your particular case at all.

Regarding EMI, you yourself have admitted you've tried the suggested solutions that have worked for others that claim they experience said issue, and none have solved yours.

If you refuse to accept the possibility that what you're seeing is within normal variance of imperfect game performance offline/online, and imperfect netcode/ISP performance online, and you truly think you're right about it being an interference or electrical issue in your particular house, and/or an infrastructure issues plaguing your entire area, your only viable option is to move.

Lmao. You keep repeating the same thing and a big reason is due to the fact that you do not know what it causing this therefore you are saying its "normal". I don't get why people must always believe that they are right when they are nowhere NEAR being correct. This isn't even about being right/wrong. You have just been shown 5 games where I stutter non stop, you blamed the ISP, and you keep bringing it up, but you were shown offline gameplay. Then you say its the "game". LMAO. Yeah, stuttering every 1 second and your mouse cutting off, yeah man. Definitely the game! Oh not just the game, but every single game I play in unplayable. Wow. Oh your playing offline? It must be the ISP causing this even though you're not connected to the internet!

Like I said. Im not sure why people cannot just admit and say "I don't know what could be causing this issue or what is going on" Instead your feeding me stuff thats very incorrect to avoid saying that. It's best not to reply if you're going to be saying stuff that is useless to this thread. You are bringing up ISP and game performance. This has NOTHING to due with that. We can go off and show 100 games stuttering non stop and unplayable that's offline but you will keep bringing up ISP issues because you have no knowledge on what is going on so you must say something instead of admitting you have no idea.. It seems you lack fundamental technical subjects. You are shown videos where non stop issues occur offline and you are talking about ISP. Please, move on. And the next thread where someone is dealing with an issue thats not a 1+1 question and you don't know what the answer is, don't feed them BS, just admit that you don't know.

Thanks,
-Sincerely everyone who ever posted on a forum for help.

[diakou]

Like I said. Im not sure why people cannot just admit and say "I don't know what could be causing this issue or what is going on" Instead your feeding me stuff thats very incorrect to avoid saying that. It's best not to reply if you're going to be saying stuff that is useless to this thread. You are bringing up ISP and game performance. This has NOTHING to due with that. We can go off and show 100 games stuttering non stop and unplayable that's offline but you will keep bringing up ISP issues because you have no knowledge on what is going on so you must say something instead of admitting you have no idea.. It seems you lack fundamental technical subjects. You are shown videos where non stop issues occur offline and you are talking about ISP. Please, move on. And the next thread where someone is dealing with an issue thats not a 1+1 question and you don't know what the answer is, don't feed them BS, just admit that you don't know.

Thanks,
-Sincerely everyone who ever posted on a forum for help.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7771&start=20#p60049

I would like at least an answer regarding this. Why not just hire a professional home and/or figure out methods to check, you stated you have the money to throw at the problem if it can get you a fix, this is most likely under $300 and should give you a solid direction forward.

[jorimt]

I understand that having it suggested to you that something you're struggling with may not have a complete solution is frustrating, but my only aim was to save you time and trouble by educating you on the precedent.

That said, it appears you will have to continue to learn the hard way by your own experience.

Feel free to update us here if you ever solve any of your issues to your satisfaction.

[kryztripleb]

Like I said. Im not sure why people cannot just admit and say "I don't know what could be causing this issue or what is going on" Instead your feeding me stuff thats very incorrect to avoid saying that. It's best not to reply if you're going to be saying stuff that is useless to this thread. You are bringing up ISP and game performance. This has NOTHING to due with that. We can go off and show 100 games stuttering non stop and unplayable that's offline but you will keep bringing up ISP issues because you have no knowledge on what is going on so you must say something instead of admitting you have no idea.. It seems you lack fundamental technical subjects. You are shown videos where non stop issues occur offline and you are talking about ISP. Please, move on. And the next thread where someone is dealing with an issue thats not a 1+1 question and you don't know what the answer is, don't feed them BS, just admit that you don't know.

Thanks,
-Sincerely everyone who ever posted on a forum for help.

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7771&start=20#p60049

I would like at least an answer regarding this. Why not just hire a professional home and/or figure out methods to check, you stated you have the money to throw at the problem if it can get you a fix, this is most likely under $300 and should give you a solid direction forward.

Do you have any in mind?

I have friends who are electricians who I've spoke to this about. None have a clue what can be going on although they can check EMI frequencies but as people are telling me, it's not likely the case, but it seems like nobody knows for sure and it's mostly assumptions.

Power Company? Electricians? POCO possibly, who knows. If this was related to the power in my house it's weird that even with everything turned off and running on battery on my UPS the problem still occurs, but I've heard that it being turned off, it's still partially "on". If you have any recommendations other than the 2 I've mentioned, please let me know.

[TTT]

Where are the vids of offline play?

You said you have tried powering just through a UPS and turned everything off though already. If there is no electricity in the house how could there be EMI?

Did you completely just turn your electric panel off for a short while and literally cut electric to the propery?

If the answer is yes and it is EMI then it must be a neighbouring property or something other than your property.. Which means there is F all you can do about it anyway.

[Chief Blur Buster]

<!-- Crossposting some Chief Blur Buster Posts -->

[Chief Blur Buster]

Good luck to you guys on finding a proper fix for this and thank you for reading.

EMI is so astoundingly complex
If you engineer electronics & own an oscilloscope, you already know all the lingo about noise -- and signal to noise -- and properly shielding.

EMI can look like pratically any pattern (random noise, patterned noise, etc) at all kinds of frequencies (low Hz, mid Hz, high Hz, or all the above), at all kinds of bandwidth spreads (narrow bandwidth, broad bandwidth, multiple separate narrow bandwidth areas).

Metaphorically.... For the layperson: Think of all kinds of audio noise, some will drown out speech and others do not -- EMI is much like that except at a far wider range of frequencies. You can have jet-engine-loud EMI but only at a specific frequency. Or a car-rumble-style EMI that covers a large part of spectrum. Or a beep-style EMI affecting 3 or 4 different frequencies. Metaphorically, pretend that EMI as 0 Hz through 1 terahertz "sound" (many orders of magnitude beyond 20Hz to 18,000 Hz sound) that can be drowned out by various noise patterns. You could have 500 decibel equivalent of EMI (more than a billion times louder than a jet engine, supernova-loud EMI or EMP-loud EMI) at a specific frequency, or just merely 50 decibel-equivalent of EMI (like outdoor wind interfering with a person whispering). Now, a Farday cage is like a very noise-proofed chamber.... but a big explosion outside will still get sound into the noiseproofed chamber. A Farday cage will always be leaky to sufficiently-loud EMI at specific frequencies that the Faraday cage cannot perfectly block. Just like noiseproofing can't be perfect to the world's loudest sounds, a Faraday Cage cannot be perfect to the world's loudest EMI at all possible electromagnetic frequencies in the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

Sometimes only a specific EMI affects only a specific system (but not a different one). And yet another EMI pattern only affects a different system (but not that system).

The big problem is that EMI fixes are difficult to do in a catchall manner. Manufacturers try to Faraday-cage some components (metal shells etc) but there's so much unprotected paths to worry about sometimes -- some paths thought to be non-EMI-critical but ends up being EMI-sensitive in an EMI spectrum that they never tested for, etc.... All kinds of leakages into a system. As systems go faster and faster, they can inadvertently become more and more EMI sensitive to new spectrums.

Just like earplugs versus a noiseproofed building versus a room 1000 feet underground -- you can have varying levels of EMI protection f various kinds (simple thin metal shielding, leaky Faraday cages, heavy bank-safe Faraday cages, distant EMI-quiet location in Antartica like they do for the Neutrino detectors, etc).

The truth is that EMI is a big problem for computers nowadays, but it's a "1% problem" that is very hard to troubleshoot. Even 1% of 1 million computers is still 10,000 computers unexpectedly slowed down by EMI. Who knows what the exact % is, but it's somewhere between "Product recall" threshold and "Beta testers didn't test for it" threshold.

Simpler things like lifting the computer 2 feet above the floor might help -- because there was a hidden 10,000 volt transformer in a maintenance floor below the computer room. Or that the problem is caused by a laundry room behind the wall, with powerful motors injecting a big EMI field a few inches through the wall to your computer flush against wall. Or the EMI is coming from a huge transformer across the street. Or you have high voltage power transmission lines in your backyard. Or your neighbour's microwave is defective (leaky). Etc. Who knows?

So, "Finding A Proper Fix" is extremely hard. There's no real universal fix for EMI because of the above. But you can fix some kinds of EMI (that the manufacturers didn't fully design against), the more common kinds of EMI problems that are be broadcoast over only a few feet or a single meter.

I have a semi-universal computer-offgridding fix if you have about $1000 to spend. Here goes:

Costly Brute Force Fix: Battery-Power your 500-Watt Gaming Tower!
A brute fix is to isolate the computer by powering it off a battery such as Jackery 1000 amp-hour Portable Power Station (5-star Amazon rating!) to put your computer completely offgrid. That ~$1000 lithium-battery Jackery can power an RTX 2080 gaming computer for about 2-3 hours completely offgrid (monitor + PC at 300 watts for about 3 hours for 1000-watt-hours, or a 500 watt gaming rig for 2 hours), if your electricity is particularly EMI-dirty. The wonders of the Tesla dropping prices in lithium batteries to $62/kWh by year 2030 will be a big boon for the ability to run computers away from an EMI-dirty power company -- if you are particularly desparate. The electricity coming from the Jackery is not 100% perfectly clean but it's much cleaner than many mains power grids in many countries (very EMI-dirty), and can be vastly superior to a power conditioner / inline UPS / etc. Think of the Jackery as a big cellphone power bank for a gaming computer, combined with lifting all equipment/cables at least 2 feet away from all walls & all floors & all other appliances (to get away from hidden wires/transformers in floors and walls) + don't use a glass window on your gaming tower (full metal box) + premium shielded cabling + avoid Ethernet via using 802.11ax WiFi 6 with antenna minimum 2 feet away from your computer equipment + good PC build components like well rated 80Plus Platnium power supply with low-EMI ratings. Combined, all of this, can be a reasonable "brute-force fix" for >90% of EMI. Won't help your Internet latency problems (bigger cause of problems) but can help EMI-related problems.

Brute Force Off Grid Computer EMI Fix
1. 1000 watt Jackery battery
2. Computer & Monitor plugged into Jackery battery
3. Metal cover on computer tower side (not the common transparent window); slot covers installed on unused PCI-X slots
4. 80Plus Platinum power supply in computer with good review (good noise rejection)
5. Well rated computer components (components can be internal sources of EMI)
6. Monitor at least 2-3 feet away MINIMUM from computer tower, use a wide desk (just in case EMI interference coming from monitor)
7. Computer tower on your desk, not on floor (just in case EMI source below floor)
8. No cables far below desk level. (just in case EMI source below floor)
9. Desk at least 2 feet away from back wall (just in case EMI source behind wall)
10. Completely offgrid computer. No power! No Ethernet!
11. Use WiFi 5 or preferably WiFi 6 for low-latency gaming WiFi (~2ms stable full duplex; Ethernet-quality)
12. No Ethernet cables; Keep inches of separation between power wires and data wires
13. No WiFi routers within 5 meters. Don't plug WiFi router into the same Jackery as the computer.
14. Use USB3 WiFi antenna (not on-motherboard WiFI; can be EMI source) + put USB3 WiFi antenna 6 feet away from computer & monitor (use a side table)
15. If you find large appliances/power company transformers behind wall, below floor, or above ceiling, you may wish to move your cordless computer rig somewhere else.
16. This won't be a 100% perfect fix but may solve 90%+ of non-Internet EMI issues over mains grid/over air. (EMI issues that show up in offline gaming, that was caused externally). Remember "inverse square of distance" is your Best Friend for over-the-air EMI.

Please Note this is possibly bad advice & wasted money. Please read wild goose chase to red herrings, Part 1 & 2. But using a bigass battery as an EMI brute-force fix, it's particularly effective: Completely offgrid gaming computer for only $1000

Although... the Jackery is a damn amazing kickass camping power supply that can boil electric kettles & power a 5000 lumen projector in the middle of nowhere. A cheap tiny 120 volt electric generator that doesn't need gasoline and safe to use indoors....like doubling as a bigass UPS for your gaming PC! Even if EMI just ends up as vapor voodoo -- instead of genuine as it sometimes is -- the 1000 watt-hour Jackery battery is one damn amazing "big cellphone battery bank" that can power an RTX 3090 gaming tower hooked to a 70 inch TV, battery powering both at the same time!

EDIT: The popular 1000-watt Jackery battery is sold out in Amazon USA; there's the smaller 250-watt hour Jackery (fine for gaming laptops like ASUS/Razer at full 200-watt GPU power envelopes). But you NEED the 1000-watt-hour Jackery to properly power RTX 2060+ desktop gaming towers on a battery.
250 watt Jackery battery (available today)
500 watt Jackery battery (sold out in USA as of Oct 21, still available in Canada)
1000 watt Jackery battery (sold out in USA as of Oct 21, still available in Canada)
Note: These are Blur Busters commissioned Amazon Affiliate links.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Good luck to you guys on finding a proper fix for this and thank you for reading.

EMI is so astoundingly complex
[...]

Wow, I was not expecting such detail at all . Anyway, I wasted almost 2+ years trying to fix this, got fed up and gave up eventually, I am fine gaming on PS4 for now. I am not that desperate enough yet to attempt above fixes which would be quite costly and time consuming which I do not have luxury of at this time.

I also forgot to mention I have about 5 parallel high tension / high voltage wires running above my house I would say about 100 meters and I am convinced it's giving off EMI and is the root cause of this problem at least in my case.

Only thing I want to test is a wireless gaming mouse in future because wireless controller just works fine all day and if I move house in future this problem will be sorted itself in time.

100 meters? That's pretty high above your building. Do you mean above and to side (e.g. house next to corridor)? Most power transmission pylons (0.5 megavolt transmission wires) are usually only 20 to 50 meters above the ground, distances can be hard to estimate. 100 meters is the equivalent of 30 storey apartment tower. Usually the lowest power transmission line is only 8 to 10 stories above the ground (which translates to approximately 20 to 30 meters) but 700+ kilovolt through 1 megavolt transmission towers can be taller, in the few countries that use such ultrahigh voltages. Distances of power lines are devilishly hard to estimate, but if it's directly vertically above you, then it's already too close already for comfort for a gaming computer.

Living Next To Power Transmission Pylons: Can Cause Problems for Gaming Computers

A larger percentage of EMI interference problems with gaming computers also coincidentally happen to be gaming computer systems near high voltage transmission lines.

Most manufacturers don't really spend thousands of hours testing power transmission EMI, especially since other countries may have more lax dwelling-distancing rules than the manufacturer's country -- meaning you may have minimum 50 meter distance in one country, 100 meter distance in another country, and 10 meter minimum distance.

In some If you know the rules of inverse squares, then 15 meters will have a 100x stronger EMI than 150 meters. Ouch! And power transmission generates really powerful 60Hz over-the-air EMI over distances much, much, much, much farther than common EMI (most common household sources of over-the-air EMI is no longer a problem after being approximately 2-3 feet away, or 1 meter away).



Power Transmission Pylons are The Easy Needles In EMI Haystacks

If you live under them / next to them, that is. Fortunately, EMI from power transmission is well known EMI -- it's simply a 60Hz buzzer-like sound when converted to audio frequencies (you can actually hear them sometimes -- the wires' corona discharge vibrating at 60 Hz, creating sound in the air creating audible noises that concurrently also matches exactly the EMI frequency. While the sound is quiet, the inaudible EMI will be literally jet-engine loud (metaphorically speaking) to a poor computer tower designed to only reject normal household EMI.

The great news is that this is a known EMI frequency; which makes it massively easier to surgically target. By describing power transmission pylons above your home, you've probably described the EMI needle in the haystack: 60 Hertz. It's usually a severely intense EMI -- but it's also very narrowband (60 Hz only).

Power Transmission Line Over-The-Air EMI is Strong but Simple to Block

Those living in these corridors are the most unfortunate recipients of EMI -- hold up a fluorescent tube pointed at the power transmission line within 30-50 meters of you, and it will flicker faintly in darkness. If that happens to you in your house, then definitely, it's a possible problem for your computer. That's EMI that can affect your computer! You can just yank a single tube from any of your ordinary fluorescent-tube fixture and use it as a crude strong-60Hz-field dector.

Fortunately over-the-air 60Hz EMI is easily blocked. Use a full metal enclosure for your computer (no transparent window) and shield all your wires, and preferably keep your computer at the same level as your monitor. Much like how a horizontal tube doesn't light up, but a vertical tube does (pointed at power lines), spreading your wires horizontally will partially reduce EMI under high voltage transmission lines if you live in a dwelling under high-voltage transmission lines.

Power Transmission EMI is very low-frequency, within audible frequencies -- a 60Hz buzz can be heard with a hearing aid configured to "Telephone Coil" mode. (I'm a deafie, and I can hear 60Hz EMI quite easily with my hearing aids in "Telephone Coil Pickup" mode). It's amazing how I walk into some rooms and there's sudden loud screech of a 60Hz buzz at 120 decibels that startles me, because I forgot to disable the telephone-coil mode on my hearing aid... And it definitely screeches loudly with a 60Hz buzz while walking under high voltage lines. Anytime I can hear 60Hz with a hearing aid in Telephone Coil mode, it means the EMI is probably strong enough to be wonky with a computer.

While a lot of quackjobs do Faraday Cages for no reasons, transmission line EMI is no laughing matter for a computer -- it's strong enough to do wacky things to a computer.

The Fluorescent Tube "Lightsaber" Test

Carefully yank any 4 footer tube from any fixture and hold it vertically under a high voltage transmission line at nighttime. Hello Luke Skywalker!

If you are unlucky to live within 30-50 meters of high voltage power transmission pylons -- you've got a big problem if your unwired tube glows in your computer room. You may have to consider a Faraday Cage to protect your gaming computer. For best results, hold up a 4-footer or 8-footer fluorescent tube pointed straight (vertically or diagonally) at the approximate direction of where the nearest power transmission lines are. (Be careful you don't break the tube in the dark accidentally banging it on something!) Power transmission EMI strong enough to faintly light up a handheld 4-foot fluorescent tube while indoors in your dwelling, is a huge EMI problem for a computer.

In some countries, people build homes UNDER these lines. That's a big problem for a modern gaming computer with a transparent window -- your computer isn't well Faraday Caged against these effects -- use a full metal computer tower box, and good shielded cables. Even if the tube glows much fainter than these photos, any faint flickery glow at all is a problem.

phpBB [video]

Look at that. EMI making fluorescent bulbs and tubes glow! That EMI can leak into the transparent window of a typical gaming computer. Do NOT use transparent-window gaming towers if you live UNDER these transmission towers. The good news is 60 Hz power transmission line EMI is somewhat mitigatable, and relatively easy to test for (fluorescent tube method).

Do not use transparent windows in your gaming tower if you live next to ultra high voltage power transmission lines! You've left a massive barn door open to 60 Hz low-frequency EMI...

Simple Power Transmission EMI-Rejection Fixes

1. Test with an inexpensive EMF Meter as well as with an unattached 4 foot fluorescent tube at nighttime, lights out, pointing towards those big power towers through the wall or ceiling. Does it glow while inside your comptuer room? Houston, you've got a massive problem if you have magic glowing tube while standing indoors. Your 60 Hz EMI is already far off the scales if the tube glows. Now, even weaker power transmission EMF that does not make your tube glow, can still set off the EMF meter alarm quite quickly and easily. 50 meters will probably still be close enough to raise a fuss on an EMF meter with a 765 kilovolt power transmission line above you. Metaphorically, that 60Hz EMI from power transmission is a bleepingly jet-engine loud compared to the gentle hum of ordinary household 60 Hz EMI.
2. Full metal enclosure for your computer. No gamer glass window (goodbye RGB bling, sorry). You NEED more shielding for your computer tower, so cover up those big metal holes. Something heavy and thick metal is even better. Small holes for vents are OK, but you cannot have a big gaping barn door of a glass window in a room where a handheld unattached fluorescent tube glows.
3. Keep your computer accessory wires 90 degrees to your transmission lines, not parallel to them, nor pointed straight to them. If you live under your power lines, that means keep your mouse/keyboard/USB/DisplayPort/etc wires as horizontal as possible and NOT parallel to the power lines above you. Raise your computer tower to the same level as your monitor, and wire horizontally between the computer / monitor / keyboard / mnouse. Wires at other angles will accept EMI more easily from overhead high voltage transmission lines. It won't solve the problem but it will reduce EMI. Better wires (with good shielding) will make this less necessary, but remember your 4-foot fluorescent tube tester? It glows brightest when it's not pointed at your power transmission lines. Tilt your tube around until your tube glows dimmest. That's the direction your computer accessory wires should go in if you're not Faraday-caging your room.
4. Fully Shielded Data Cables. This won't help fully, but unshielded twisted pair CAT5/CAT6 Ethernet cables should be replacd with CAT7 shielded twisted pairs, and all your wires should be shielded with a metal coaxial shield where possible. Most high-speed cables (10 gigabit and up) are already full-metal outer-shielded, like a coaxial cable's outer metal foil wrap. Upgrade your cables until all your cables are fully shielded. While the twisted pairs help reject EMI (thanks to to the continual-cancel-outs), the twisting may not be perfect enough to fully reject ultrastrong 60Hz EMI from power transmission. So you might as well make sure you've got full metal shielding on all your data cables, no matter what cable (USB, DisplayPort, HDMI, Ethernet, etc). Most high speed cables (10 gigabit+) are already fully shielded\. But some are not shielded enough to reject AC power transmission pylons (phone-wire like cables, slower USB cables, UTP Ethernet cables). Good gaming keyboards and gaming mice already have metal-braided shielding in their USB cables, but not all of them do.
5. If possible, "Faraday Cage" your computer room. It won't be 100% effective with super strong AC fields, but it can diminish it somewhat Use your existing 4-foot tube as your simple EMI detector, test your room in total darkness. If you want a more sensitive power transmission line detector (too weak to light up a tube, and you want to fix your weaker 60Hz EMI), then get a cheap EMF detector with 60 Hz detection capability. Or borrow your grandma's hearing aid device and configure it to "Telephone Coil" mode. Listen for 60Hz buzzing. Rooms with Faraday Cages can be partially effective with 60 Hz power transmission line interference -- the EMI is extremely intense and will punch through. But it can still help to an extent. Because the fluorescent tube does glow dimmer or go dark inside a better-shielded room. Metal sheeting behind your wallpaper. Metal sheeting under your carpet/tile/flooring. Metal embedded in your ceiling. Make sure it's all connected into a unified conducting piece of metal. EMI test accordingly. It won't eliminate the ultrastrong 60 Hz AC EMI completely, that can still punch through the Faraday Cage, but effects will diminish somewhat (tube might still glow but won't glow as brightly). Of course, this may be a waste of money, it's only for the most dedicated people who's got money to burn but unavoidably stuck living next to high voltage transmisson lines.

Remember the 90-degree rule? Look at one of the photos:


So perhaps to be safe, also keep your wires 90 degrees to your power lines, not parallel nor pointing at them. Maybe even carefully tip over your fancy gaming computer (glass window down, onto a sheet metal plate), to resist EMI from the power transmission lines. Unfortunately those zigzaggy computer circuits inside a computer never follow a single direction (inside a computer and inside a monitor) but you'll reduce the odds of EMI injection into your computer. If your cables are shielded this is less necessary, but you can still generate a lot of ground faults (currents conducting across the outer jacket of shielded cables -- just like a glowy tube -- creating various kind of ground imbalance effects), so go 90-degree anyway. Even if you can only make 90% of the cables horizontal, that's still a big reduction in EMI injections. This paragraph won't nearly as be important if you can instead Faraday-cage your room instead.

Also, the battery isolation technique MAY still be worthwhile since power transmission EMI can inject AC-waveform distortions into your house' mains wiring (two overlapping different-phases of AC -- one strong AC waveform, and one fainter AC waveform slightly out-of-phase) -- distorted away from sine-wave because the house' power wiring is picking up EMI interference from the power transmission lines.

Powerful EMI from near-megavolt transmission lines can inject some very weird effects into a nearby gaming computer. Manufacturers do not spend thousands of hours testing a gaming computer under high voltage transmission lines. And your country's may have more lax rules about building dwellings mere meters away from high voltage transmission lines, like houses underneath the wires...

Remember, this does not preclude other superstrong sources of nearby EMI outside your property lines (e.g. transformer stations, high power radio broadcasting towers, cell towers improperly pointed at your dwelling point-blank, miltary radar, airport radar, etc)...

You may have many sources of EMI, so concurrently doing this advice AND the battery-power advice may also solve EMI problems for high-end gaming underneath high-voltage transmission pylons. You might need to hit multiple bases for EMI sources strong enough to overcome 2 feet (power transmission EMI is unusually strong -- it can emit problematic interference to a gaming computer a hundred meters away), combined with weaker EMI that is indirectly caused by this (e.g. dirty power going into your comptuer power suppy). So you may have a whac-a-mole factor too.

Nontheless, this is "uber power user, I gotta solve EMI at all costs" advice for a person unable to move away from EMI. Worldwide, millions live too close to power transmission lines for EMI comfort -- so you can be unlucky with your gaming computer. The good news is that strong EMI from power transmission is mostly simply a 60Hz buzz, and targeted mitigation is possible.

Note: The buzz is 50 Hz in some countries that use 50 Hz power frequencies. Replace all occurances of "60Hz" with "50Hz" if this is your particular case.

[Chief Blur Buster]

Since Blur Busters loves opening all kinds of Temporal Pandora Boxes all the time (...Hz|fps|GtG|MPRT|lag|etc...)

Throwing more EMI fuel to the fire, newer GPU ram is now also error-corrected and can lag in performance.

Was watching LinusTechTips today about GPU overclocking (this vid), and...



It's literally, RAM with error-detect-and-retransit, not simple FEC (Forward Error Correction) algorithms of classic ECC memory.

So, yet another error-corrected element in a computer that can also lag. At the tight margins of ultra-high-speed memory that's being pre-overclocked at the factory. Those real tight tolerances.

The complete entire input latency chain, from button-to-photons, necessary has to go through the GPU funnel, so it's relevant to include this factor.

It's not completely inconceivable that we'd see certain specimens of overclocked computers in tempered-glass towers slowing down in realtime as soon as we had a high-EMI device nearby (Such as an old vacuum cleaner or old fridge/drying machine startup nearby behind the wall immediately behind the computer tower). Imagine, overclocked PCs with multiple buses fine-tuned to near its breaking point simultaneously, PCI-Express (error retransmit), GDDRX6 (error retransmit), NVMe (error retransmit), etc, strategically fine-tuned to exactly the breaking point. With all showing ~0.000001% retransmits that could spike to 10%+ retransmits with small EMI sources creating human-visible lag with a nearby old vaccuum cleaner motor or whatnot.

Like an Internet connection suddenly getting 10% packet loss -- except it's your RAM. Your PCI Express. Your NVMe. Trying to retransmit data out of the wazoo. Even if it's nanoseconds, it's lag death by millions of nanoseconds.

<Speculation>
Who knows, later this decade, someone will probably create a viral video about that -- on a computer pushed to its overclocking breaking point (where it becomes suddenly EMI-lag sensitive), like "WATCH THE VACCUUM CLEANER CREATE LAG ON COMPUTER!" or "WATCH MY SMARTPHONE CREATE LAG ON COMPUTER!" whatnot (smartphone in 1-bar reception zone in a phone call or continuous LTE/WiFi-transmit) as they wave the phone towards the computer innards. Perhaps an old electric drill with a spark-generating DC brush motor. Mind you, you'll have to multiple mudane household devices that may nail specific EMI problem frequencies (test quite a few), before you find one that creates weird computer slowdowns. Then create that viral YouTube video and make many industry jaws drop. It'd be funny and sobering at the same time.
P.S. You Youtubers, feel free to give me a shoutout for idea.
</Speculation>

For strong-EMI environments, maybe it is time to buy a full-metal-box computer tower as a "more complete Faraday cage" instead of a temperred glass window, eh?

More error correction layers out of the wazoo.

</Temporal Pandora Box>
ERROR 0001: Failed to execute closing tag. <Temporal Pandora Box> Failed To Close

[Chief Blur Buster]

I'm sure someone else has said this before but as an electrical engineer, I can tell you that EMI should have zero effect on your "input lag" UNLESS you're talking about wireless networking or peripherals (e.g. mouse & keyboard).

Part 1 of 2

Actually, it's rare but it has happened. I am crossposting something else I wrote on another forum at ArsTechnica:
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Interference problems can create really WEIRD effects for a lot of modern gadgets. When interference is strong enough -- and/or the shielding is weak enough.

Like the LG 5K display that glitched if a WiFi router was nearby.

I've also gotten anecdotes from spectrum-analyzer using engineers/techs where they found weird videogaming sutters/glitches caused by electricity noise.

The interference was nearly (but not quite) strong enough to crash a computer. Instead, the computer was severely slowing/lagging from apparent error correcting behaviours.

We don't know what specific slowdowns were caused by -- flood of IRQ interrupt noise or error-correcting behaviours on SATA cables or noise on ECC DRAM buses or some other mysterious EMI-based slowdown effects, or a PCI Express bus trying to retransmit data during noise errors -- probably error correcting by the millions, like death by a million nanoseconds or microseconds that added up to continually visible slowdowns (game stutter, Window-dragging stutter, scrolling stutter, etc). Even when nothing was running in background (CPU/GPU near 0%), and scanners found no viruses.

Like thousands of microfreezes per minute.

The computer really performed erratically slow in a way that wasn't blameable on Microsoft Windows in particular as patterns persisted regardless of what was installed or reinstalled. And it was only when the interference was occuring. When the culprit appliance was removed, the computer went back to full speed. The engineer's testing equipment confirmed massive interference noise was somehow being injected into the computer that slowed down / stuttered everytime the noise occured. The massive amounts of error correction layers that portions of a modern computer has, apparently prevents the computer from crashing.

It's possible some components were suboptimal/defective or it was a cheap motherboard, or a poorly EMI-rejecting computer power supply. But at some point, some forms of interference can become too strong for a hardened computer to resist fully. And they apparently don't always crash right away thanks to all those error-correcting buses (PCI, SATA, NVMe, ECC RAM, USB, LAN, DisplayPort, etc, all of which use error correction now). It can be bad enough like an Internet connection losing 50% of its packets, but on a PCI Express bus, or USB cable, or NVMe SSD or whatever -- things really slow down there too if interference is strong enough but still lets enough data through that the computer doesn't crash.

All the numerous error correcting buses found in modern PCs, that didn't exist 25+ years ago. Error correction behaviours often involve latency, including bandwidth reductions or retransmission latency or extra wait states or ultrabrief computer freezes, etc. We don't know which error correcting layer occured, but we know computer reliably sped up/slowed down everytime the known electrical interference was added/removed.

Usually error corrections in a PC on these layers are nanoseconds or microseconds but they can apparently daisychain by the thousands into visible milti-millisecond microfreezes covering multiple display refresh cycles! Which just appears as stutter (choppy motion on a screen). It's hard to diagnose exact causes of specific stutters (from driver bugs or thermal throttling or background processing).

But apparently, this computer slowdown was EMI-caused -- visible stutter from electricity noise coming from the power outlet!

There's a ton of weakly-shielded cheap electronics or even shielding-defective high end electronics. And time can degrade many device like these TVs degrading into unintentional small-scale EMPs.

Very weird!
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--end of crosspost; begin of reply--

WARNING / CAVEAT: This is usually a wild goose to a red herring more than 99% of the time. However, it's not out of the realm of possibility for strong-enough EMI to start "thousand-microfreezes" lagging an insufficiently-shielded PC. The type of "EMI strength + shielding weakness" combo that is strong enough to almost, but not quite, crash a PC. I've seen at least a few examples in the last few years. TL;DR: EMI can cause computer lag as described, BUT it's very rare. It definitely ain't a five-sigma "No", just rare. Unless you have the time and absolutey exhausted other avenues, do not waste time troubleshooting longshots; troubleshoot the low-lying apples first!

As for power going into your PC, it's always worth buying a good power supply. It's job is to ensure "clean" DC power output and protect/mitigate various failure modes. If you have a bad one, usually the failure isn't simply input lag, it's usually freezing/crashing, inability to power on, or catastrophic failure such as shorting and overheating.

Part 2 of 2

Also, read the Milliseconds Matter Thread: The Amazing Human Visible Feats Of The Millisecond, where some milliseconds are invisible, and other milliseconds create human-visible effects. I don't own any appliance that's a defacto EMP bomb, but even a single analog television set took out an entire town's DSL infrastructure (it really happened). Now, imagine a super-EMI appliance (Imagine; The 0.001% of the worst EMI-emitters, that's still a few out of a million) being right next to a computer, injecting EMI through a cheap computer power supply, and then really dirtying all the voltages inside the computer, creating those massive double-digit-percentage-loss errorcorrection/ECC bus floods that creates multithousand human visible millisecond-scale microfreezes (aka stutter).

A 1990s computer crashes, but a 2020s computer is full of error correcting buses & behaviors. So, thusly, the said computer is no longer guaranteed to crash;

Even today's PCI Express bus isn't like a non-errorcorrected 2400 baud modem that spews garbage when somebody else picks up the phone line (qF2{TfRJZ^s-y,a....NO CARRIER) while you were calling a BBS. Today, a PCI Express bus (in conjunctsion with PCI Express peripherals) is a packetized "error detection and retransmit mechanism". Yep. LAG, if there's a million-retransmit flood. Those bus lines are almost literally getting more like a DSL phone line now (just a different order of magnitude; the multi gigabit scale). While yesterday's PCI had error detect and retransmit, tomorrow, PCI 6.0 will have FEC too (forward error correction) so error corrections out of the wazoo because buses are getting faster and more sensitive to EMI! PCI Express is capable of lagging noticeably if tons of of packets are lost, for example. Same for NVME, SSDs, USB buses, etc. Any EMI could go anywhere, like a chip pin thanks to a cheap chinese design oversight, and whatnot that was not detected by automatic circuit board EMI-checking software, etc. BOOM. Lag instead of crash. There's billions of potential weak links in a modern computer (counting on-chip stuff -- even a single transistor can sometimes be a Chaos Theory Butterfly) and you only need enough weaknesses here n there. See, engineers? (Like the way I school disbelieving engineers about 240Hz benefits).

Heck, today DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0 is also an error-correct packet system now. Yep. Packets with error correction. On your cable between computer and monitor. Also, recently, very slightly variable latency sometimes occurs on DisplayPort and HDMI, though usually in the sub-millisecond timesales (<0.1ms), and most monitors just glitch (brief blackouts) though some freezes the last refresh cycle on-screen while it's trying to get the next refresh cycle. It might even happen more often as video cables try to go faster (HDMI can now go up to 77 gigabits per second over copper. That's almost as fast as 100 gigabit Ethernet), as electronics in display decides to lag (freezeframe the last refresh cycle) instead of doing blackouts, etc. LAG, baby. It ain't 1990 Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. Many buses in a 2020 computer have "error-detect-and-retransmit" mechanisms -- probably over one hundred of them (from USB layers, PCI-X layers, SATA layers, NVMe layers, etc, etc, etc, etc). And y'know, engineers, do you know what "error-detect-and-retransmit" means, buddies? LAG. Yes, nanoseconds, but there is such a thing as error floods and deaths by a million nanoseconds to human feelable milliseconds and microfreezes galore.

Yesterday 1985 IDE bus .... CRASH upon EMP
Today's 2020 nVME .... LAG upon EMP (error retransmit)

Yesterday's 1985 ISA bus ... CRASH upon EMP
Today's 2020 PCI-Express ... LAG upon EMP (error retransmit)

Yesterday's 1985 RS232 serial bus ... CORRUPTION
Today's 2020 USB ... LAG upon EMP (error retransmit)

etc, etc.

See...We're Blur Busters. We're truly in the temporal technology business (Hz/lag/GtG/MPRT/stutter/sync, all a matter of temporals), and thusly, we keeps an open mind on whac-a-mole of the hundreds of weak links in a system, including longshots. We're science and evidence-minded here.

Milliseconds (many scientifically proven human visible) pays the bills that put the food on my table and pays my mortgage. We do realize that we attract a lot of "out there" people, but we also pull the Wizard of Oz curtain to reveal amazing temporal discoveries in the midst of FUD/disinformation.

I frequently have to give the Obviousman Duh walls-of-texts to many people throughout the industry, to mythbust all those tiny descendants of "Human Can't Tell 30fps vs 60fps" myths. Sometimes via great show-and-tells like a simple TestUFO animation. Whether be 360Hz monitors, 8000Hz mice, or other formerly-assumed imperceptible things. Assume is a no-no for researchers; so we actually dig and and find surprises. So, please allow me to microp that EMI is becoming an increasingly more frequent problem today in computer latency. (Excuse me.)

Historically, I'd find it nuts to put a Faraday Cage around a computer monitor, but I've seen everything -- the LG 5K monitor EMI-sensitivity problem isn't the only culprit! For every reliably EMI-sensitive device (e.g. the LG 5K recall), there's thousands of EMI-less-sensitive situations where 1000 units out of 1000000 actually had a definite case (e.g. more-sensitive-than-usual to some form of EMI creating lagging or glitching or other non-crash effects from EMI) -- whether manufacturing tolerances varying or the users being closer to EMI superemitters. Those don't make media, those don't make the news, those often get swept under the rug as unreproducible/unexplainable. So "designed-correctly" won't work if you've got an unavoidable defacto nuclear bombesque EMI source nearby.

Also EMI is a massive universe (radiofrequency through the air versus through the wires, of all kinds of strengths, all kinds of frequencies, of all kinds of looks on an oscilloscope ranging from tuning-fork looks to 1920s sparkgap transmitter looks), so EMI isn't just "one thing", and sometimes one defective appliance EMI super-emitter is >10,000,000 times stronger at a specific frequency for a specific instant than the EMI of an iPad. Like a failing CRT flyback transformer unknowingly shorting/arcing to the house's wiring (mains and/or phone) and turning the whole town's grid into a DSL-killing radio antenna

Or more mudane stuff such as:
- Neighbour's defective motor in a very old dryer.
- Roommate's 1970s music equipment with defective power supplies.
- Grandpa's 1940s electric fan running in workshop.
- Upstairs apartment tenant's failing fridge compressor.
- Nearby nerd's tesla coil build down the street generating intense spark-transmitter style background noise.
- Undiagnosed arcing between wires in your attic.
- The next door hospital's old MRI machine on its original power supply.
- That sketchy-looking huge rusting old 11kV power company transformer on the pole just outside your 2nd floor window.
- Large flash tubes (large xenon photo flashes, old dental analog X-ray, etc) and their associated capacitor/inductor/transformer circuit.
- Unshielded sparkplugs in a nearby old gas generator on the opposite side of the wall (exerior wall of your office).
- Or other super-EMI-emitters emitting blindingly hundreds or thousands or even millions times beyond FCC limits.

Most won't be problematic, but sometimes it is a problem (I've seen an Arduino crash from a single open-air sparkplug 2 meters away, and a RIM 950 BlackBerry pager irreparably die from a nearby Xenon flash tube/circuit two inches away! And other times, the problematic EMI sphere from the superemitter is big enough to envelope the whole residence, with no way to move your computer far enough outside the EMI sphere, or the EMI is in the wiring instead of the air. Like the example of an appliance weirdly creating unexplained microfreezes in window-dragging on a nearby computer.

Many engineers just check their circuit design through vetting software, send to fabricators such as PCBway or whatever, do a small beta, and then ship out the retail, call it a day. Don't cry to me if 1000 of the 1,000,000 retail users has a next-door neighbour having an EMI-superemiitter appliance that is doing wonky things to their setup....just because one circuit trace or one chip wasn't properly shielded, and/or the user was using a tempered-glass-sided computer tower that wasn't a complete Faraday cage (EMI via air)...and/or the power supply was defective in shielding specific power frequencies (EMI via wire), and/or multiple concurrent factors. Doh?

FCC has no God Mode that can wave a wand and make all those EMI superviolators dissappear. Unfortunately no better-than-FCC/UT/ETL/ISO/KitchenSink Approved Shielding, will be 100% completely opaque to 100% all of EMI frequencies of 100% of all EMI superemitters lurking worldwide. Lot of the superemitters are often only short-distance (inverse square law FTW!), killing only a couple computers with lag/crashes, but doing zilch for the rest of the town. FCC ain't going to hunt this particular superemitter down, since it's not causing thousands of complaints. Anyway, we can only do our best.

At some EMI-strong point (e.g. a nuclear bomb), no shielding of standard retail computer builds is immune to such strong EMI of the EMP pulse of the bomb. Shielding isn't completely opaque to all radiofrequencies; and sufficiently strong EMI of various frequencies will tend to punch through garden-variety computer shielding. But plenty of lesser EMI-superemitters (whether by air or via wire) capable of doing to a computer, lots of hard-to-troubleshoot stuff that feels voodoo.

Turn the dial somewhere between "EMI successfully blocked by shielding" and "Nuclear bomb league EMP pulse", and some computers will find the sweet spot (lagging computer) at EMI signal strengths just barely below causing computer crash. It may only be a specific EMI frequency/pattern, and immune to other EMI frequencies/pattern of the same signal strength. And yes, many systems just crash, but more often, computers now begin lagging first when the EMI is a smidge below computer-crashing-strength.

So.... "Properly Designed" doesn't five-sigma-out the FCC-violating EMI super emitters that probably exists by the millions throughout North America -- who knows how many there are -- but it's somewhere "Rare enough that it doesn't affect a single beta tester" but also "Common enough to affect a few retail users". Mathematics 101. See?

It does sounds very tinfoilhattery, even to many University Ph.D engineer (especially those who don't know how error-corrected-out-of-the-wazoo a 2020 computer is), but, alas, EMI super-emitters exist here and there, that can indeed visibly lag a specific computer, glitch a specific monitor, or create weird non-crash effects on specific devices. Super-rare, and it's probably certainly not the problem of most of the forum members troubleshooting unexplained lag (found even in window dragging and offline gaming), but it's certainly extant.

But yes. Obligatory troubleshooter wasted-time warning. This is a wild goose chase to red herrings more than 99% of the time. It's much rarer than two-sigma, but more common than five-sigma, but it's now rapidly becoming more common thanks to the more-EMI-sensitive faster speeds. And yes, there's placebos & wrong claims in the mix too, which muddy the signal-noise ratio finding trustedly actual EMI-lagged computers. And, definitely, focus on more common causes of lag first.

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The Bottom Line

We have to respect people who are having fruitless problems troubleshooting EMI, with the newfound respect based on the 5 above replies that I just made. The problem is that this is a devilishly difficult problem, and so extremely difficult to troubleshoot --

Problems from EMI definitely is guaranteed to exist somewhere -- but provability is not guaranteed because of the sheer astounding complexity of EMI.

So everybody, don't dismiss EMI, even if it is sometimes a longshot problem, but be cognizant about the sheer difficulty of troubleshooting EMI in a nice/polite way to each other.

Online Internet lag is a more common problem. Internet lag is also a major problem too, but sometimes EMI lag happens offline too as explained above; One forum member posted that sometimes a LTE connection is better for CS:GO than a gigabit connection. I am totally not suprirsed by this, if one upstream router (beyond your control) has some bufferbloat problems on the FTTH connection. And some games and some servers has behaviours that handicap LPB's (creating more advantage for 30-40ms latency players, than 15ms players or 100ms players), so Internet lag troubleshooting difficulties creates red herrings by the gigatonnage -- worse scores when your Internet lag goes down is also possible because of online-play handicap algorithms when you're the lowest-lag player on a server of more lagged players! So focus on equalizing yourself with others, e.g. server selection, switching gaming VPN, switching ISP, adjusting the distance between you and server, etc -- until you hit the sweet spot. Battle(non)sense YouTube channel has a delicious universe on these kinds of topics.

But, for EMI issues that are not Internet-related, one needs to follow a (very complex, non-boilerplateable, hard to write a HOWTO Guide for) troubleshooting path that also includes offline tests. Discussions needs to be nuanced/cognizant about the increasing problems of these phenomenae, given millions are unlucky enough to live close enough to EMI sources capable of doing weirdnesses to a computer.