Cool. Keep us updated.
Like yourself, I come from a Windows Gamer background with lots of experience deep tinkering and optimisation. I think I may enjoy it more than playing the actual games themselves.
I do not remember if I have already suggested this, but if you haven't already, be sure to install TimeShift which allows you to take snapshots of your system so you can restore to a known good configuration should you go too far down the rabbit hole and get lost.
I left Windows because of Microsoft's stance of pushing AI and tracking everything we do.
The only thing I feel I have sacrificed as a gamer going to Linux are games like Call of Duty and Battlefield which make use of kernel-level anti-cheat drivers.
I played the games too much anyway.
Let me know if you are able to test the stuttering with various sound devices disabled.
If you have completely wiped your desktop machine, it may be worth pulling the Soundblaster card out of the system until you get NVIDIA humming on Zorin.
BTW: On other distros, I did have to try several NVIDIA drivers from various sources until things began to magically work, but at the same time, I didn't really know what I was doing and was throwing things at the wall until something stuck.
My recommendation still stands: remove and simplify your setup to isolate variables and devices that may be interferring and conflicting with each other.
Ideally, physically detach/remove devices, or barring that masking the devices from being detected and thereby interacting with the operating system (think 'disable in the Windows device manager'
Since NVIDIA and Soundblaster play nice when booted to Windows, I think the problem is at the LInux driver layer causing the hardware to misbehave.
And I'd first start with getting things working using the tried and true X11 display stack, rather than dealing with wayland.
I'll try to log in everyday to see how things are going.
I've fascinated by this stuff.
Stay strong! 
Check out my post from 10 days ago in which I talk about using TimeShift to inch your way towards progress (for another Zorinista having troubles with MangoHud). Installing mangohud - #5 by HungryPooch