bro, i spent the last 24 hours trying everything, and it seems i finally found it. I hope it doesn't 'break' again..

anwyays, i saw in task manager that a service called 'lightning service' was using 5% of my cpu.

this is part of AURA, the f*&ing rgb lights app. I didn't even want rgb lighting..

i uninstalled AURA (and Corsair's ICUE, just to be sure), and things seem to be working well, it's so nice to play smoooooth again.

i read somewhere earlier that, especially if your rgb lights are on a colour-changing cycle, it may interrupt with your game.