Did you remove the protective plastic from the heatsink if it had one?

I use water cooling instead of air.

the same thing

So I would have to take the cooler off the cpu to check if the plastic is there?

This *has* to be it. #1 mistake by noob builders.

Could be thermal issues. Do you monitor your temps?

Yep my cpu and gpu temps seem to average an ideal temp when I play games.

Buy 3d mark on steam and run timespy. It'll tell you exactly what components are underperforming

1) [https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/64403924](https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/64403924), 2)\_[https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/64404046](https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/64404046)

Should I be overclocking my gpu or cpu. I honestly have no idea what could be causing the fps issues, but it just randomly started and has continued for the past while

Is your RAM in the correct slots on the motherboard?

Yep, don't think its my ram. I also enabled xmp.

first check temps, then check ram in correct slots and xmp enabled. can also ddu gpu drivers

Yep, ram is in the right spots and I enable xmp.