Slow performance - Windows 11 or my hardware?

[Lodreus]

Hi,

For the past few months I've noticed my PC performance declining to the point where I am having to restart more often than normal to clear the trouble. The poor performance became too great to the point I had to reset Windows (Main drive only). Since then it's been... so-so, but still sluggish at times.

i5-9600k
AMD Radeon RX 5700
RAM DDR4 16GB
SSD 840 EVO 250GB
3 HDD's
EVEA 600W

I wanna say Windows 11 has been the source of it all, or partly. I've had this setup for long time now and while I do plan to upgrade I wanna start with the RAM.

I've been debating whether to dual-boot Linux Mint and handle my work on Linux only and game on Windows, but it's inconvenient for me. And, I don't want to run a VM.

Anyone on Windows 11 notice the same, and/or what do you recommend?

Thanks.

[SlowClick]

That is not my experience.

[SlowClick]

Back to the OP - I wonder if the 3 HDDs are getting tired or need a defrag?

[Lixire]

10 and 11 24H2 give me basically the same performance on my hardware with a very slight advantage to the newer OS (7800X3D+3080+64GB DDR5 6000)

Do you have Core Isolation enabled by any chance?

[Lodreus]

Diposting pertama kali oleh ★Sinon★ <3:

10 and 11 24H2 give me basically the same performance on my hardware with a very slight advantage to the newer OS (7800X3D+3080+64GB DDR5 6000)

Do you have Core Isolation enabled by any chance?

This feature not available for me to access.

[Lodreus]

Diposting pertama kali oleh SlowClick:

Back to the OP - I wonder if the 3 HDDs are getting tired or need a defrag?

My OS is all on the SSD but I've defrag the HDD, so will see how it goes.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Win11 = turning off Core Isolation and Controlled Folders in Defender is a must; these are defaulted to Enabled in Win11; and not in Win10.

Add your Game Client folder and Games Library folder (or stand-alone game folders if you have those) to Defender's Exclusion listing so this puts a stop to it constantly doing real-time scans of those areas. Also other game client locations as well; such as for Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar, BattleNET, Amazon, Google Play

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Lodreus:

Diposting pertama kali oleh SlowClick:

Back to the OP - I wonder if the 3 HDDs are getting tired or need a defrag?

My OS is all on the SSD but I've defrag the HDD, so will see how it goes.

What app do you use for Disk Defrag?
MS doesn't have a good one for that.

It will be much better to use Piriform Defraggler.

[_I_]

on a hdd, defrag only helps when an entire large file needs to be read from start to finish

games dont do that often
steam install might, but also does that in small read/writes chunks

fragmented files does not hurt as much as anyone says it does

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Games having slow issues because it's a HDD, is because... it's a HDD, all of those are slow, period.

[Viking2121]

Well, maybe a roge driver, if all else fails, downlaod snappy driver installer and see if it finds anything that needs an update or installed.

Check temps, high CPU temps can slow windows down a lot, same with GPU temps, though it would normally crash the driver and or lag the animations in windows. Do you overclock? set everything back to defaults, see if it improves.

Also wouldn't help to unplug all 3 HDD's and see if the PC is noticeably faster, though unlikely, a failing HDD can slow the entire system, even if its just a secondary drive for games, I've had a few experiences like this myself.

Good Luck!

[Andrius227]

I think the cpu is too slow. 6 cores without hyperthreading is very limiting.

Hyperthreading is very important for older cpus. I have an old 3rd gen i5 thats basically unusable now but i also have a 2nd gen i7 that still runs great (on win10) because it has hyperthreading.

[SpiraTech]

Check your startup applications and uninstall anything you don't need. Make sure your AV solution is working - I recommend sticking to Microsoft's own one.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

I dont even understand why the OP bothered to put Win11 on that PC anyways.

[AmaiAmai]

What exactly do you mean by "declining performance?"

Also, if you have old HDDs you can try disconnecting them to see if the issue is actually one that is close to failing. If an HDD is close to failing,

Windows can slow down even if it's not the OS drive because of automated checking and other processes like drive indexing (and search indexing, etc.). On a bad mechanical disk this will cause a massive loss in performance, SSDs will just blue screen or the PC will freeze once it gets bad enough .

If any of those drives are over 5 years, I would test performance with them connected and disconnected if it is an easy test.

If you leave the connected and turn off controller in BIOS it is not the same thing because some BIOS still keep the devices connected, but hide them from the operating system. If the drive is bad and shorting the port, the operating system won't see the drive but still get the signal that the port is shorting and run a check there.

--

One last thing is if you have CSM on for a Linux OS, make sure Windows was installed in UEFI. You can verify it with a simple tool like HWInfo or use Windows like described here:

https://kb.parallels.com/115815/

more complex methods if it shows blank or another value besides UEFI/Legacy (like CSM, or the value is numerical)

https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/how-to-know-if-windows-using-uefi-or-legacy.html

EDIT: forgot to add , in case your drive is failing and you want to turn indexing off until your drive completely fails...

Drive Indexing:

https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/disable_indexing_11.html

Search Indexing:

https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-search-indexer-guide/

There is a way to turn off both in the registry if some software continues to force it on even with the simple method above.

[Rin]

Get Dism++ and scan and clean. Just don't tick the Package Cache Folder unless you know what you're doing.
https://github.com/Chuyu-Team/Dism-Multi-language/releases