I have had an x670e Crosshairs Hero that was faulty, combined with an TUF 4070 Ti and a Ryzen 7950X. This build had constant audio popping and crackling when playing certain (but not all) games. After the motherboard was replaced with an X870e Crosshairs Hero - I eagerly rebuilt it only to have the same audio issue still remain.
Over the last 18 months I have followed all the advice I could find online and played with process affinity, clean driver installs, shown that the issue was independent of the O/S, ensured the sound quality settings were correct, and the issue was independent of which sound card was used (gpu or on board DAC).
I also swapped the video card - no improvement, swapped the power supply - no improvement, swapped the speaker — no impact, added a secondary sound card — no impact. Removed the raid — no effect.
Today, I wanted to share that I solved it (finally!!!) so that in the off chance someone else has had this issue - maybe, just maybe, I can save them time.
The Infinity Fabric voltage on the boards is set too low. There was an article from about 6 years ago that identified this issue on Ryzen chips. So when I have now adjusted my VDDG voltage in the bios to 1.1V or higher, the issue has fully been corrected. Such a simple fix but has been so elusive to find.
I hope this helps someone else at some point so that these efforts were not in vain!
