Hardware or Software Issue?

24c · 01 Jul 2018

I built a box for a friend of mine, used it for a week and shipped it to FL - specs below.

The box arrived safely, with the exception of one SATA cable, which had come loose.
OR - it wasn't properly seated by me.
After a day or so of use, he tells me the machine is very slow - I ask him for a screen shot of the Task Master and
he sends me the one on the left below. Slowness explained.
I walk him through the BIOS settings and both the Clock speed and Sync all Cores settings are exactly where I had set them.
Reboot, and all seems to be OK for awhile, then I get the screen shot on the right below.
If I recall correctly, I had an similar issue when I had it, it slowed down and the BIOS setting were NOT correct when I checked them. I reset them and all remained OK. At least I think it is the same machine. I built/rebuilt 4 boxes this year and as well as I track where each piece of hardware is, I never made notes of issues I may have had.
Before we go any further, I decided to come her and ask for suggestions. I have no clue why this is happening.
I think there is a recent update to the BIOS - updated my machine yesterday to 1401 - his is on 1101.
So guys/gals - all you have to do is help a guy in the north help a guy in the south -

Addonics M2 PCIe SSD - PCIe 3.0 4-Lane Adapter
ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero LGA 1151 (300 Series) Intel Z370 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard
Cooler Master MegaFlow 200mm Blue LED Silent Fan for Computer Cases
EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 03G-P4-6160-KR Video Card
EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G2 220-G2-0650-Y1 80+ GOLD 650W Fully Modular PSUG.SKILL
TridentZ RGB Series 16GB(2x8GB)288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 4000 (PC4 32000) Memory
Intel Core i7-8700K Coffee Lake 6-Core 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) LGA 1151 (300 Series) 95W BX80684I78700KNoctua NH-D15 SSO2 D-Type Premium CPU Cooler, NF-A15 x 2 PWM Fans
StarTech SATSASBP125 Mobile rack backplane for 2.5in SATA/SAS drive
Thermaltake Core X5 Tempered Glass Snow Edition E-ATX Stackable Cube Chassis CA-1E8-00M6WN-00DRIVESCorsair

Neutron XTi 2.5" 240GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CSSD-N240GBXTI - CADDY
960 PRO M.2 512GB NVMe PCI-Express 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V6P512BW M.2-2 - OS
970 EVO M.2 2280 500GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7E500BW M.2 PCIe
970 EVO M.2 2280 250GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MZ-V7E250BW M.2-1
WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s 2.5"/7mm Solid State Drive - WDS100T2B0A

PolarNettles · 01 Jul 2018

CPU speed automatically drops down when the system is at low load. The utilization is only 1% so the user isn't actually doing anything and it's expected for the frequency to drop.

For a valid comparison you would need to look at the performance at full load (e.g. with some benchmark) or temporarily raise the minimum processor state in Power Options to 100%. But we'd need more information than "the machine is very slow" to give specific tips.

24c · 01 Jul 2018

Thanks for the reply PolarNettles - this is not the ideal situation for diagnosing problems for sure - sometimes we do the best we can to help a friend.
This screen shot is of my ASUS box, the same as the one in FL

Utilization 1% - Speed 4.68 GHz - this is what I am used to seeing on my machines
Power Plan shot included - same I use on all my machines

Wait a minute - You may have hit it here - My buddy put an image of HIS os on the machine I sent him - it doesn't have the Power Plan set up as I set it - this MIGHT explain the issue here??????