I think my pc is running slower than it should, would I be able to get some help?

[CraigW4017]

Hi all, first time posting on this site and I'm not quite sure I put this in the right topic...

But anyways, on to the main question.

When I first got my pc, it was a referb. dell (i think) and since then I have added in upgrades 3 different times and switched cases.

Currently, my specs are:
CPU - Fx-8350 black edition, not overclocked
MOBO - Asus Sabertooth 990fx R2.0
GPU - Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Vapor-X
RAM - (this might be the issue here, idk) I have 4 sticks of ram at 14 gb total(4,4,4,2) The 2 and the 4 are both stock samsung brand at 1333 mhz and the other 2 4s are Micron Technology 16jtf51264hz-1g4m1
PSU - I can't tell you the exact part here, although I can tell you that it is very likely either a Corsair CX500 or CX600
OS - Windows 7 Prof. 64bit

The reason I think that my pc is running slow is because when I look at my hardware and its specs it seems like I should get better performance than I do. I can't really put many games into consideration, but games such as Arma 3, crysis 3, battlefield 4, and others I can't name right now which I should be able to get 50+ (should be about 60) fps on AT LEAST very high quality I can't seem to get much more than 20-40 fps. This and in AMD Gaming Evolved's new program, I have said games "optimized" according to them and they still run very slow. I have also run Unigine's Heaven benchmark (1920x1080 highest settings, 8xAA and 16xAF along with extreme tessellation) and got an average of about 22 fps, when I read that with my config I should be able to get about 30-35.

I want to be able to play my pc at its optimal (or at least close) performance but I can't seem to even do that. Now, a lot of the stuff I have said has been my own opinion based off of my very minimal(compared to some of you guys) knowledge of hardware and research that I have done. This might be completely normal for my setup, but that I don't know and is thus why I am coming to you guys. Can I get an opinion on this?

TL;DR - Have absolutely no clue how my pc should be running, automatically assume it's slow.

 

[CraigW4017]

Edit* The Micron ram is 1333 mhz as well

 

[MeteorsRaining]

No it's not normal, the setup should provide better results. Some quick questions:

Do you have the latest GPU drivers installed?

What's your CPU and Memory load on idle (via Task Manager)?

Is the memory in correct slots config, ie, Samsung in same color slots and Micron in the other same-colored slot (MoBo has 4 in total)?

What is your CPU and GPU temps while gaming and on heavy usage?

Check CPU usage via Task Manager and temps via Core Temp and GPU usage and usage via GPU Z.

Also, Confirm if the PSU is 600W, 500W isn't enough for the build. And Corsair CX/ VS/ CS/ builder are all low quality PSUs, but ideally if its the PSU's fault, the system should just shut down on heavy load, does that happen? Any BSoD while gaming?

Also, what is your Unigine-H score?

What software do you use to monitor FPS?

Around 40ish FPS on Crysis 3 is fine, its absolutely graphic intensive and on everything on Ultra/ Very High, even 290 manages 50ish FPS. BF4 and Arma 3 should get better frame rates tough.

What resolution do you game at? 1080p or 2k or higher or multi monitor?

Are all softwares and the BIOS up-to date?

 

[CraigW4017]

No it's not normal, the setup should provide better results. Some quick questions:

Do you have the latest GPU drivers installed?

What's your CPU and Memory load on idle (via Task Manager)?

Is the memory in correct slots config, ie, Samsung in same color slots and Micron in the other same-colored slot (MoBo has 4 in total)?

What is your CPU and GPU temps while gaming and on heavy usage?

Check CPU usage via Task Manager and temps via Core Temp and GPU usage and usage via GPU Z.

Also, Confirm if the PSU is 600W, 500W isn't enough for the build. And Corsair CX/ VS/ CS/ builder are all low quality PSUs, but ideally if its the PSU's fault, the system should just shut down on heavy load, does that happen? Any BSoD while gaming?

Also, what is your Unigine-H score?

What software do you use to monitor FPS?

Around 40ish FPS on Crysis 3 is fine, its absolutely graphic intensive and on everything on Ultra/ Very High, even 290 manages 50ish FPS. BF4 and Arma 3 should get better frame rates tough.

What resolution do you game at? 1080p or 2k or higher or multi monitor?

Are all softwares and the BIOS up-to date?

Thanks for the quick response !

Yes

I think I have what your asking here(this is without doing anything but talking on skype and downloading a game on steam -
CPU Load: around 3 to 6% can jump up to 10 at max
Physical memory maybe?: 31% (if this is whats available to use in total, it seems a bit low...)
Total - ~14200 MB Cached - ~9800 Available - ~ 9800 Free - 0

I couldn't see very well in my case so I couldn't tell you if it was 4, 4, 4, 2 in order, but yes the micron and the samsung were together

My temps while taking the Unigine Bench were a max of 69 C for the GPU and 63 C for the CPU

The way may case is, I can't see what my power supply actually is. I went and looked for the box and it turns out I have a VisionTek 700W modular 900489
I have gotten BSoD before, and lately too, but they have all been while doing other stuff/at random times and have never happened before while gaming.

Here is all the details I got from Unigine Heaven -
Direct3D11, 1920x1080 8xAA, Quality Ultra, Tessellation Extreme
Radeon HD 7900 series: 850mhz 1250 mhz 69 degrees C
FPS 28.6 Min14.7-Max61.2 Score 721
Windows 7 7601 SP1
Radeon HD 7900 series 14.100.0.0 / Log Me In Mirror Driver 7.1.542.0 / VNC Mirror Driver 1.8.0.0

I usually don't. I can somewhat tell when something is running 55-60 frames and when something should be better. My arma 3 scores are from the in game options, but I feel like I might have used FRAPS in the past.

1920x1080 on 23 inch monitor

yes/no. I haven't messed with the BIOS for about 1/2 a year now so I haven't really done much with that. I was thinking about trying to update it the other day but I read that its better to just leave it be, unless you know what you are doing.

I would also like to add that when I opened up my computer case to get a better look at the PSU and the ram, I noticed that one of the fans(the one farthest from the hdmi/vga/dvi outputs) was not working. The insides of my case were sort of dusty and It probably needs to be cleaned but I don't know the best way to go at doing this. I don't know when or why the fan decided to stop working and I don't know, it could be apart of Sapphire's Vapor X thing but I highly doubt that since when I looked at it while running the benchmark it was still off. I also believe that I still have the option of "overclocking" the GPU with Sapphire's turbo button if I haven't already pushed it in. And finally, my pc case which is the HAF 920, my GPU is upside down, with the fans on the bottom. This could be one of the reasons the fan stopped working and I wouldn't know of a way to fix this.

 

[MeteorsRaining]

Analysis:

Thanks for the quick response !
I think I have what your asking here(this is without doing anything but talking on skype and downloading a game on steam -
CPU Load: around 3 to 6% can jump up to 10 at max
Physical memory maybe?: 31% (if this is whats available to use in total, it seems a bit low...)
Total - ~14200 MB Cached - ~9800 Available - ~ 9800 Free - 0

CPU Load and memory are good. 31% means the memory being used currently.
14.2GB total X 31%=4.4GB,
and 14.2GB - 4.4GB=9.8GB available, which its currectly showing.

I couldn't see very well in my case so I couldn't tell you if it was 4, 4, 4, 2 in order, but yes the micron and the samsung were together

I'm assuming that they were in the form: S-M-S-M on the slots where S=Samsung and M=Micron. And seeing the memory performance readings via Task Manager, I can say they're good.

My temps while taking the Unigine Bench were a max of 69 C for the GPU and 63 C for the CPU

The temps are good.

The way may case is, I can't see what my power supply actually is. I went and looked for the box and it turns out I have a VisionTek 700W modular 900489
I have gotten BSoD before, and lately too, but they have all been while doing other stuff/at random times and have never happened before while gaming.

Ok the PSU is not the best, its a poor quality one. But 700W should not load it too much, even under full load the total system load won't exceed 400W, and the efficiency is 85%, so it should handle that load. The capacitors though melt easily in VisionTek, but that will result in either a BSoD while gaming or no POST.
You've tried to see what BSoD code it was or what did it say about why it happened? Can you post the dump log file?
The PSU seems to be alright as it'd usually either fail at high load or not boot at all if it was extremely bad or faulty.

Here is all the details I got from Unigine Heaven -
Direct3D11, 1920x1080 8xAA, Quality Ultra, Tessellation Extreme
Radeon HD 7900 series: 850mhz 1250 mhz 69 degrees C
FPS 28.6 Min14.7-Max61.2 Score 721
Windows 7 7601 SP1
Radeon HD 7900 series 14.100.0.0 / Log Me In Mirror Driver 7.1.542.0 / VNC Mirror Driver 1.8.0.0

The avg FPS and score seems a bit low, I'm not too sure here though. The score should've been 1k+ and avg FPS ~32. But I can see why that's not the case, FX 8's single core performance w/o OCing is comparable to i3, so the low Score and probably FPS too. But even then the score seems a bit lowish to me.

I usually don't. I can somewhat tell when something is running 55-60 frames and when something should be better. My arma 3 scores are from the in game options, but I feel like I might have used FRAPS in the past.

Well, try to check with FRAPS and give a good solid reading. That is because even 45 FPS may seem like 30 FPS in intense multiplayers and vice versa.

You should be getting 50+ FPS on FHD monitor.

I would also like to add that when I opened up my computer case to get a better look at the PSU and the ram, I noticed that one of the fans(the one farthest from the hdmi/vga/dvi outputs) was not working. The insides of my case were sort of dusty and It probably needs to be cleaned but I don't know the best way to go at doing this. I don't know when or why the fan decided to stop working and I don't know, it could be apart of Sapphire's Vapor X thing but I highly doubt that since when I looked at it while running the benchmark it was still off. I also believe that I still have the option of "overclocking" the GPU with Sapphire's turbo button if I haven't already pushed it in. And finally, my pc case which is the HAF 920, my GPU is upside down, with the fans on the bottom. This could be one of the reasons the fan stopped working and I wouldn't know of a way to fix this.

Which fan, on the front side of case, on MoBo (CPU cooler's fan?), side panel fan, GPU fan or some other? Can you take a pic to show?
You should clean the case from dust regularly, or alternatively, after doing some cleaning this time, buy dust filters and put on all fans and outlets, especially intake.
How can the GPU be upside down? Something like this?
http://2d.zol-img.com.cn/product/72_500x2000/545/ceS2luQMABIeA.jpg
I've no idea of your case, a pic of GPU and case orientation would be helpful.

Conclusion:


Use compressed air can to clean dust off the case. A good tutorial:
http://www.wikihow.com/Clean-the-Inside-of-a-Computer

Download SpeedFan (if you haven't) and check if the fan speed is set to 0% or something, check from BIOS as well is you're comfortable.

You GPU Z to check GPU load %age while gaming, is it going 90%+ (it should)? Try enabling Turbo and run Unigine again. Check if CPU's usage is going 100% while GPU's is still not 100%, which means a bottleneck (not expected).

Memory and PSU seems to be alright. Fan issue is weird but shouldn't hamper the performance that much as the temps will hardly increase more than a couple of degrees w/o one case fan. If its a GPU fan, then that's a difference story.

Update:

Have a look here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1965286/8350-bottlenecking-gtx-780-normal.html

Look at the best answer, the memory Speed may not be able to cope up. Can you try OCing it to something like 1600MHz.

Also, what DRAM freq is it showing in CPU-Z? It should show 667Mhz or something close. You need to bring that up to 800MHz (DDR3 is DIMM so 667X2=1333MHz and 800X2=1600MHz). There're tons of guides out there to help you out with timings, speed, Voltage and stuff, and I can help you out too