Question Potential CPU bottlenecking/under performing when it shouldn't?

[bootlegjedi]

Specs:
Windows 10
Nvidia GTX 1080
Intel core I5-6600k
16 GB RAM
Z170XP-SLI
I've been searching around the internet for hours trying to figure this out. Basically, what's happening is that when I play games (any game) my CPU is under extreme stress and my GPU hovers extremely low (often times around 6%).
This often happens a lot when playing games that aren't as CPU intensive such as Overwatch. For the most part, I'm able to play Overwatch with relatively no frame drops at a constant 144fps, but I have to set the game to a high priority in task manager and keep all the settings as low as possible. Like I said before, the game will use up nearly all of my CPU and only a small portion of my GPU, and as a result, I'm getting a lot of frame drops, stutters, and freezes. I've mostly dealt with this issue, but I recently bought Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville with a couple friends of mine. They are able to run the game perfectly fine, including my friend with a CPU that has identical specs as mine. However, the game uses more CPU than I have available and the game is constantly stuttering and freezing as a result.
Things I've tried: Updating my drivers (every driver I have available), used DDU and reinstalled my graphics drivers, gone to the bios and disable integrated graphics, tried messing with power management to boost performance, tried just about every I could find in the Nvidia Control panel, ran the game as admin, checked to make sure that the CPU's cores weren't overheating (they stayed around 50C), tried game booster for closing background processes, tried Intel's diagnostic software which found no issues with my CPU, checked to make sure that my GPU was in the correct PCIe slot.
To the best of my knowledge, my computer understands what CPU and GPU I have, and what preferred graphics driver I want to use, but my cpu is still bottlenecking. What do I do?

 

[Tolis_GR]

I'm able to play Overwatch with relatively no frame drops at a constant 144fps, but I have to set the game to a high priority in task manager and keep all the settings as low as possible.

It looks like something is taxing your cpu which is irrelevant to the game. Keep an eye on those background processes and check which one is using horse power. It may be easier to monitor is you run the game at window mode and select task manager window always on top. Eventually a clean install of Windows usually help in such problems.

 

[Vic 40]

You have the latest bios as well?

 

[Diddly]

run the game(s) in windowed mode and run task manager at the same time, see if you can see what's hogging the CPU

 

[bootlegjedi]

You have the latest bios as well?

I updated my bios not too long ago but the issue continued.

It looks like something is taxing your cpu which is irrelevant to the game. Keep an eye on those background processes and check which one is using horse power. It may be easier to monitor is you run the game at window mode and select task manager window always on top. Eventually a clean install of Windows usually help in such problems.

I've already tried to see whether there were other programs running, but the only thing using the CPU is the actual game. And what's really surprising me is that it's using at least 80% at all times, which makes running other things like discord choppy as well. If it could use more CPU I'm sure it would, but there just isn't more power for it to pull from it. I don't really have any type of disk to reinstall Windows, so I'd rather try to avoid that if possible for now. Any other thoughts?