Computer very sluggish after reinstalling Windows.

lavadarkshadow

Reputable
Jul 3, 2015
8
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4,510
Computer specs

  • CPU: i5-3570k @ 3.40GHz
    Motherboard: ASRock z77 Extreme4
    Ram: Patriot Viper 3 Series Sapphire Blue DDR3 16GB (2 x 8GB) 1600MHz Dual Kit
    Graphics Card: Gigabyte Windforce GTX 970

Background:
Blue screens of death started about two weeks ago. Whenever I looked them up they were either some sort of memory issue or driver. Ran memtest86, lots of errors. (Didn't think about testing one of my sticks only at this point). At this point I try reinstalling drivers, the only ones that I had updated around the time these problems started was my NVIDIA drivers. That doesn't work, so eventually I decide to reinstall windows. Right after the install, before launching into windows I run memtest86 on the ram sticks separately and figure out that one of them is defective. (I started a RMA) Now I'm running on 8GB (1x8GB).

Problems I'm facing now:
The problems I'm going through right now involve high CPU usage when idle, very low performance from GPU (IMO probably cpu holding it back). I've done everything I can find to try to make some of the processes I'm having trouble with stop hogging so much CPU. Nothing works. My computer feels very sluggish compared to before I had reinstalled Windows. I've tried to do as much as I could before posting anything, but I can't figure this out.

(If you need any more information I'll be happy to provide.)

Edit 1: I've noticed when the computer is completely idle, no programs open just task manager, it'll hover around 3% CPU usage, but as soon as I move my mouse it'll jump up to 20-30%.
 

lavadarkshadow

Reputable
Jul 3, 2015
8
0
4,510


Windows is up to date.
I'm pretty sure I had both sticks of ram installed at the time of re-installation