What is using my CPU???

[DanWhite]

So I got this laptop around a month ago, brand new, the Dell Vostro 3405 with the AMD Ryzen 3450u and when I'm gaming or doing whatever I see like 80% usage spikes but then I look at the actual processes or tasks or whatever that are active and there is like a couple things only that are using say, 20% CPU and, nothing else, like 2 or 3 things besides that that are using like 3% CPU each. Its so annoying because when I'm doing whatever, playing 1080p youtube, gaming, etc, it slows down when I try to like close a program, load a new page (its not a bigg slow down but its just not smooth) so I don't know why there are CPU usage spikes like that but it doesn't really show what is pushing the CPU to 100% usage each time on task manager. Also, some times it just runs fine, 60FPS stable while gaming (I know this machine is capable of more even, we're talking League of Legends, that the game I play most of the time) but then some times I just get low, unstable FPS, like around 30 and going even below that in moments of high action on screen (graphics set to low, vsync etc disabled). I don't know what's happening, maybe something's  causing the CPU/GPU to throttle, something is causing the CPU to get to 100% usage when it shouldn't do that, but something is causing the PC to slow down. The laptop came with Windows 10 LTSC (installed by the local store that sold it to me) and I recently installed Windows 11 Pro (which Dell says this machine is compatible with). Something else to mention, I don't think this PC thermal throttles (maybe, I don't know what the threshold is for this specific machine) but it stabilizes at around 70 degrees under heavy load and it maintains that)

 

Hope you guys can help me figure out what is causing my PC to have CPU usage spikes when stuff are loading (when chrome pages loading, game client pages loading, booting up game client(LoL cliente), etc, and why some times I get low frame rates when this machine should be capable of running League of Legends at least at a steady 60FPS  no problem. If you need any extra info to try to help me I'll gladly provide, thank you in advance

[DarkSwordsman]

Have you checked the processes tab in Task Manager and sorted by CPU?

[CommanderAlex]

8 minutes ago, DarkSwordsman said:

Have you checked the processes tab in Task Manager and sorted by CPU?

Then right click and click on "Open file location" to view exactly the file path it's running from. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

46 minutes ago, DanWhite said:

Hope you guys can help me figure out what is causing my PC to have CPU usage spikes when stuff are loading (when chrome pages loading, game client pages loading, booting up game client(LoL cliente), etc, and why some times I get low frame rates when this machine should be capable of running League of Legends at least at a steady 60FPS  no problem. If you need any extra info to try to help me I'll gladly provide, thank you in advance

Are you sure this isn't just normal usage?  You SHOULD have CPU spikes during loading, especially in games as disk IO and potentially decompressing assets takes a lot of resources.

 

Its also very common for laptops to be configured to drop their power profile after a certain time period.  I was dismayed with my 2500U as it ran great for 10 minutes, then would power throttle after that, dropping the frame rate from a smooth 60fps to 30fps.  There was no way to override that, it wasn't even running that hot, I suspect the laptop just wasn't designed to provide full power for long periods so it was VRM throttling.

[DanWhite]

2 hours ago, DarkSwordsman said:

Have you checked the processes tab in Task Manager and sorted by CPU?

yeah

[DanWhite]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Are you sure this isn't just normal usage?  You SHOULD have CPU spikes during loading, especially in games as disk IO and potentially decompressing assets takes a lot of resources.

 

Its also very common for laptops to be configured to drop their power profile after a certain time period.  I was dismayed with my 2500U as it ran great for 10 minutes, then would power throttle after that, dropping the frame rate from a smooth 60fps to 30fps.  There was no way to override that, it wasn't even running that hot, I suspect the laptop just wasn't designed to provide full power for long periods so it was VRM throttling.

oh what, even being plugged in all the time it would behave like that? this one has a NVMe ssd or whatever for main storage, i i'm not sure if u call the NVMe things ssds as well, i guess you do

[DanWhite]

2 hours ago, CommanderAlex said:

Then right click and click on "Open file location" to view exactly the file path it's running from. 

Yeah but I haven't noticed anything strange, any sus processes or anything, as I said some times there's kinda high CPU usage but there isn't anything using that much CPU if you look at the processes list. I don't hink i have malware or anything but I don't know. The only things that I actually can see use the most CPU are legit things like the game I'm playing or the browser