PC Failure, Help!

[Renegade]

He is located in Troy.

[Sideout]

Yea I am in Troy and if you want to 1366 board I can sell that cheap or I do have a 1155 H77 board as well for sale.
It is an Asrock board.

[shocka]

How much would you take for both?

[shocka]

Well I would like to give a big thanks to sideout, he was a huge help to me for having those boards.  Before my pc went out the last time I had an issue with my CPU usage being what I thought as way to high for what was going on.  Right now I'm on a fresh install of windows and the only thing running is IE and my CPU usage is idling at around 25-29% if I simply take a window and drag it around the screen it will jump up to around 60%.  The CPU is new, I got it when I got my new mobo, it's a i5-3570 with everything stock, the temp is at 31c.  Do you guys have any idea why it's doing this or is it normal because it doesn't seem normal, things seem extremely sluggish.  Thanks!

[Renegade]

That is an issue yes.   Try it with bare min config.  HD, 1 stick ram etc.    Also check your temps make sure the CPU is not getting to down and down clocking.

[shocka]

I tried doing a bare minimum config, I swapped for each ram and only used my primary SSD and the system is still sluggish.  I also ran a prime95 torture test to get the temps at full load and the maximum temp reached by each core was: core #0 53c, core #1 60c, core #2 61c, core #3 59c.  So what else could be causing the issue, everything in this current rig that I'm using was used in my previous rig except for the cpu, mobo, and psu and my other rig worked fine.  I just ran a stress test on the gpu to make sure the psu was running properly as well.  Everything seems to be running fine so I'm not understanding what the issue is, could the cpu just be faulty or possibly a bios setting I should change?  I issued an rma and I'm wondering if I should return it for a replacement, my 30 days for a replacement are almost up.

[Renegade]

Try updating the MB bios to the latest see if that helps any at all.    Also are you using a CLEAN original install of windows or a copied altered one?

[shocka]

It's an altered one, I have my original key that I got when I bought Windows 7 but I no longer have the installation disc.  I'm going to update my bios right now.

UPDATE: The bios was updated and did not help any.

[Renegade]

It really sounds like some kinda of malware/virus even though its a new install.

[shocka]

Well I just burned a new copy of windows from digitalrivercontent.net, it's supposed to be an oem version of windows so I'm going to reinstall windows again and see what happens.

UPDATE: That also did not help, it's still running sluggish, is it possible that it's the cpu at all?

[Renegade]

When all else fails then look at the CPU.  Usually the CPU is the very last thing I consider.   

double check that the MB you have is clocking the processor right and getting the right data from it etc.   EG that your processor is in the supported list etc.

[shocka]

Both motherboards that I have used with this cpu support this cpu, it is also running at the correct clock speed.  Is there any bios options I could enable or disable that might change anything?  I'm not too familiar with bios.

[Renegade]

Nothing in the bios should cause 30% CPU usage.    Its rather odd that's for sure since you reinstalled etc.   Did you make sure to install all drivers etc to make sure its not a missing driver doing it?

[Sideout]

It might be worth it to bring it into Dave's shop at P3 , put it on a bench and perform some known good hardware swaps to see where the issue is at.

[shocka]

I would love to bring it in and have it checked out but I don't have the money to do that right now.