The Real Secret of Smoothness

[jeffeh12133]

i admire your effort to keep searching for issues. we'll get through this one day. i think one day all electrical issues will be solved, someone will figure this out. it's way too widespread and too many people are starting to catch onto this issue.

I don’t know if it’s really an electrical issue anymore, but the solution honestly feels impossible. Even if I go and buy a brand new PC tomorrow, I’ll probably only get one smooth day of gameplay, and then the problem will come back again. I already know that will happen. But if this were truly an electrical problem, wouldn’t there also be issues with things like phones, TVs, or even refrigerators?

i know. for me, the issue is my inconsistent experience with my PC during the day vs night time. night time feels so snappy and quick and good. usually after 4-6pm it starts feeling good. i live in the US California and i live in a newer (2007 constructed) apartment. i even have an online double conversion UPS and while the UPS made things feel really good (i can't go back to regular wall outlet ever again, i tried), that day vs night inconsistency is still present which is unfortunate

[MK92]

Probably shared neutrals in apartments, as always in those cases...especially if UPS doesn't fully fix this - it can fix dirty electricity, it can fix voltage fluctuations, too low voltage etc., but it cannot fix noisy neutral wires.

Even a 2025 apartments are using shared neutrals, they don't build buildings in a way that every apartment would have it's fully own neutral wire connected to the ground, and this is why almost everyone with this problem is living in apartments, not houses.

At night, less people are using electricity = stable internal grid in the building = snappy PC performance...it cannot be anything else with those day/night differences that all of us experience, it's simply how many people are using electricity.

[astroasis]

i admire your effort to keep searching for issues. we'll get through this one day. i think one day all electrical issues will be solved, someone will figure this out. it's way too widespread and too many people are starting to catch onto this issue.

I don’t know if it’s really an electrical issue anymore, but the solution honestly feels impossible. Even if I go and buy a brand new PC tomorrow, I’ll probably only get one smooth day of gameplay, and then the problem will come back again. I already know that will happen. But if this were truly an electrical problem, wouldn’t there also be issues with things like phones, TVs, or even refrigerators?

i know. for me, the issue is my inconsistent experience with my PC during the day vs night time. night time feels so snappy and quick and good. usually after 4-6pm it starts feeling good. i live in the US California and i live in a newer (2007 constructed) apartment. i even have an online double conversion UPS and while the UPS made things feel really good (i can't go back to regular wall outlet ever again, i tried), that day vs night inconsistency is still present which is unfortunate

Well thanks for saving me the trouble of getting a double conversion UPS, it seems we really cant play multiplayer games at a high level with this, at most we can enjoy casual and single player

[Yagami]

The PC cannot get "permanently infected" by bad electricity, so if you still have the same problems in the new apartment where electricity is okay, than your hardware is faulty and it has nothing to do with electricity.

Before trying a PC at new apartment, simply reset the CMOS battery, and spam turn on button many times when the PSU is switched off, so any leftover electricity will be gone and the capacitors would fully empty...even better solution is to not turn on the PC for at least 24 hours after doing this and before trying it at new house.

Bad electricity can REDUCE the lifespan of your components, but it WON'T permanently damage it...if your PC behaves the same in the new house with good electricity, then you have problems with something else.

Regarding the network - how hard is it to test that? Simply unplug ethernet cable from PC, turn off the modem from wall socket or power strip, wait for 20-30 mins so everything stablisies, and then try the smoothness of the PC, you can easily see on desktop if you have 60hz feeling, choppiness or floaty mouse....and disable network adapter in windows as well.

I understand what you’re saying, but whatever the cause is, the end result is that I now have two computers affected by the same phenomenon. That’s why I believe the damage is permanent. At this point, maybe the term “infected” actually fits the situation quite well — because I honestly wouldn’t feel comfortable installing a brand-new GPU or CPU in my main PC just to “test” it.

Fiber-optic internet was definitely never the issue. In the place where I live now, everything was installed from scratch, and I even spent two weeks gaming exclusively on a mobile network before connecting fiber. Unsurprisingly, nothing changed.

That’s why I’m ruling out electricity and networking as the root cause — I’ve tested different environments, different connections, and the behavior remains exactly the same.

My secondary PC was completely powered off for almost a year. When I turned it back on, I could feel a slight improvement in smoothness for a few minutes, but it was still nowhere near how it used to be.

I bought an Alienware AW2525HM 320Hz monitor and used it exclusively in my new place, and I have to say I don’t feel any difference compared to my old 144Hz monitor. On the contrary, everything still feels like it’s running at 60Hz, even though it clearly isn’t.

[MK92]

Does it get better at night, or are you problems 24/7 the same? For me it doesn't even feels like 60hz, it literally feels 55hz or less during the day, but late at night it suddenly becomes normal, the colours are vibrant and sharp, text is very sharp, mouse is moving fast and without a shadow trace...but during the day its fucking impossible to even use a PC because my eyes hurts, even closing a tab in firefox in so choppy and stuttery, like it needs 3 different frames and animations to complete it. And websites are also loading slower, even though the speedtest shows no slowdown or high ping.

[Yagami]

Does it get better at night, or are you problems 24/7 the same? For me it doesn't even feels like 60hz, it literally feels 55hz or less during the day, but late at night it suddenly becomes normal, the colours are vibrant and sharp, text is very sharp, mouse is moving fast and without a shadow trace...but during the day its fucking impossible to even use a PC because my eyes hurts, even closing a tab in firefox in so choppy and stuttery, like it needs 3 different frames and animations to complete it. And websites are also loading slower, even though the speedtest shows no slowdown or high ping.

Actually for me the problem used to start at night. From around 6 PM to 11 PM the game would feel less responsive. Hitreg gets worse, but at the same time the mouse feels easier to control.

After a while all the fluidity is just gone and any FPS game becomes unplayable. Best way I can describe it: I’m getting 400 FPS on a 320Hz monitor, but it feels like V-Sync is locked at 60Hz.

If I increase mouse sensitivity it gets way worse, aiming becomes unstable and it’s REALLY hard to control basic movements.

What’s weird is that in normal desktop usage I don’t really notice much difference. The PC feels fine overall, no obvious performance issues. That’s what makes this so confusing.

[jeffeh12133]

i admire your effort to keep searching for issues. we'll get through this one day. i think one day all electrical issues will be solved, someone will figure this out. it's way too widespread and too many people are starting to catch onto this issue.

I don’t know if it’s really an electrical issue anymore, but the solution honestly feels impossible. Even if I go and buy a brand new PC tomorrow, I’ll probably only get one smooth day of gameplay, and then the problem will come back again. I already know that will happen. But if this were truly an electrical problem, wouldn’t there also be issues with things like phones, TVs, or even refrigerators?

i know. for me, the issue is my inconsistent experience with my PC during the day vs night time. night time feels so snappy and quick and good. usually after 4-6pm it starts feeling good. i live in the US California and i live in a newer (2007 constructed) apartment. i even have an online double conversion UPS and while the UPS made things feel really good (i can't go back to regular wall outlet ever again, i tried), that day vs night inconsistency is still present which is unfortunate

Well thanks for saving me the trouble of getting a double conversion UPS, it seems we really cant play multiplayer games at a high level with this, at most we can enjoy casual and single player

i would say that a double-conversion UPS has diminished the bottleneck by about 70% for sure though. my games are still responsive, they just look and feel snappier at night time. before when i didn't have a UPS, it was absolutely awful. now it's actually playable.

[Espionage724]

i would say that a double-conversion UPS has diminished the bottleneck by about 70% for sure though. my games are still responsive, they just look and feel snappier at night time. before when i didn't have a UPS, it was absolutely awful. now it's actually playable.

Sounds like your PSU is sketchy if it can't filter power properly before reaching hardware to affect it.

[MK92]

No, because a good quality PSU can tolerate and fix only small voltage dips and fluctuations, normal and expected levels of harmonics, normal ripple, small EM and RF interferences etc., but it won't fix major electricity issues with neutrals, ground loop, high impedance, phase imbalance etc.

[Espionage724]

No, because a good quality PSU can tolerate and fix only small voltage dips and fluctuations, normal and expected levels of harmonics, normal ripple, small EM and RF interferences etc., but it won't fix major electricity issues with neutrals, ground loop, high impedance, phase imbalance etc.

Sounds like other devices in the house would have notable issues with wild wiring sooner than a computer with a PSU that can filter better than average :p (I imagine a on-special TV with dollar-store HDMI would probably blank or HDCP scramble if building power was too bad before high-end desktop PSUs can't mitigate)