[SOLVED] CPU running at a lower clock speed than usual

[Gawizard]

So, recently got an intel i5 7400 last week, gaming has been fine except i've had constant dips in framerates while playing games and even in windows. Thought it was coming from the Rx 580 i recently bought aswell (same day as the i5 7400) but after i saw the CPU's power consumption never go above 30 watts even while mid game i suspected something.
Does anyone have a rough idea on what can be causing this?

So far i've set my Windows power settings to high performance, turned off some start up applications that were wasting cycles. Still couldnt find the issue.

Specs
CPU: Intel i5 7400 @3.00GHz (3.5GHz boost)
GPU: Asus Rx 580 Dual 8GB
RAM: G.Skill 8GB @ 2400MHz
PSU Thermaltake SMART 500w 80+ White
Storage: 3 256 GB HDDs, 1 256 Sata 6GB/s SSD
Motherboard: Gigabyte B250m DS3H

 

[Gawizard]

Update: Looked up on the I5 7400 and saw that the CPU usually runs at 3.3GHz on all 4 cores
this still doesnt explain the the frame drops and CPU utilization spikes

sorry if i forgot but my temps are usually in the 60s for both cpu and GPU while gaming

 

[Karadjgne]

check cpu tempreature may be it is causing because of dry thermal paste.

Might want to actually read the opening statement....

Base frequency is 3.0GHz
Turbo frequency is 3.5GHz 1 core, 3.4GHz 2-3 cores, 3.3GHz 4 cores. So cpu is exactly where it should be.

Cpu temps gaming @ 60°C ish are perfectly fine.

Nothing wrong with anything I can see except it's an i5, 4 thread cpu and many games will suffer from uber high utilization trying to cram upto 8 or so threads through a 4 thread cpu. That's going to cause some slowdowns. As is games with high AI or physX etc.

Only thing you can do is look in the game settings for the individual games and turn down cpu bound settings like viewing distance, grass detail and lighting affects to med or low. This'll take some of the workload off the cpu so minimums will not be as low.

 

[Gawizard]

Might want to actually read the opening statement....

Base frequency is 3.0GHz
Turbo frequency is 3.5GHz 1 core, 3.4GHz 2-3 cores, 3.3GHz 4 cores. So cpu is exactly where it should be.

Cpu temps gaming @ 60°C ish are perfectly fine.

Nothing wrong with anything I can see except it's an i5, 4 thread cpu and many games will suffer from uber high utilization trying to cram upto 8 or so threads through a 4 thread cpu. That's going to cause some slowdowns. As is games with high AI or physX etc.

Only thing you can do is look in the game settings for the individual games and turn down cpu bound settings like viewing distance, grass detail and lighting affects to med or low. This'll take some of the workload off the cpu so minimums will not be as low.

its not overall performance
overall performance runs as expected
its just sometimes the entire pc will freeze up for a min or 2.
i thought it was something to do with ram but my ram usage seems normal and i usually have 1-2 GBs free.
im still working on upgrading to 16GB so ill report about that when it happens

 

[Gawizard]

think i found a culprit. Im seeing one of my backup drives being accessed every now and then
and right as this happens, my pc freezes and the CPU usage drops to 0 for a while

 

[Gawizard]

Okay, went into system settings and saw my back up drive is being used to store the page file. Moved it over to a partition on my SDD (Which is currently my boot drive). Hopefully this solves my problem

 

[Karadjgne]

That means you are actually using more ram than you have. Moving the pagefile to ssd will help a lot, but SSDs are still slower than ram, plus the accesd/read/write times etc. It's a fix, but a band-aid fix, and will only get solved with more ram.

Windows won't use the entire 8Gb before accessing pagefile, it'll start using it after @ 6Gb or so, depending on file sizes. It keeps a virtual reserve for system file usage, your game not being system files ;p