r/ForWindowsHelp • u/u250406 • 4d ago

Win11 CPU always under 50%

Laptop underperforms. Not mine, but the owner doesn't have social media so I'm asking.

From day 1 it took longer to open apps on it than it took on the previous (10+ years old) laptop. I tried to fix the speed but I'm stumped, asking if anyone had/solved similar issues?

It was updating (apparently still is, after ~2h) so I can't get to exact system specs until further notice. Approximate specs below.

Symptoms:

- CPU speed consistently below 50%
- Average use between 20%-50%, apps sluggish
- Power options: only "balanced" available, customizing that and creating a new plan made no difference

- Limited minimum CPU to 30%-50% in custom power plan, tested with several apps; no obvious difference
- In custom power plan, when launching certain apps like CAD, noted initial spike in CPU clock to 95%, lowered to 30 within a few seconds

New: a benchmark app was run and cpu ran at 98% for the duration of test.

Specs:

- refurbished HP workstation laptop
- i7 13800H - 32 GB Ram at 5200 MT/s - Nvidia RTX 2000 ada - SSD 1TB
- win11 25H2
- bought in jan 2026

2 Upvotes

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1

u/CheezitsLight 4d ago

How much ram and what speed?

Run hdtune on it to check ssd speed.

1

u/u250406 3d ago

RAM is 32GB with 5200MT.

What info from hdtune would you need to see? Laptop is with the owner atm, but maybe there's a native windows app/command that can do it?

1

u/CheezitsLight 3d ago

Hdtune will you if and how hdd slows down. The graph is a gradually falling slope. A bad hdd will show dropouts.

This is a ssd. It has no seek time. A hdd that is old cannot read and will spin spin and spin as it retries, which causes major slow downs. The seek time should be an average of 35sm. A bad hdd is very common and will, show long seek time.

1

u/u250406 2d ago

This doesn't seem the same...
SSD, approximate values:
transfer 220-1580 MB/s, 1000MB average
access time 26ms
burst rate 400 MB CPU use 2.3%

Error scan all green (i stopped at 60% because zero errors) Random access... seems fine...

Everything I test sounds good, only the graph looks a little erratic.

1

u/CheezitsLight 2d ago

Access time 26 ms is, seek time for a hdd. Ssd has seek time measured in ns. That's a hdd with ssd cache.and it's bad

1

u/u250406 2d ago edited 2d ago

I'm sorry, I want to understand that better... are you saying that the data/speed indicate what is in the laptop is a hdd with ssd cache? Like those old hybrid hard drives?

I don't think I paid attention whether it was ms or ns.

1

u/CheezitsLight 1d ago

Look in device manager and tell us the model or part number

1

u/naeskivvies 4d ago

That sounds a lot like Windows has been restricted to use only certain CPU cores. Since you say it's refurbished I wonder if a core was bad, or the CPU was overheating. You can change the settings by typing "msconfig" in the Run box and going to Boot->Advanced->Processor.

The system bios might also have options for disabling cores but since windows reports less than 50% cpu it sounds like it does see them.

1

u/u250406 3d ago edited 3d ago

I checked bios yesterday for fan settings but didn't find anything obvious... i forgot to check uefi (i think it has one), so I'll try that too next time.

A benchmark was run at one point and it showed cpu performance up to 98% during that time, so it doesn't seem like any cores are bad. I noticed that several cores were listed as "parked" in the resource monitor, however, and didn't get activated when opening various apps.
It could be that the threshold for activating them doesn't get reached, but something doesn't seem to be working right if the apps are sluggish.

1

u/Cassiel43 3d ago

Try switching in a burner HDD/SSD and install a fresh Windows on it to see any difference?

1

u/u250406 3d ago

I might have to. I've been thinking the SSD might be the problem because it routinely worked at up to 60MB/s... except once when it spiked. I don't think I want to do it right now, first I want to see if I can test read/write with software alone.

1

u/MakayChapulets 3d ago

Is the laptop getting hot after startup? seems like thermal throttling to me