Windows 10: Experiencing Audio popping/crackling and sometimes game crashes

I have a mega PC and there is no good reason this should be an issue. Any time I play a game it either has audio cracking and popping or crashes...sometimes both. Specs are below. As for the file attached, I ran Windows Performance Analyzer after starting a game called "Livelock" The test was started as soon as I launched the game and the game takes a few screens to get to the menu. I skipped through the first few and then pressed space to enter the menu and that is when the audio starts malfunctioning. You can see this moment because the "Computation" graph starts to show loads of activity. Now remember, this is just the game menu so idk why there's that much activity but please please please take a look and tell me what seems off. I waited over 8 years to afford my PC and even bought over 500 games in that time and waited patiently to play them and now I'm being tortured by bad audio. All of my drivers are up to date and temps never get out of control btw. Let me know what the graphs reveal. Thanks in advance!!!


(LINK)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_kkz9DoPZYrrc0rk9HoENG7HJXNykY_n


Specs:

Mobo- Asus ROG z270E

GPU- Zotac AMP Extreme 1080Ti (connected with a riser cable but I've never heard of that being an issue)

CPU- Intel i7 7700k

RAM- 16GB Trident RGB Gold

PSU- Seasonic 850Watt PRIME Gold

M.2- MP500 120GB

Intel Optane 32GB + Western Digital Enterprise Gold 6TB HDD

:)

 

Crackle/Popping Sound When Playing Audio + Stuttering Video Games

I just built a PC:

• ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-H GAMING
  
• Intel i7 8700k
  
• EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 FTW 8 GB
  
• Corsair RMx Series, RM750x 750w
  
• Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD
  
• Seagate 2 TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD
  
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2x8GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200 MHz
  
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
  

Not currently OC'd, default specs.

Whenever I play audio (YouTube, foobar, VLC player, video games) I can hear a popping/crackling sound whenever I start or stop it. It's like the small crackle sound you hear when you plug in headphones/speakers. This also happens during playback, although not randomly – it's usually a specific part of the audio/video file that causes the popping. I can even find the particular "pop" spot and replay it.

Additionally, whenever I'm playing a video game I get random frame skips at random intervals. This happens in all my video games – WoW, Subnautica, Fallout 4, Dark Souls 3.

Originally I had the ASUS Prime z370-A which I thought to be the issue. But I replaced it with the ROG Strix and I can still hear the popping/crackling and the frame skips still happen.

Does anyone have experience with this issue? This is my first build over $1k and I'm very distressed that I cannot find the problem. Could it be the hard drives? RAM, maybe?

 

Crackling audio. Skyrim + other games

USB headphones have never been kind to me. They always hiss, pop and crackle. The fact that you can hear it when no audio is being played suggests it's a power /connection issue.

Do you have any 3.5mm or RCA based headphones you can try?

 

Crackling audio. Skyrim + other games

No idea what either of those are.