i5 3570k 100% cpu usage doing simple tasks. Need help!

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Potential

Potential

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Dec 6, 2012
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Hey Tomshardware! You guys helped me immensely when building my comp about 2 1/2 years ago but I need your help again. I'm having weird problems with my cpu and maybe ram. My cpu usage is getting maxed out when I'm simply updating league of Legends. I can't browse the Internet or do anything when this happens and it'll eventually bluescreen me. I opened my case and took my cpu fan off and cleaned it. I got most of the dust/dirt off and I noticed that there wasn't that much thermal paste left. It still covered most of the cpu and cpu heatsink but if I had more thermal paste I'd definitely apply more. I also reinstalled windows 7. Nothing helped and running simple processes still near max or max my cpu out. I'm not sure if I need a new cpu or new thermal paste or what. I'll post my complete build below.

Next phantom case
i5 3570k with oem/default fan/thermal paste
Azrock z77 extreme4 motherboard
Gtx 760 evga superclocked
2x 4gb vengeance LP ram
Corsair 750hx power supply
128gb samsung pro 840 ssd
1tb Seagate hdd

Any help is GREATLY appreciated! Thank you!
 
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ST0RM91

ST0RM91

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Dec 15, 2015
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If you took the cooler off the cpu you should really have applied new paste.

Could you go into task manager, set memory usage descending and take a screenshot. You likely have something other than your game sucking up the memory in the background.
 
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GhislainG

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Jul 16, 2008
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If possible, download and install Intel XTU to monitor the CPU frequency and temperature, but your cooler most likely is the issue. Clean the old paste, apply new paste (a dot the size of a grain of rice is enough; too much isolates the CPU from the cooler) and then make sure all 4 pins are fully locked in place (best is to check from the back of the motherboard).
 
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Potential

Potential

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Dec 6, 2012
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Ill download it in a few hours. At work right now but after reading other people with similar problems I'm really starting to think it's a cooler/thermal paste problem. It was getting worse and worse until last night. I was playing Garys mod then alt tabbed and loaded up league of Legends and started playing that WHILE Garys mod was open. This caused my cpu usage to bug out and stay at 100% and my framerate dropped to 5. And ever since it's been really shitty. I'll report back in a few hours with that program. Thanks
 
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Potential

Potential

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Dec 6, 2012
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Alright I downloaded an ran Intel XTU. The package temp is 86C idle and cpu utilization is between 4%-7% idle. The core frequency is averaging 1.6 GHz. I ran this with nothing but Intel XTU and Firefox open. I'm going to run a stress test for 5 minutes and report those results.

Stress test for 5 minutes:
Cpu utilization 100$
Right into the test the core frequency rose to 3.5GHz then almost immediately dropped down to 0.80 GHz.
Thermal Throttling was 50% - 75% and now staying at 100%.
Package Temperature is staying at 105C
Active Core count is 1.
Memory Utilization is 2035 MB (Dropped to 1990 MB)
Processor Graphic Frequency is 300 MHz.
After the test was done it said "The CPU Stress Test Passed

I ran the stress test while typing this out on Firefox. My computer is almost completely unusable from being so laggy when it tops at 100%. Theres definitely some weird shit going on here because its not using all 4 cores on the stress test and my core frequency goes to 3.5GHz to 0.80.

What do you think?
 
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Potential

Potential

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Dec 6, 2012
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Weird. I took my cpu fan off again and then put it back on and made sure everything was in place. My cpu is now running perfectly it seems like. I can play games normally and I finally updated League of Legends without it maxing my cpu usage out and bluescreening. Intel XTU also seems to be normal this time. So I guess its fixed for now. I'm still going to order some thermal paste and possibly a hyper 212 cpu fan
 
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GhislainG

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Jul 16, 2008
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Then at least one pin wasn't locked.

 
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