u/Thats1AstroNut

The Setup

My PC specs:

• Ryzen 7 7800X3D

• RTX 4080 Super Gigabyte OC

• ASUS TUF Gaming B650-E WiFi

• 32GB Corsair DDR5-6000

• 2TB + 1TB SSD

• NZXT Kraken AIO (original)

• NZXT 850W Gold PSU

• Corsair K55 keyboard and Nightsword mouse

Built about a year ago from a MicroCenter bundle. Ran perfectly for 12 months without a single issue.

How It Started

Sitting down, taking a school survey on Qualtrics in Chrome. Completely normal Tuesday afternoon. Chrome starts acting weird, closes my YouTube tab mid-survey, and opens random windows when I finish. Then my mouse stops clicking entirely. The cursor moves fine, but hovering over anything does nothing, and clicking does nothing. The only fix was Ctrl+Alt+Del or opening Task Manager.

Restarted the PC. Happened again within minutes. Restarted again, still broken.

Naturally assumed the worst: I somehow got a virus, Chrome doing something evil, malware. Ran a full Windows Defender scan. Came back completely clean.

This is where the 72 hour saga begins.

Phase 1 — Blaming Software

First instinct was Windows or Chrome corruption. Tried everything:

• Cleared Chrome cache and cookies — no fix

• Ran DISM — completed successfully

• Ran SFC — said it found and repaired corrupt files

• Checked CBS log — showed zero components actually repaired (first sign something deeper was wrong)

• Disabled Fast Startup via the powercfg command

• Uninstalled June 2026 Windows security update KB5094126 which installed the same day

• Updated NVIDIA drivers

• Rolled back NVIDIA drivers from 610.47 to 596.49 via DDU in Safe Mode

None of it worked. The issue kept coming back within minutes of every restart.

Phase 2 — The Symptoms Get Weirder

Things started escalating. The scroll wheel on my Corsair Nightsword began randomly activating on its own my middle-click scroll mode flickering on and off unprompted. Then phantom inputs started:

• Chrome opens 5-6 tabs on its own

• Text jumping around while typing in Discord

• PowerShell windows opening randomly

• Right-click worked, but left-click didn’t during episodes

• Keyboard input dying alongside mouse input

At this point, I'm losing my mind

Phase 3 — I'm Desperate

Tested different mice that I had on hand, a Corsair M65 and same issue. Tested different USB ports front and rear... same issue.

Saw online that LatencyMon, a software, can see inputs and other weird stuff, which showed nvlddmkm.sys (NVIDIA driver) spiking consistently at 1300-1400µs. Normal systems stay under 300µs. Tried every fix:

• DDU clean driver wipe and reinstall

• Rolled back to older NVIDIA driver 596.49

• Disabled HAGS

• Disabled NVIDIA HD audio interfaces

• Forced PCIe slot to Gen 4

• Applied High Performance power plan

• Disabled USB Root Hub power management

• Disabled all NVIDIA audio controllers

Nothing moved the needle.

Phase 4 — Full Clean Windows Install

Decided to go nuclear. Deleted all partitions on both SSDs, fresh Windows 11 install from USB. Only AMD chipset drivers and NVIDIA drivers were installed before testing.

The issue came back before any other software was installed.

Also discovered during this phase that Windows Reset had previously run to 100% completion multiple times but never actually fixed anything, because why would it?

Phase 5 — Hardware Investigation

Device Manager revealed three hardware errors:

WiFi — Code 28 (hardware not recognized, no compatible drivers found)

Bluetooth — Code 43 (Windows stopped device due to reported problems),

BTHUSB crashing every single boot — event logs showed this had been happening since December 2025.

Updated BIOS from a 2024 model to a April 2026 release. No change.

RAM passed Extended Windows Memory Diagnostic — two full passes, zero errors.

Removed RTX 4080 Super entirely and ran on integrated graphics. DPC latency spikes transferred from nvlddmkm.sys to dxgkrnl.sys at identical levels. The issue persisted.

At this point, all evidence and online speculation, along with help via my brother and online friends pointed at the motherboard, WiFi dead, Bluetooth dead, DPC spikes on both GPUs, three independent hardware fault codes.

Drove to MicroCenter with the board and they confirmed the TWG 2-Year Replacement warranty, I decided instead of the same board to use the warranty for store credit and get an upgrade.

Phase 6 — New Motherboard! Yay we did it!!

Bought a Gigabyte Aorus X870. Transferred all components from the B650-E, including the original NZXT Kraken AIO.

Booted up and went into bios to yet again do another windows install...

That's when we noticed the CPU temp was slowly rising... which eventually shutdown the system...

Oh my lord...

The original Kraken AIO died on arrival to the new board, completely failed, tried diffrent wires, tried to run difrent usb headers, dedicated sata power... still dead and overheating the cpu in bios. I sat on the floor for a while... eventually made a drive to Best Buy to purchase a replacement, so yay more money!!

Installed the new AIO, cooling was working properly straight out of the box, preeem! We did it, new board, new aio, I can rest.... finally!

The issue persisted immediately even with the new AIO, new motherboard and new windows install.

I'm so tired...

LatencyMon showed nvlddmkm.sys spiking at 1358ms on the brand new board with the new cooler. Same spike, completely different motherboard, fresh AIO, fresh Windows.

This is when suspicion shifted toward the CPU’s I/O die, two different motherboards showing identical behavior with only the CPU and GPU in common. Started mentally preparing an AMD RMA on the 7800X3D.

"Shoud've stayed on a leapfrog" -Older brother

Then I asked Mark, my old time friend and the buddy whos been by my side since my Microcenter trip, to bring his Razor set-up over.

Phase 7 — My life is a joke

My friend came over with his Razer keyboard and mouse.

Plugged them in.

The problem disappeared instantly.

LatencyMon's highest interrupt latency dropped from over 70,000µs to 172µs.

System completely stable. Unable to produce the bug and everything was working flawlessly.

Plugged Corsair peripherals back in. The problem returned immediately. Unplugged them. Stable again. Plugged in only the K55. Manageable. Only the Nightsword. Manageable. Both together? Full input failure within seconds.

The combination of both Corsair peripherals (including my old one) were the cause the entire time, you can guess my reaction and face when I learned this.

The Root Cause, Our Best Theory

My older brother's friend is who is a pc nerd came up with the idea that the original NZXT Kraken AIO had been failing for some time before it completely died. The AIO communicates with the motherboard via an internal USB 2.0 header. As it failed, it caused USB bus instability — disconnect/reconnect loops, interrupt storms, driver confusion on the shared USB controller.

iCUE constantly monitors and communicates with both the K55 and Nightsword. During the USB instability events caused by the failing AIO, iCUE likely attempted repeated write operations to both devices during interrupted connection cycles, essentially the equivalent of unplugging a USB drive mid-write, repeatedly over time. This left both devices in a persistent corrupted state, generating malformed HID input reports.

The corrupted HID reports specifically broke the Windows shell input layer, which is why games we tested worked perfectly, fullscreen games bypass the Windows shell and handle input directly, but desktop use, browsers, and window switching were constantly broken (all processed through the shell input stack).

The dying AIO was confirmed when it completely failed upon installation in the new X870 board. New AIO installed. But the peripheral firmware was already corrupted and remained corrupted regardless of which board they were plugged into.

iCUE firmware reset was attempted on both devices. Failed.

Note: This theory is our best explanation based on the evidence. We believe it to be plausible and explains everything, but not definitively proven, if y'all have any other ideas we'd like to hear them.

Collateral Damage Discovered

• ASUS TUF B650-E had genuinely dead WiFi (Code 28) and dead Bluetooth (Code 43), real hardware faults, just not the cause of the input issue. Possibly contributed to or caused by the AIO’s USB instability

• AMD Ryzen Master ghost services had been failing on every boot since the PC was built

• BTHUSB had been crashing every boot since December 2025, logged but not discovered until now

• Windows Reset was completing to 100% but never fixing anything, now believed to be related to the peripheral corruption rather than storage controller failure as originally suspected

• Original NZXT Kraken AIO completely died after we swapped the board

Total Damage

• Gigabyte Aorus X870 motherboard — ~$350 (genuinely a nice upgrade even if not strictly necessary)

• NZXT Kraken Elite 360 AIO — ~$180 (genuinely needed, old one died)

• Bought a new keyboard and mouse (Not Corsair)

• Total: Roughly around $800

• Root cause (TBD): a failing AIO that probably cost $150 when new

Lesson Learned

Test with completely foreign peripherals early in troubleshooting, probably would have saved alot of stress and money.

Mark and his razor gear was the MVP of my agony.

I've been running the Logitech G512x and G502 Hero for a few days now and no bug since. Happy to answer any questions if anyone has any.