I’ll have to do some research I’m not that smart at pci lanes and bus lanes but i have never had problems with it until the 4th this month never had problems with pausing but I’ll move some wires around and swap some things
If this makes a difference please let us know what you do, what mother board, what connectors you’re plugin what to. It might just be a shot in the dark, but if this proves solving the stuttering issue, it will be worth documenting for others.
Maybe you can check the whole thing relatively easily with the task manager: You open the tab with the respective hard disk and check the “average response time” This should then go up if the data does not arrive fast enough. Or am I mistaken with it?
This might show something, but maybe not all. Please see my post above in the discussion:
Solution for Stutters & Pauses (updated for SU5) - #373 by CptLucky8
The mobo I have is a b550 f and I’m running an m.2 and ssd when I get home I’ll prob try installing flight sim on my m.2 where my windows is and see if that helps then try moving SATA ports
I can simple disable the cache… same smooth application.
I use the cache only, to safe a little bit bandwith and my internet provider will happy about,… possible 
But as same reason as @CptLucky8 mentioned it, I configured the cache to another disc : there is a lot of Bus-traffic and I bring the load from nvme to sata.
In special users where windows MUST use the pagefile, there is addtional a lot of read/write actions and this can possible ( can and possible ! ) cause issues.
With my 64GB RAM I not run into these kind if problems.
I run F2020 from SSD on SATA without any issue nor stutters, but I’ve chosen the last SATA connector which is most likely the one dealt with the chipset, not the CPU.
Otherwise I keep the system on an NVME with barely just Win10 and some apps which I prefer having regrouped with Win10 (Visual Studio and other dev progs).
My FS2020 cache is on the same SDD as FS2020, but I’ve been wondering moving it elsewhere, but I’m really not sure I’ll gain anything because the only remaining space to fit the 64GB is the HDD, which is on the first SATA connector number and I suspect therefore handled by the CPU instead, thus maybe the “freeze then halt” I’ve documented when the HDD wakes up.
I have the same issue. I also have a 3070, since late November so I’m not sure if the issue existed before then. I get roughly 100 fps in a GA prop plane. But roughly every 5 minutes, I have a 2 second lock up, moves for a second, and then another 2 second lock up.
You can see the freeze on the graph where both CPU and GPU go to almost 0. I have tried many different fixes without success. OS and rolling cache are on C drive, rest of game files are on G drive. I have not tried moving or disabling the rolling cache as of yet.
To me this ressemble your HDD waking up and freezing the system, like I’m describing.
Solution for Stutters & Pauses - #373 by CptLucky8
Can you try changing your HDD settings to not sleep and compare?
I get a 3 second lock up every 20 seconds or so, and I used to have no stutters even on max settings. It is infuriating and makes flying ■■■■ near impossible. I wasn’t able to play for a couple weeks, so don’t know if this started after a MSFS update, or a windows update.
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Ohkay so if this 2 sec pause is not that rare apparently it’s prob a flight sim issue sometimes it doesn’t do it most of the time it will. Just sitting at the menu for 4 hrs after I got home chart has every 15min it drops to the 2 sec pause. So more testing I guess it is hopefully we get fix soon
I thought I’d share my specific stutter fix just in case it helps someone else! Apologies if this has been mentioned elsewhere.
I have a Valve Index and an Nvidia 2070 Super.
I too was having the “2 second pause every 20 seconds” thing going on when flying in non-VR mode. I fired up Task Manager and watched the Microsoft Flight Simulator app (I clicked on the pull down arrow to drill down to the individual processes that were running). Turns out, the simulator was starting and stopping the “vrserver.exe” executable from Steam and this coincided exactly with the stutters. I
right clicked on this when it appeared and did an “open file location” to see where this file resides on my system. I couldn’t find any settings in Steam or the sim that might prevent this from being fired up constantly (even when not in VR mode) so in desperation, I simply renamed vrserver.exe to vrserver_old.exe and the stutters immediately went away!
Obviously, if I want to run in VR mode (or play something else in VR) I have to rename the file back again!
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I’ll give your suggestion a try next time I have a chance, but the HDD sleep setting is currently set for 20 minutes and I see the freeze more often than that
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It might not be the HDD then, but worth making sure there is no left over to cross check just in case!
Ik there was a forum on Bluetooth devices causing the freeze but I disconnected all my sound devices and still had it happen but disabling or enable if will cause the same 2 sec pause so if you have any connected maybe try disabling them and disconnecting them see if that helps
just after enabling audio getting a stutter and with all audio disabled no stutter so my guess it’s some sort of audio issue
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I generally notice many of the smaller stutters occur during (right before or right after) communication with ATC.
The larger 1-2 second stutters generally seem more terrain loading related. Especially around larger detailed airports.
I did something today that I’ve never done before by pushing up Render Scaling past 100% to make my system more GPU bound. My monitors default resolution is 3840x1600 and I run at nearly Ultra settings (blur is turned off and I have all shadows maxed out). I thought setting the scaling past 100% would cripple my RTX 3090 in no time but was shocked to see at 140% I was still running at an average of 35-40 FPS with slight dips down to 27 FPS in moderately heavy clouds over CYVR using real weather and traffic.
The exercise did achieve in making MSFS more GPU bound as planned, and I would say that many of the micro-stutters seemed to disappear, but the larger 1 second stutters still popped up occasionally.
I get this same symptom but only over certain cities; eg the lock up over Melbourne city centre is 100% reproducible
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I started experiencing random pauses of 10-20 seconds about a week ago. Nothing was changed on my end to cause this. Same settings I’ve had for literally weeks both in game and in Windows. No Windows Updates, no driver updates, etc. It went from a mostly smooth experience to these pauses suddenly happening.
I have also observed they seem to happen with radio comms to ATC. That’s where most occur. But I’ve had them when I was sitting on the apron before even powering up my master battery. I’ve also experienced it on the world map.
I’m honestly terrified of trying to change settings since everything else seems to be working just fine outside of the pauses.
Exact same freezes here.
I had 2 sticks of Gskill F4-3400 Mhz 16GB running at 3200 Mhz with no freezes.
Added 2 sticks of Gskill F4-3600 Mhz 16GB.
All 4 sticks running at 3300 Mhz - No freezes.
All 4 sticks running at 3400 Mhz - random freezes. (in flight and out)
Turned out there was one 16GB stick of memory that was bad.
Edit 2:
I should have noted also that the freezes were only on FS2020.
No freezes on Win 10, Office 365, Chrome (This site and Email).
Strange that this PC will run just fine on memory at 3400 Mhz.
FS2020 will run but has freezes at 3400 Mhz.
FS2020 has no freezes at 3300 Mhz.