[SOLVED] not-so-new system being sluggish even though hardware usage is not at 100%

jv_guano

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Nov 7, 2007
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Hi all,

I have a bit of a concern.
My computer (granted, it is not the freshest out there) is just not performing adequately.
My daily usage is mainly browsing and I am quite undisciplined and have lots of tabs open; sometimes I use Lightroom Classic CC and it is also not the snappiest.

Especially when I use Chrome with my many tabs open, I can see in Task Manager that the Memory used hover around 30%, every other metric has negligible usage values.
Perhaps with a myopic view, that makes me think that my hardware is mostly underutilised and should thus perform more than adequately.

To test things further, I have installed Chrome Portable (so a 100% fresh, unused Chrome with only one tab open) and browsing is still sluggish, perhaps just a notch less than in my browser with gazillions of open tabs.
Also, if I disregard resource-intensive Lightroom and decide instead to open pictures from File Explorer by launching Photos, it will take 2 seconds to actually open it. I would expect, I would want for that to be instantaneous!

Websites which I find to be particularly sluggish are reddit, gmail, google maps, google sheet, google news, or any other website which essentially has a bit more content than
simple text and perhaps one picture.

My system specs are:
picoPSU-150-XT–150 W
ASUS H97I-plus, integrated GPU Intel HD4600
i5-4690T
16 GB RAM Crucial Ballistix Tactical (8GBx2) DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) UDIMM 240-Pin Memory
Samsung 970 EVO 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 (running the OS and softwares)
Samsung 860 QVO 4 TB (storage)
(every drive has at least 20% free space)
Connected to internet via Gigabit LAN, DL 70 Mbit/s, UL 20 MBit/s
Win10 Pro x64

Again, I am aware this is of course not the most brand new PC out there; it bugs me though that it always feel so unresponsive when it didn't use to and when Task Manager seems to show that the hardware is always underutilised!
Short of formatting and reinstalling the OS and taking it from there, I would really appreciate any help in trying to figure out why the sluggishness, thanks!