For as long as I can remember running an aftermarket sound card has always slowed the boot process for me. I recently decided to install intel toolbox and verify my firmware was up to date and run the optimizer (trim). After this the boot time was reduced A LOT.. I thought I must have fixed something with the firmware update. The windows load logo got about a half a rotation before it went in instead of the 4 or 5 rotations it usually does.. this was awesome. This lasted for days until I started playing with my overclock again.. just voltage changes in the bios and all of a sudden the slower boot times are back. I did some reading an realized I never installed the NVME driver.. I had some trouble installing the Intel NVME driver but finally got it to show in device manager but boot times are not improved. Hell even the benchmarks dropped a little with NVME installed. What I have always noticed during my bootups was during the windows load screen the sound card would pop through the speakers. When the PC was booting fast it didn't do this. Any ideas?