I'm trying to troubleshoot a persistent problem in competitive games where movement and aiming feel floaty, delayed, or inconsistent. I suspect the quality of the electricity supplying my PC, but I'd like to find a solution that doesn't involve moving house. I've already tried a CyberPower CP1600EPFCLCD-UK pure sine wave UPS, but it didn't make any noticeable difference. I use a wired Ethernet connection and have been dealing with this for roughly two years. What else could cause these symptoms, and how can I properly test whether power quality is involved?
3 Answers
Electrical ‘dirt’ is very unlikely to create these specific symptoms. A computer’s power supply regulates incoming power, and serious power problems usually cause crashes, resets, noise, or hardware faults rather than subtle input lag. I’d start by checking monitor refresh rate, V-Sync or VRR settings, frame pacing, GPU drivers, peripherals, and whether the issue happens in offline games too.
A pure sine wave UPS is one reasonable test, but if it made no difference, the mains supply is probably not the cause. Gaming input delay and a floaty feeling are more often related to display settings, frame-time spikes, variable refresh configuration, controller or mouse behavior, USB issues, or network latency and jitter.
Since you’re already using Ethernet, check the connection rather than the cable type alone. Look for packet loss, bufferbloat, latency spikes, and inconsistent upload traffic. Also compare different games and test locally or offline: if the delay only appears online, the network or server path is a much stronger suspect than household electricity.
I do use Ethernet. The problem has been present for a long time, but I’ll compare offline and online behavior and check for latency or packet-loss spikes.
I tried a CyberPower CP1600EPFCLCD-UK and it didn’t change anything. I’ve been investigating this for about two years, so I’m still looking for other likely causes to test.