High performance computer running slowly

[SumYungGai]

I recently built a great system. It has the following specs:

Core i5 2500k 3.3GHz
Radeon HD 6790 1GB
8 GB of Corsair C9 kit of memory
PH67S-C43 (B3) motherboard from MSI.
Caviar Black 750gb
Greenpower 1TB

The only problem is, it runs VERY slowly in some applications such as Firefox and Minecraft. I've installed all drivers listed on the MSI website as well as my GPU drivers. Still no luck. I've installed Steam, microTorrent, Microsoft Security Essentials, Java (x64), Adobe Flash, and Adobe Reader X. Any suggestions?

 

[sminlal]

The first thing you should to is use Resource Monitor to determine what resource (CPU, disks, memory) is maxed out when your system is running slowly.