My other computer (pun here) is an i7 860 with 16GB Ram as well but has a GTX 670 in it so its not good for anything newer than about 2010 or so.
My retro games drive (the one in the USB case has MAME on it as well, so with 500GB CHDs both wont fit but I can use it for pinball, I just like to keep everything in a organized place, probably OCD. Other than that everything including Amiga, MS-DOS and C64 all have portable paths to the letter X:\, so I will have to either reinstall PinballX or changes all the paths manually. Even GameEX and Launchbox uses that path.
Oddly enough the M.2 did not help, but I know what the problem mus be, I am not letting the videos play long enough or something to do with cache in each video, I just flip too fast I think. either way its no big deal I just have to let a vidoo play for a bit and it cleans up. I just thought it had something to do with the FPS or codec or whatever.