u/Nudl1_

Hi everyone, ive owned this laptop for 4-5 years now. I have had an INSANE ammount of issues with it, i tried really hard to love it, but either mine was faulty from the factory, or i just have the worst luck ever since 2 months into owning it i lost 2 of the little rubber feet and 2 screws while never having opened it. Sorry for ranting but im beyond frustrated, i genuenly need some help.

Onto my issue. Ive noticed that the system stutters a lot more lately than normal. I do some photo editing and gaming on it as well, and while i was playing Alien Isolation, wich shouldnt really make the laptop struggle as much, the game randomly dropped from 120+ fps down to around 5-10 every 5 minutes for a few seconds. I didnt think much of it and tought it was just driver issues, but even after updating my drivers the issue persisted, and not just in Alien Isolation but pretty much every time i did anything system heavy, (other games, developing raw photos, light photoshop). The entire system will just stutter for a few seconds.

My first tought was that it must be the thermals. I re-pasted the entire system, and even bought new fans for it. I never went above 85 degrees celsius after that, and the issue persisted. Then i checked the battery's wear level and was shocked to see that it was around only capable of delivering 42 Wh by how much it had degraded. I tought that this was obviously the issue, and it also made perfect sense. I did some more testing and found out using G-helper that whenever the stutters were happening, the system was actualy discharging at a rate of around 20-15w even while plugged in, and whenever they were not happening, it was doing so at 1-3w persistently. After finding this out i tought that for SURE the battery was the faulty component, so i went out and brought an Asus certified replacement aftermarket (its extremly hard to get one original where i live).

After installing it, the stutters did dissapear... for about 20 minutes. I was extremly dissapointed since the battery was not cheap. I did some more testing, and ran the memory diagnostics tool. When i did so, the test would complete, but when the laptop rebooted i got put into the bitlocker recovery screen wich makes me think it may be the ram that is causing the issue? Then again, it might be the SSD since i have 7.7k hours in it, or the charger itself, OR the charging port. Those are my next theories but before i buy anything, (Or in the Ram's case, sell the laptop for parts since its soldered, same thing in the charging port's case probably) i tought i would make this post to see if anyone had a simular issue, or if anyone can help me figure out what could be causing it.