Your MSI motherboard appears to be malfunctioning, with the CPU operating under reduced performance settings.
Your MSI motherboard appears to be malfunctioning, with the CPU operating under reduced performance settings.
Hi everyone, I own an MSI a88xm Gaming board from 2015 that I've had since the beginning. It's built for AMD FM2+ and holds an Athlon x4 860k processor. The power supply is an Evga 500W unit. This rig has seen a lot of use—enduring drops, moves, and overclocking attempts. After a year of being idle for a basic Minecraft server, the Athlon x4 860k starts at 3.9-4.2ghz on boot, then drops to 1.7ghz instantly, even under heavy Prime95 stress. Temperatures stay normal, no signs of throttling. I've tested everything: swapped CPU with a known good one, changed RAM, updated BIOS, reset settings—nothing changed. The motherboard's switch is faulty; Windows 10 Power Mode stays at high performance. I tried Ubuntu to rule out Windows issues, but it didn't affect anything. Now I've replaced the board with a new one, and it's running at full speed! This suggests the original motherboard might be the problem. Someone mentioned bad VRMs—maybe that's it. Pic1 shows me after 8 hours of troubleshooting at 4 AM with no luck and a spinning head. Pic2 confirms the CPU is stuck at low speeds during the benchmark.
It's notable that Windows is utilizing a single-core CPU with SMT support—just one core running two threads. Check your BIOS settings to confirm no core was disabled, and consider a BIOS reset by clearing the CMOS if needed.
This occurs on the mobile side when Windows can't change power plans, causing it to abruptly reduce clock speeds—often to as low as 300-400 MHz. You might want to adjust the power plans in Windows to resolve this problem.