Very slow new build

[wozza_c]

I built myself a new machine at the weekend from a mixture of new and second hand parts acquired on Ebay. The machine is running without errors but feels very sluggish for the spec that it has. The components are;

i5-2500K (not O/C'd)
ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3
8Gb DDR3 1600
500Gb 7200RPM HDD
OCZ 650W PSU

I purchased a GT440 Graphics card, but this appears to be faulty so is not currently part of the system.

I ran a PassMark test yesterday and got a system score of 1463 which has confirmed my thoughts.

Can you please give me any advice as to how to troubleshoot where the root of this low speed is?

Thanks

 

[AdrianPerry]

Based on this: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-2500K+%40+3.30GHz your CPU score should be around the 7,500 mark!

A couple of things I can think worth checking...

1) The CPU may have been operating in power save mode which only uses 1.6GHz
2) Only 1 core was active rather than all 4

Just an idea, but worth checking out some of the settings in the BIOS.

 

[wozza_c]

Cheers for that.

I have downloaded CPU-Z and can see that at idle the CPU drops down to around 1.6GHz, but it automatically raises to 3.3 when under load. I assume that this is an auto-throttling feature.

Im pretty sure that all 4 cores are active as i get a reading on them when i bring up the task manager.

Both the CPU and Motherboard were second-hand components but i cant think of a situation where you would just get reduced performance if either parts were faulty. The memory & PSU are both new.

I will have a look at the BIOS settings tonight, as perhaps there are some residual settings from the previous owner which is causing the glut. Perhaps a CMOS reset will do the trick?

Has anyone else seen anything odd like this?

 

[AdrianPerry]

I have downloaded CPU-Z and can see that at idle the CPU drops down to around 1.6GHz, but it automatically raises to 3.3 when under load. I assume that this is an auto-throttling feature.

Im pretty sure that all 4 cores are active as i get a reading on them when i bring up the task manager.

Correct. And yes, if you are seeing activity in task manager then all cores will be active.

I will have a look at the BIOS settings tonight, as perhaps there are some residual settings from the previous owner which is causing the glut. Perhaps a CMOS reset will do the trick?

CMOS reset is certainly worth a try. It's likely some motherboard settings will be hindering your performance.

 

[wozza_c]

Just an update. A CMOS reset and BIOS update seems to have done the trick.

Thanks for your help.