Brand new laptop running extremely slow!

[westons2532]

I recieved my new laptop today (8/10/19) and its running so slow its almost unusable,
does anyone have any advice on what to do?

The specs are:

Chassis & Display	Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS 60Hz 45% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)	Intel® Core™ i5 Quad Core Processor 9300H (2.4GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)	4GB Corsair 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (1 x 4GB)
Graphics Card	NVIDIA® GeForce® MX250 - 2.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
1st Storage Drive	1TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
Memory Card Reader	Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor	1 x 90W AC Adaptor
Power Cable	1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery	Cosmos VIII Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste	COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card	2 Channel High Def. Audio + SoundBlaster™ Cinema
Bluetooth & Wireless	GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 M.2 GAMING + BLUETOOTH 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options	1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language	MULTI COLOUR BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System	Genuine Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language	United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media	Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software	FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus	BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser	Google Chrome™
Notebook Mouse	INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE

 

[SpyderTracks]

It’s very underpowered, you’ve got a 5400rpm hdd as the main drive which will be a bottleneck, plus only 4gb RAM which is just about enough to load windows.

There’s not much anyone can do, it’s down to the choice of components.

 

[ubuysa]

I completely agree with the above. With only 4GB of RAM it will be paging memory and to a very slow HDD, I'm not at all surprised it's slow.

Your best option is to increase your RAM to 8GB.

Sent using Tapatalk

 

[paul1224]

As per above replies the spec does have limitations although in my opinion and experience I wouldn't be expecting it to run so slow that it is almost unusable.

A quick suggestion would be that you turn off 'fast startup' as per here as I have known this to cause a range of problems even with new builds. Other than that it could be a multitude of reasons you are having the issues (make sure Windows Update is left to run all the updates required and restarted when prompted) so maybe speaking direct with PCS would be a good idea.

 

[Oussebon]

At a guess the poor hardware is brought into sharp relief because of all the things a brand new PC will do - windows updates, driver and software updates + installations, indexing any files you've put on there. Performance will suck at first.

But it's not like you can just wait out the updates etc and it will all be fine going forward. The spec is minimal, and will really suffer periodically with future updates.

You do see off-the-shelf laptops with 4gb RAM and much weaker CPUs that are totally fine for basic tasks. But they tend to have flash storage rather than very slow HDDs, and even they will get hammered periodically.

> upgrade to 8gb RAM
> ideally add a 256gb M.2 SSD and reinstall Windows to that.

 

[phitol]

With a clean install of windows, I know 4GB isn't a lot but 'unusable' doesn't fit with my own experiences although I would always upgrade to a minimum of 8GB as suggested.

What I'd just sanity check first

1. The performance profile is not set to 'quiet' or 'power saving' or similar, I don't know the underlying chassis your laptop is based on, but I assume it comes with some control centre? In addition left or right clicj the battery icon in the systray and ensure the slider is all the way to the right for max performance.
2. Ensure your fans are spinning up under load and that the laptop isn't thermally throttling too much, you will need to download HWINFO or a similar tool to monitor CPU clocks and CPU Temps, it might be that that heatsink has become loose, this could lead to almost immediate and permanent throttling.