I7 6700k at 12% usage with "nothing" running.

[Ghost Lightning]

So, I recently upgraded my system from a Haswell base (using an i3) to a Skylake system running on an I7 6700k, and I'm having some issues with CPU usage at idle.
With no programs open, I'm averaging between 12% - 13% CPU usage, and about 3 - 4.7 GB of RAM usage out of a total 16 GB.
When I open the task manager, none of the running functions list CPU usage until I select to "Show processes for all users", at which point, the culprits seemingly become apparent: http://i.imgur.com/4sDAvyM.png
Now, I seriously doubt these system processes are the sole contributors to this unusually high CPU usage. When I was running an i3 and 16 GB of DDR3, my idle usages were nowhere near this high.
I've run every virus scan out there, and nothing has come up.
I think it's important to note that, when I moved my system, I did a fresh windows install, but did not format the SSD I'm running windows from. I do still have my Windows.old folder, if that could be causing any issues.
What are the chances that this is the result of a sub-par chip?
Here are my full system specs: http://i.imgur.com/31IamRo.png

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[airplanegeek]

That amount of ram usage is normal, system idle process actually represent how much of your cpu ISN'T being used and svchost is a system process. It does a bunch of tasks in the background so it's hard to know what exactly is using cpu, but 12% isn't that high, even at idle.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

The 6700k is an 8 thread CPU, so 12.5% (100% / 8) means one thread is maxing out. You can try downloading Process Explorer to see what it's actually doing. But from my experiences, it's usually either Windows Update stuck in the background, which usually requires manually downloading whatever KB's will allow it to finish, or Windows Media Player trying to run its background indexing/sharing task and failing.

 

[airplanegeek]

The 6700k is an 8 thread CPU, so 12.5% (100% / 8) means one thread is maxing out. You can try downloading Process Explorer to see what it's actually doing. But from my experiences, it's usually either Windows Update stuck in the background, which usually requires manually downloading whatever KB's will allow it to finish, or Windows Media Player trying to run its background indexing/sharing task and failing.

That isn't necessarily true. It is an aggregate of the total usage of your cpu, 12% usage could be 100% on one core or 12% on all 8 threads, which is more likely.

 

[Ghost Lightning]

The 6700k is an 8 thread CPU, so 12.5% (100% / 8) means one thread is maxing out. You can try downloading Process Explorer to see what it's actually doing. But from my experiences, it's usually either Windows Update stuck in the background, which usually requires manually downloading whatever KB's will allow it to finish, or Windows Media Player trying to run its background indexing/sharing task and failing.

So, I got Process Explorer, and it's showing the same two processes on top. Looking at the system info diagnostic, it's showing that the spikes are due to svchost.exe: 404 Host Process For Windows Services.
As airplanegeek said, I'm aware that that's a normal process, but it's eating up a much larger chunk of my CPU than it did my last, far weaker processor.

 

[airplanegeek]

If you are really concerned about it, try reinstalling windows again, but this time with a format of the ssd

 

[Ghost Lightning]

If you are really concerned about it, try reinstalling windows again, but this time with a format of the ssd

I'll probably end up going this route. I performed a disk cleanup to get rid of my old windows files, which had no effect, so I'm not sure what's on here causing it.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

That amount of RAM usage is not normal. The svchost.exe is using almost 1.6 GB by itself. And all the old svchost programs run on single threads, it isn't evenly spread across his cores. You can easily see whether it is in the CPU Usage History graphs in Task manager.

In regards to Process Explorer, you can actually use it to see which exact service is running:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/yongrhee/2012/06/28/how-to-troubleshoot-service-host-svchost-exe-related-problems/

Each instance of svchost.exe represents a number of services that handle everything from device drivers to network I/O and so forth. Tracking down which specific service is running amok is one of the main reasons they split it into separate processes in Win 10 as of build 14942.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-build-14942-ends-svchost-ram,32832.html

 

[airplanegeek]

That amount of RAM usage is not normal. The svchost.exe is using almost 1.6 GB by itself. And all the old svchost programs run on single threads, it isn't evenly spread across his cores. You can easily see whether it is in the CPU Usage History graphs in Task manager.

In regards to Process Explorer, you can actually use it to see which exact service is running:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/yongrhee/2012/06/28/how-to-troubleshoot-service-host-svchost-exe-related-problems/

Each instance of svchost.exe represents a number of services that handle everything from device drivers to network I/O and so forth. Tracking down which specific service is running amok is one of the main reasons they split it into separate processes in Win 10 as of build 14942.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-build-14942-ends-svchost-ram,32832.html

But he is using windows 7.

 

[Ghost Lightning]

So, I did a fresh windows install, and, even without any programs yet installed, the problem persisted.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

That amount of RAM usage is not normal. The svchost.exe is using almost 1.6 GB by itself. And all the old svchost programs run on single threads, it isn't evenly spread across his cores. You can easily see whether it is in the CPU Usage History graphs in Task manager.

In regards to Process Explorer, you can actually use it to see which exact service is running:

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/yongrhee/2012/06/28/how-to-troubleshoot-service-host-svchost-exe-related-problems/

Each instance of svchost.exe represents a number of services that handle everything from device drivers to network I/O and so forth. Tracking down which specific service is running amok is one of the main reasons they split it into separate processes in Win 10 as of build 14942.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-build-14942-ends-svchost-ram,32832.html

But he is using windows 7.

Yes, he is running Windows 7. Which still bundles together numerous services under each single instance of svchost.exe. And problems, such as trying to track down one specific service that goes haywire and consumes 100% of one thread, is why in Win 10 build 14942 they split them up into separate processes for each service.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

So, I did a fresh windows install, and, even without any programs yet installed, the problem persisted.

While you should still try Process Explorer and examine the specific svchost.exe to see which services it's running, I'd be willing to bet it's Windows Update behind it. The Windows Update client has been updated dozens of times, and a fresh install would have an older one. One of the background tasks, wuauserv (which runs as part of one of the instances of svchost.exe) is pretty notorious for exactly this problem. To verify, you could use a command prompt and "net stop wuauserv" to kill the service and see if your CPU usage drops back to normal. Or disable Windows Update from msconfig and reboot.

If that is the culprit, you can try running Windows Update and seeing if it will finish on its own in a timely fashion. But the same issue that can max out a core with the background task can also cause Windows Update to take forever (8+ hours) or not finish at all. If it looks like it's getting stuck, try this:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3136677/microsoft-windows/how-to-speed-up-windows-7-update-scans-forever.html

 

[Ghost Lightning]

So, I did a fresh windows install, and, even without any programs yet installed, the problem persisted.

While you should still try Process Explorer and examine the specific svchost.exe to see which services it's running, I'd be willing to bet it's Windows Update behind it. The Windows Update client has been updated dozens of times, and a fresh install would have an older one. One of the background tasks, wuauserv (which runs as part of one of the instances of svchost.exe) is pretty notorious for exactly this problem. To verify, you could use a command prompt and "net stop wuauserv" to kill the service and see if your CPU usage drops back to normal. Or disable Windows Update from msconfig and reboot.

If that is the culprit, you can try running Windows Update and seeing if it will finish on its own in a timely fashion. But the same issue that can max out a core with the background task can also cause Windows Update to take forever (8+ hours) or not finish at all. If it looks like it's getting stuck, try this:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3136677/microsoft-windows/how-to-speed-up-windows-7-update-scans-forever.html

Hotdog! You hit the nail right on the head.
http://puu.sh/sElqd/94317a87eb.png
You can see the update service there running on the svchost that was maxing out the thread. I disabled updates, and now I'm averaging 0 - 1% CPU usage at idle, and under 2 GB of RAM usage. Oddly, it looks like my taskbar previews no longer show miniaturized images of the window as a result.
Either way, thanks for your, and everyone else's suggestions!

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Glad to pin it down, but you should probably at least grab all the security updates. That last link has fairly painless instructions you can follow. There are literally thousands of vulnerabilities that have been patched, so running an unpatched system really isn't safe. It shouldn't take more than 30-40 minutes depending on your connection speed.