My old computer is acting slow and I don't know what's wrong with it.
My old computer is acting slow and I don't know what's wrong with it.
I have an M2 SSD and a laptop with a Ryzen 7 processor. It wasn't slow until just a couple of months ago, but it is still running slow even after I cleaned it up, applied fresh thermal paste, and removed software and files that might be slowing things down. I know I could reset the Windows settings, but I don't really want to do that because it would take too much time and stress. Any help on what's causing this problem and how I can fix it?
What could be different since a couple of months ago when everything was good? Maybe something isn't working right now? You can try using system restore to go back to how things used to work. Another chance is that the laptop is overheating or throttled down because it's too hot. I hear lots of people complaining about gaming laptops not doing their best, usually while plugged in. A big reason for this is thermal throttling. Laptop coolers have to be tiny and light so they don't get too heavy. But these small fans aren't very powerful either. If you run a program like HWMonitor or HWinfo, you'll see the current, lowest, and highest CPU temperatures right now. For Intel chips, if your max temperature hits 100 degrees Celsius, that means throttling has happened. The processor will lower its speed and how much power it uses to keep safe until things get better again. At this point...
What could have happened since it was all good two months ago? Maybe an update didn't go right? Try using system restore to bring everything back to normal. Another chance is that heat got too hot for the laptop. I hear a lot of people complaining about games not running well on these laptops. They usually only work when plugged in. One big reason is heat throttling. Many laptops have coolers that are too small and weak. If you look at software like HWMonitor or HWinfo, you can see how hot your CPU gets. For Intel chips, if the temperature hits 100 degrees Celsius ©, it means the processor is slowing down to save itself until things get better. When it slows down, its speed drops and it uses less power. At a slower speed, your tasks might still seem like they are running at full strength even though you aren't using as much battery or power. What can you do? First, check that the air around your cooler fan is clean and moving freely. Make sure your Windows power settings use balanced mode instead of just performance mode. Turn down the minimum CPU speed to about 20%. This trick might sound weird at first, but try setting the maximum power to 90% instead of the usual 100%. Sometimes you won't even see the difference in how much performance drops.
I think it is too hot for me. It stops working after that heat builds up and goes stable around 60 to 70 degrees celsius like in these other prints. When I left it alone on idle, it stayed mostly at that temperature range. But one time, there was a spike to about 83 degrees celsius during stress testing. Even with the fan running before that, it only dropped back down very quickly in less than three minutes because of something like thermal throttling or just the heat itself. I don't know if it's the fan not working well or if the computer is slowing down too much from all this heat getting hot enough to slow things down. The PC has been acting very slow lately.
My computer has a tiny in and out for air flow but I never had much trouble with the temps even when using it for some 3d projects at university with blender and 3ds max. But lately, even the browser sometimes gets slow. I'm going to try your tip of setting a minimum usage and power usage to 90%, but as you said about the 100c (even though mine is an amd it must be around those temps too) maybe its not throttling. Its weird then i will try rolling back updates after setting a min usage and power usage to 90%.