Slow Running PC Question

[smartcanadian]

Hi all,

About three years I got my wife a custom-built PC with the following specs:

Asus B85M-E motherboard
Intel i7 4790k
8 MB Ram
1 TB HDD
Windows 10
No stand-alone gfx card.

The PC is excruciatingly slow (much slower than the older one running on an i7 3770k).

She is not running any resource-hungry applications such as a graphics editing or a game.

Wondering whether it is the RAM (8 GB Ram instead of 16) or the lack of a separate gfx card or both that could be causing this slowdown.
Note; it has always been a slow one but when I got down to updating the printer driver in that PC today I realized how slow it is and decided that it is time to resolve the issue.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thans a lot.

 

[prince_xaine]

Do you have the OS on the HDD?
If so: when was the last time you defragged it?
If so: have you thought about upgrading the PC to a much faster SSD?

 

[Doctor Rob]

SSD FTW!!.. but also make sure she is not using all the disk space, ram, etc.. just check it.. and also do a disk scan.. it could be the drive is not healthy.

Another good test is boot in safe mode and see if its still super slow or not.. IF its not then its something you have running in the background.

Also check the power settings.. like make sure the CPU is not set to limit to like 5% etc..

 

[wishthinker]

My first thought would be to check for malware and viruses. I've cleaned computers loaded with them and they slowed to a crawl.

 

[smartcanadian]

Thanks a lot for all the tips.
So, I have done the following:
Checked for viruses/malware. It is clean.
Defragged.

Still no improvement.

I have the OS in a HDD, and not SSD.

So, could it be any of the following?
1. HDD slow (I would be surprised if this is the reason because this PC appears to be slower than a lot of the modern-day HDDs)
2. 8GB RAM is not enough
3. Needs a stand-alone gfx card.

Will keep you'll posted.

Thanks again.