Question CPU Maximum Frequency Stuck at 31%

Dec 7, 2020
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I'm at a bit of a loss here. Been doing research for a while now but I just can't seem to find out why my laptop is slow. It's an older one (6 years now), with an i7 4710HQ processor (2.5 GHz, boost to 3.5 GHz) and 16 GB DDR3 RAM. It used to be just fine, but I've found it annoyingly slow lately.
2.5 GHz seems alright, so I checked Resource Monitor to see what was up - turns out the Maximum Frequency is pretty much stuck at 31%. I found out that it's possible that it was temperature throttled, so I downloaded NZXT CAM to check temps - and it maxes out at 60-62C at max (30%) frequency. NZXT CAM also says Stock Frequency is 2500, but Current Frequency is stuck at 798 MHz (rarely jumping up to 830/840 for before instantly falling to 798 MHz). I checked out my power options and made sure the max was set to 0 MHz in Advanced Power Options so that it's uncapped, and also tried changing that to 1500 to see if that would do anything - no impact, though.
I also ran Windows10Debloater to get rid of anything that might be slowing my PC down.
Why won't it go further up? CPU's can surely go higher in temp and remain safe, no? I'm reading into all this stuff coz I want to build a PC in the new year and from what I can see, the CPU could easily handle 10-20 extra degrees, maybe more.
What can I do, any ideas? Am I still missing something important?

This here is a bit weird, though: So the computer I'm having issues with is my 17" laptop that I keep at home and that recently shut down out of the blue and wouldn't turn on again, so I brought it to a tech support guy and he basically said that the battery was broken and his fix was rerouting power so that it would bypass the battery and go directly into the motherboard.
Since getting it back, the laptop has been on battery mode for some reason - it doesn't seem to understand that it's plugged in, if that makes any sense. I changed up power plan settings that all the battery settings matched plugged in settings but the max. frequency stayed at 31%.
I'm saying this because I pulled out my work laptop to compare, and on battery the CPU max frequency dropped, too - to about 50-70% but fluctuating. When it's plugged in, though, my work laptop has a CPU Maximum Frequency of 115% - and will go into the range of 70°C temperature when under heavy load, then reducing Maximum Frequency to 100% instead of 115% as to not increase temperature further.
Did the tech support's "solution" screw up my CPU?
 
Last edited:
Dec 7, 2020
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In your power plan settings see if you can set it to high performance. See if that gets your cpu to ramp up.

Unfortunately I only have the "Balanced" power plan as an option to choose from (probably because it thinks it's in battery mode?) In any case, I created a new power plan with the High Performance preset, and nothing changed :(
 
Feb 1, 2021
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I'm having a similar issue and apparently nobody on the planet has an answer. I've spent hours searching the web and not a single suggestion anywhere has helped at all whatsoever. Considering that this post is almost two months old I guess there is no solution?
 
Dec 7, 2020
3
1
10
I'm having a similar issue and apparently nobody on the planet has an answer. I've spent hours searching the web and not a single suggestion anywhere has helped at all whatsoever. Considering that this post is almost two months old I guess there is no solution?
Ah yeah I couldn't figure it out. I decided against going back to the tech support guy and just get a new PC as it was already over 6 years old, and just build me a new computer. Sorry I can't help you more!
 
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