My employer provided an HP Elitedesk mini PC for remote browser work, it's basic but it should be fine... yet it lags like crazy and is very sluggish

[Hypervibe]

Hi all, I really need some tech support advice as this is making working from home incredibly difficult and infuriating.

 

My employer recently provided a fairly basic mini PC for some light browser-based remote work because we have to download lots of files from clients leaving us vulnerable to downloading something nasty, so we don't want to use our own systems for this work.

It's a pretty basic system and a few years old but when I saw the specs I thought this should be absolutely fine, I only need it for Chrome with a max of 10 tabs, Nuance Dragon for speech-to-text, and that's about it.

• AMD 3400G
• 16GB (3200MHz)
• 512GB NVME (Gen 2)
• 1TB SATA SSD

 

The Problem:

 

However...  oh my goodness it lags like crazy! It seems to sit at around 65-75°c constantly with just a few Chrome tabs open and frequently sitting in the 80-95°c area with a 1080p YouTube video playing and a few random tabs.

The fan is working perfectly fine by the way.

 

When I say lag I mean if I double-click on a word to highlight it or right-clicking, I've timed it and it can take between 0.5 and nearly 2 seconds for the click to register on something. 
Sometimes when typing I notice the words will lag and suddenly all appear a second or two later, or using the arrow keys to move the cursor, It lags behind half a second all the time.

Even clicking play on a YouTube video, I click on the video and it starts playing a couple of seconds later.

 

Here is the crazy thing... I have been using an Ivy Bridge 3570k with 8GB of RAM system for this browser remote work for the past few months and that doesn't lag at all. It's 12 years old and it's significantly more snappy than this system.

 

What I've Tried:

 

I thought it was overheating so I stripped it but the thermal paste was absolutely fine, fresh, and evenly spread. I even checked that the heatsink and IHS were flat and reapplied the TIM but it didn't help.

Added a 120 mm fan blowing on it and the system is now sitting on a passive cooling plate to help dissipate some of the heat from the chassis.

 

I thought about malware or some bloated monitoring/logging software, so I tried formatting the drive and installing Windows 11 fresh, but no difference on a fresh install.

 

I just can't figure out what is causing it. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[BiotechBen]

1 minute ago, Hypervibe said:

Hi all, I really need some tech support advice as this is making working from home incredibly difficult and infuriating.

 

My employer recently provided a fairly basic mini PC for some light browser-based remote work because we have to download lots of files from clients leaving us vulnerable to downloading something nasty, so we don't want to use our own systems for this work.

It's a pretty basic system and a few years old but when I saw the specs I thought this should be absolutely fine, I only need it for Chrome with a max of 10 tabs, Nuance Dragon for speech-to-text, and that's about it.

• AMD 3400G
• 16GB (3200MHz)
• 512GB NVME (Gen 2)
• 1TB SATA SSD

 

The Problem:

 

However...  oh my goodness it lags like crazy! It seems to sit at around 65-75°c constantly with just a few Chrome tabs open and frequently sitting in the 80-95°c area with a 1080p YouTube video playing and a few random tabs.

The fan is working perfectly fine by the way.

 

When I say lag I mean if I double-click on a word to highlight it, I've timed it and it can take between 0.5 and nearly 2 seconds for the double-click to register on something as simple as highlighting a word. It means that you frequently think it hasn't registered the double-click so you double-click again... before both register.
Sometimes when typing I notice the words will lag and suddenly all appear a second or two later, or using the arrow keys to move the cursor, It lags behind half a second all the time.

Even clicking play on a YouTube video, I click on the video and it starts playing a couple of seconds later, I click pause, then push my chair back and get up from my chair before the video actually pauses.

 

Here is the crazy thing... I have been using an Ivy Bridge 3570k with 8GB of RAM system for this browser remote work for the past few months and that doesn't lag at all. It's 12 years old and it's significantly more snappy than this system.

 

What I've Tried:

 

I thought it was overheating so I stripped it but the thermal paste was absolutely fine, fresh, and evenly spread. I even checked that the heatsink and IHS were flat and reapplied the TIM but it didn't help.

I thought about malware or some bloated monitoring/logging software, so I tried formatting the drive and installing Windows 11 fresh, but no difference on a fresh install.

 

I just can't figure out what is causing it. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

What's the specific device? Is it passively cooled?

[Hypervibe]

It's an HP Elitedesk mini desktop Gen 4 or 5.

 

No, it's not passive, as I mentioned the Internal|fan is working fine and I now have a 120mm fan blowing on it and it's sitting on a passive cooling plate to try to the thermals

[Biohazard777]

41 minutes ago, Hypervibe said:

It's an HP Elitedesk mini desktop Gen 4 or 5.

52 minutes ago, Hypervibe said:

so I tried formatting the drive and installing Windows 11 fresh, but no difference on a fresh install.

Did you install the AMD Chipset Driver (from HP website for your PC model), also did you try updating BIOS?

 

Other than that, sounds like the APU is downclocking itself to oblivion.
Did you run any monitoring software (hwinfo for example) to check where your CPU/iGPU clocks are at when it goes into crawl mode?

It could be thermal issues... but I'd expect it to stop boosting, not throttle down to min. clocks.
Maybe power management is out of whack (trying to save power when it shouldn't), you could try running: https://amdaputuningutility.com/#install

And upping the minimum iGPU & CPU clocks, should look something like this:

 

[Hypervibe]

11 hours ago, Biohazard777 said:

Did you install the AMD Chipset Driver (from HP website for your PC model), also did you try updating BIOS?

Yes, I did install all of the correct drivers including the chipset, and I've just checked the bios, it is up-to-date

 

Quote

Did you run any monitoring software (hwinfo for example) to check where your CPU/iGPU clocks are at when it goes into crawl mode?

Yes, I have HWInfo, I have been monitoring things with that. 

 

Example:

I booted the system this morning and opened 2 windows of Chrome with 5 tabs on each with Chrome in efficiency mode. Plus VLC player playing a 720 P video file.

(This is with an additional 120 mm fan blowing directly on the case through the air vents and the system is sitting on a cooling plate.)

• Minimum CPU temperature was 64°C with a maximum of 96.1°C.
• Minimum core clock was 1.36 MHz with a maximum of 4.1 MHz, averaging 3.1 MHz.
• iGPU minimum temperature was 60°C and a maximum of 74°C, minimum clock 200 MHz, maximum clock 1.4 MHz.

The thing that concerned me the most was the Vcore, the minimum was 0.85 V but the maximum was 1.555 V which if I'm not mistaken is significantly higher than recommended, my understanding was it shouldn't be above 1.45 V.

 

Quote

Maybe power management is out of whack (trying to save power when it shouldn't), you could try running: https://amdaputuningutility.com/#install

And upping the minimum iGPU & CPU clocks, should look something like this:

I will take a look at the tuning utility to see if that can help but it looks like, unless I am mistaken, that It's getting too much voltage and causing thermal throttling