Big PC slowdown when starting most processes and throughout use

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chris89

Member
PC specs are in the bottom, this is a PCSpecialist PC which is 6/7 years old now apart from the SSD boot drive which I added in a year ago.

Issues:
1) Over the past week upon starting a new process such a opening a new tab/window in Firefox or opening a new program or using the windows search bar for example, the computation takes way longer than usual and everything seems to be struggling despite the task manager performances looking relatively standard. When launching a relatively low demanding game such as Counter Strike my in-game fps would fluctuate between 120+ and 3 each frame rendering the game more than unplayable, other games such as Minecraft on the lowest settings ran at 1-30 fps, whereas normally both games would perform at 90+ on good settings. Even dragging around a window on my desktop often causes the window to lag behind. The attatched files are screenshots taken from task manager while just using my browser to multitask as well as screenshots of the temperatures of the processors.

2) On a sidenote, before these problems my GPU fans would run very loudly when playing a somewhat demanding game such as PUBG and my PC would perform very poorly (40 fps average) in these types of games and even some more detailed Counter Strike maps when playing on low settings. This has been a problem for about 3 years now, so i assumed it was just the parts getting old but as time has gone on I’ve realised that this is very subpar for my spec even 4 years down the line.

Any advice on either 2 points would be greatly appreciated and many thanks in advance for your help :)

RAW PC SPECS:
• CPU: Intel Core i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4690 (3.5GHz) 6MB Cache
• Motherboard: ASUS Z97-P: ATX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
• RAM: 8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
• Graphics Card: 4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 970 - 1 DVI, 1 mHDMI, 3 mDP - 3D Vision Ready
• (My Custom Addon) 1st Hard Disk: 120 GB Kingston Technology SV300S37A/120G Solid State Drive V300 SATA 3
• 2nd Hard Disk: 1TB 3.5" SEAGATE SSHD, SATA 6Gb/s 7200 RPM (64MB + 8GB SSD CACHE)
• PSU: CORSAIR 550W VS SERIES™ VS-550 POWER SUPPLY
• Processor Cooling: INTEL STANDARD CPU COOLER
• Operating System: Windows 10 Pro (x64)
 

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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
If those CPU core temps are the norm when the machine isn't under heavy load, then I'd guess the system is heavily throttling even before anything launches (idle should be below 35c).

What temps are you seeing when launching something 'demanding'?

High temps would indicate a lack of cooling, or possibly another issue.

Can you post your full specs from the PCS order page (as detailed below) to help others diagnose if it's simply a stock cooler issue, case issue, or otherwise...

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chris89

Member
Yeah these hot CPU temps are under low load, even after applying thermal paste and making sure the fan and heatsink were properly attatched. Here is the performance from a cutscene a somewhat demanding game (Just Cause 3). Really bad and it took me about 15 minutes to take these screenshots just waiting for my PC to launch and respond.
 

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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Something definitely wrong then....you can see the cores throttling right down to 0.9Ghz instead of boosting to 3.9Ghz.

Random thoughts/suggestions from a custom-PC newbie (hopefully one of the resident experts/MVPs will come along to assist further):
  • Does the case have fans too, are they working?
  • Are the intake/exhaust/motherboard clear of dust?
  • Too much thermal paste?
Maybe you'll need a new CPU cooler or AIO water-cooler, with pre-applied paste?
 
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NoddyPirate

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
Was going to say dust also. Seeing 100 degrees at any time is a major issue. Are you sure the CPU cooler fan is spinning normally too?
 
NoddyPirate

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
chris89 said:
Yeah these hot CPU temps are under low load, even after applying thermal paste and making sure the fan and heatsink were properly attatched. Here is the performance from a cutscene a somewhat demanding game (Just Cause 3). Really bad and it took me about 15 minutes to take these screenshots just waiting for my PC to launch and respond.
Click to expand...
I don't see a CPU fan speed there actually. Could you check and see if it is displayed under your motherboard within HWMonitor?

Your CPU's max safe temperature is listed as 72 degrees. Although being above this isn't automatically a problem at all. But it is supposed to throttle itself at 90 degrees to avoid further temperature increases. The fact that is getting to 100 degrees says to me that something fundamental is worng with your cooler.....
 
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chris89

Member
Hi guys, so after making sure the fan is very much secured and spinning, there is a big improvement however it still idles at 70 degrees and is being throttled at 90 in-game. Do you suggest I switch out my CPU cooler?
 
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TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Without knowing if it's just the stock cooler causing the issue, I'd be wary of recommending a new one as the solution.

Without knowing the rest of your spec (case, fans, etc.) it's not going to be easy to suggest a simple air cooler or an single/double/triple slot AIO liquid cooler (like the Corsair H60 / H100 / H150 ranges).

Saying that, it's probably a cheap-ish way to see if it is the problem. You can get fairly decent Noctua or Coolermaster ones for £40.
 
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NoddyPirate

NoddyPirate

Grand Master
To my eye, the cooler is acting up. I don't know anything about that specific cooler but if it is just the usual block of aluminium with a fan attached to the top of it then the only thing that can really go wrong with it is that the fan stops doing it's thing.

At the temperatures you are seeing the fan should be going full tilt - like a little airplane trying to take-off - it should be obvious that it is working very hard. Just spining is not enough - it should be going bananas - on HWMonitor I would expect to see 2,000+ RPM from a small downdraft cooler.

If it doesn't look like it's spinning at a high RPM then a cooler change would be a great place to start......
 
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