Hi BestLux ... and welcome to the forums ...
Nice specs on your system. I'm guessing that your previous board wasn't a Z170. Unfortunately, the Z170 boards seem to be showing up a lot in threads concerning audio issues, especially when paired with Nvidia video cards and Realtek onboard sound. I have a list that I'll paste into this post that is a compilation of several tweaks that have helped some users get their audio better. Unfortunately, the tweaks don't help every system.
Another wild card, now that we are in August 2016 -- is that the Windows 10 Anniversary update has been rolling out. It contains quite a few changes, and it can undo quite a lot of prior system optimization. Whether for better or worse, it's something to be aware of - tweaks carried out before the update might well have to be re-done again afterwards. It would be very nice (crazy magic, in fact) if the update would solve all of the video/audio artifact issues in Windows 10. But not many updates have that "fairy godmother" effect....
On your graphs, the latencies and interrupts didn't look that bad, while the high hard pagefaults were off the chart (literally) on the one Latency monitor bar graph. Since yours is a new installation of Windows 10, some of that overly large background activity has been known to calm down after a few days. We can always hope.
EventViewer Errors: can you have a look in Event Viewer - select the "Event Viewer (Local)" item in the upper right hand corner, and then view the items in the "Summary of Administrative Events" window. Check for any patterns for errors, especially Critical errors. I'm interested to hear if you see any evidence of "blue screen" errors.
[If you'd like, you can zip the "Administrative Events" log - available from Custom Views - and post that here].
In one of your charts, you have a few processes running that I don't usually see:
crashdmp.sys .... Crash Dump Driver
werkernel.sys .... Windows Error Reporting Kernel Driver
iorate.sys .... I/O Rate Control Filter
disk.sys .... PnP Disk Driver
esrv_svc.exe .... Intel System Usage Report
I looked on three Windows 10 tester machines here, and none of them showed any of those five processes running. They look to be the sort of thing that would run after system issues appear.
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Here's the list I promised:
Some things to try for limiting audio/video glitches due to high latency issues and high hard pagefault issues
SSDs
Since SSDs are dropping in price and growing in size, I've lately been recommending that the worst-offending audio-pop suffering programs/games be installed onto the SSD. Windows doesn't take up all that much room, and neither do a few games (you can still keep "saved games" and other non-demanding software installed to a larger "spinning" hard drive, along with your photo, music, and video collections).
SATA ports
Some users who haven't seen any improvement by means of updating drivers have had success by altering their SATA port usage. A recent thread here concerns a system where the audio stuttering was helped by unplugging a DVD SATA drive (...and our tech Cluberti was nice enough to help explain why) ... The last few posts are where you will see mention of the SATA ports (and the nature of USB polling & the effect on latencies) .... Here's a link to that thread:
https://www.sysnative.com/forums/wi...efaults-fresh-install-usbport-sys-others.html
Hard Pagefaults
For the high hard pagefaults, it can help to:
1) Limit startup processes that you don't need
2) Limit Windows-Updates file-sharing (in Settings > Updates and security > Windows Update > Advanced Options > Choose how updates are delivered > turn off "updates from more than one place" - that will limit unnecessary background network activity)
3) Limit the amount of "telemetry" (data sent to Microsoft ... choose the "Basic" option in Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics ... and you can try "Never" as your "Feedback Frequency" while testing your latency issues)
4) Limit any Notifications that you don't need or want (Settings > System > Notifications & actions ...[especially turn off Windows "tips"]
5) Turn off "Live" tiles on your Start Menu (to limit unnecessary background updating of any information you don't want or need)
6) Uninstall any Windows "Universal" apps that you don't want or need (Settings > System > Apps & features -- click the app you wish to uninstall) ... and for those that you don't want, but can't uninstall (some of the built-in apps) - you can still keep them from starting unwanted services (in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services) or startup modules (in Task Manager > Startup tab)
Drivers
Hunt Windows 10 compatible drivers (this can be an ongoing process). Try generics if the manufacturer supplied drivers cause issues. Try older drivers when the new cause issues. Try and try again. Drivers are sometimes the culprits for high latencies and interrupts.
Nvidia drivers - seem to be having issues on Z170 boards, especially when paired with Realtek onboard audio. When updating to the latest Nvidia driver, try installing it using the "custom" option, and the "clean install" option. You might also see if your want or need all of the background Nvidia services that come with the latest drivers, many as part of the "Nvdia GeForce Experience" - which you can choose to install or not when you choose the "custom" install method. Here's a guide that has some details on the background services installed along with the Nvidia drivers, it might help you decide if you can do without some of them:
Disable NVIDIA Streamer Service and other NVIDIA processes - gHacks Tech News
ASMedia USB 3.1 drivers .... have proved to be an issue for some users, especially for ASRock/ASUS Z170 motherboard owners. Hunt newer versions, try old versions, try generics. Still dicey as of July 2016....
USB device drivers ... USB host controllers, USB gaming periferals (mice, keyboards, headsets...), musical instrument interfaces, wireless dongles - all these can prove to be sources of audio issues.
Antivirus
Some users find that certain modules of their antivirus program can have a rough affect on their audio quality. For some, it is especially noticeable when using the third-party firewall. You can try reverting to using just the Windows firewall, or to turn off a feature in the third-party firewall that blocks port scans (since most routers/modems/gateways have built-in port scanning blocking, it doesn't necessarily lower your defenses, since your hardware provides the service). This issue has shown up for users of BitDefender, Norton, and Avast ... it likely can occur for others as well. The issue also doesn't seem to be "universal" - it only seems to affect a certain blend of hardware/software. (I know users of Avast, BitDefender, & Norton who don't experience any issues at all).
Virtual Memory & a large set range
Since some computers experience the audio/video glitching during gaming, and Latency Monitor graphs often point to high hard pagefaults as a contributing factor (as in the pagefault tips above), I like to recommend testing things with the Virtual Memory settings for your computer manually set to a generous range (generally, with the lowest value the amount of your total installed physical system memory, and the highest value twice that number). This is an overly large range = but it can prove useful for testing. [after testing, the upper range could be lowered to one and a half times the physical memory total]... The reason for the large set range is that some games are infamous for memory leaks, and the large range might give you a better chance of surviving the memory trouble caused by the game with the memory leak.
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If your system hasn't received the Anniversary Update yet, might as well install it -- since it certainly might help/hurt the current situation. It makes a lot of changes.
We'll see how things go
