[SOLVED] CPU speed throttling, weird interactions

[LoftyEs]

Hello, I am hoping that someone can help resolve my issue. This is my first post here, after some preliminary searches I haven't found a a resolution. I will attempt to be as explicit and provide as much relevant information as i can!

My issue: I rebuilt my pc a few months back and everything has been working great. Today, I went to play some games (namely a game of league of legends) and had very intense fps drops. This came as a shock as under normal circumstances my pc runs league of legends at around 500fps on max settings at 1440p.

I opened task manager and noticed that my CPU had down clocked itself to 0.78 GHZ. Immediately I thought this was thermal throttling issue, so I ran a few tests monitoring my cpu temps. In call of duty MW, my cpu temperatures in all cores never exceeded 53 degrees Celsius, but my cpu was still down clocking itself.

Here's where the weird interaction come in...
I had done some preliminary searches online, and came across people saying one of two things, 1. its a temperature issue, 2. its a power management issue (power options in windows).
As a result, I downloaded MSI afterburner as another way to monitor my cpu temps, and AUTOMAGICALLY my issue was gone! But, weirdly enough as soon as I close MSI afterburner my cpu declocks itself once again while running any game. This lead me to believe that potentially it is a power management issue, but changing the power management options in windows doesn't seem to have an effect.

I am open to any and all suggestions as to how to restore my pc to working order, I can game under the condition that I keep msi afterburner open, which I thought may be a lead into what the problem is. Now I will list my PC parts and information:

1. My CPU is not overclocked, the only OC on my pc is having an XMP profile enabled for my ram speed.
2. The only recent change to my PC was downloading Python 3.8, and the latest version of Pycharm.

CPU: intel-i9-10900k
MTB: msi z490-mag tomahawk
GPU: msi gaming trio 2080 super
RAM: 32gbs of gskill 3600 ram
PSU: Corsair tx-850 watt psu
Storage: samsung evo ssd (housing windows 10 OS), x2 WD 1tb HDD's, x1 barracuda m.2 nvme SSD
Cooling: Corsair h100i Pro 240mm


/edit
Here is a picture, with MSI afterburner open, running league of legends at 460 fps on my separate monitor, my cpu speed is normal at 4.88 with what seems like stable temps

https://imgur.com/cgUJxeD

View: https://imgur.com/cgUJxeD

 

[LoftyEs]

Update:
It seems running any software that monitors the speed of the CPU prevents this down clock. I am having the same result if I run throttle stop 9.2 without changing any settings. Simply having the monitor running whilst loading games prevents this declock reliably... Although this is not a fix, because I don't want to have to have msi afterburner or throttlestop running 24/7 to use my pc.
Another useful bit of info, it seems as if starting a game immediately stops the intel boost clocks of my cpu and it locks in to 3.68ghz and then works its way down to 0.78ghz where it will stay.
Some more steps i have taken:
I have updated bios,
i have updated drivers,
I have disabled (and now re-enabled) intel adaptive thermal monitoring to no avail.
I have reset the bios to default,
/edit I have also ran cinebench, with no monitoring software and it completed it normal with no down clock of my CPU

Please, if you have any suggestions let me know, thanks.

 

[RodroX]

Im guessing you came from another intel system, did you made a new fresh/clean install of Winodws 10?

 

[LoftyEs]

Im guessing you came from another intel system, did you made a new fresh/clean install of Winodws 10?

Hi thank you for your response.
Yes I have a fresh install of windows, and the computer has been running issue free for two months.

 

[LoftyEs]

Problem Fixed!
I'm writing this in case someone has a similar issue:
After reseting the CMOS the PC temporarily worked normally. I reapplied XMP profiles and a CPU overclock, which resulted in breaking it again. - This led me to believe further, there was a power management issue somewhere.

I then proceeded to do a fresh install of windows 10, reupdated all my drivers and applied my XMP profile once more. The issue seems to be fixed now. Best of luck if you have a similar issue!