Are these safe to use?

[80-watt Hamster]

Well, mainly I want to do an upgrade just because it seems that even common everyday programs are getting heavier in terms of required hardware. Programs that used to be very fast now seem like they're much slower. We're not even talking about games here; we're talking about a damn web browser or desktop applications for God's sake. Windows, of course, has gotten heavier and I know that which is probably adding to the software load. I can only imagine that much of that added weight is all the damn fixes that software companies have had to put into their code to fix the various processor security vulnerabilities that have come about lately.

At any given time when I'm using my system, overall processor usage is hovering at around 20%. I could be looking at my screen, not typing or moving my mouse and yep... 20% overall usage across all twelve threads.

I was thinking about getting a 5800X3D, but the question is... Will it be worth it? Will it give the kind of performance boost that I'm looking for?

The one thing that I've noted, at least with my system, is that Cinebench R23 scores on my system are at least a hundred points lower than typical systems with the same CPU in it. Why that is? I don't know. Is it the memory timings? Again, I don't know. There definitely seems to be some kind of performance bottleneck that's in my system that's dragging everything else down.

It may be worth looking into background processes. The below is from my work laptop. Pretty sure most of that load is Task Manager. The only of my W10 installations that idles at 20% or more is a 2C4T i5-3220M-powered Thinkpad.

 

[GerKNG]

That's a bullshit reason.

but that's the reason.
you can easily pull 300W out of a folded metal 8 Pin.
a solid 8 Pin should have no problems at 350-400W. (do you have a CPU that you can put in the socket that pulls 350W+? ... no)
so why would need another(!) one?

 

[cvaldes]

At any given time when I'm using my system, overall processor usage is hovering at around 20%. I could be looking at my screen, not typing or moving my mouse and yep... 20% overall usage across all twelve threads.

Finally, a crucial piece of relevant information that should have been included in the first paragraph of your original inquiry.

This is not normal.

On my daily driver desktop Windows PC (Ryzen 7 3700X, 8 cores/16 threads), CPU usage when I'm just looking at a webpage is 1% sometimes nudges up to 2%.

My Mac mini 2018 (Intel Core i7, 6 cores/12 threads) also behaves similarly. Intel Power Gadget says Core Load is 1.4% if I'm just reading a webpage.

You have a software issue that is eating up CPU cycles. Hell, if my phone had a 20% load at idle, the battery would be dead in 90 minutes. That's crazy.

It is a better use of resources to fix a software problem rather than throwing more dollars/hardware at it.

 

[trparky]

You have a software issue that is eating up CPU cycles.

I'm wondering if I should do an old-fashioned nuke and repave of the system.

 

[cvaldes]

I'm wondering if I should do an old-fashioned nuke and repave of the system.

It is frequently suggested advice, especially for Windows PCs. If you have a spare drive to experiment with, this is a risk free experiment.

I'm guessing that a clean install of Windows on a blank drive won't make it worse. On first boot, you will likely see some CPU activity as the operating system tries to index everything so just leave it alone for a few hours/overnight and check CPU usage after it's all done "optimizing your system."

 

[trparky]

It is frequently suggested advice, especially for Windows PCs. If you have a spare drive to experiment with, this is a risk free experiment.

I'm guessing that a clean install of Windows on a blank drive won't make it worse. On first boot, you will likely see some CPU activity as the operating system tries to index everything so just leave it alone for a few hours/overnight and check CPU usage after it's all done "optimizing your system."

Sadly, I don't have a spare drive to experiment with. I'd basically just backup the system as is, do the reload, and then reload stuff and pick things out of the backed-up data to restore it. Things like documents, pictures, etc.

 

[Nike_486DX]

8+4 pin for cpu is only relevant to provide stable 300W for your 3950X/5950X 5ghz project. These same cpus will work without a hitch with 8pin "only", if you dont push them. As for the 5800x 3d, you should check what kind of power consumption it is (way below 150W), its like buying some nitro for your toyota camry, makes no sense. Invest into a better gpu instead, and stick to a B450 mobo with nice vrm, forget about 8+4 nonsense)

 

[cvaldes]

Sadly, I don't have a spare drive to experiment with. I'd basically just backup the system as is, do the reload, and then reload stuff and pick things out of the backed-up data to restore it. Things like documents, pictures, etc.

Your call.

You could bring it to a local mom-and-pop PC shop or repair service and have them poke around since you don't show any inclination into finding out what's eating up your system's performance.

One thing for sure: a new power supply (nor this power cable adapter) isn't going to fix your excessive CPU usage.

 

[trparky]

Your call.

You could bring it to a local mom-and-pop PC shop or repair service and have them poke around since you don't show any inclination into finding out what's eating up your system's performance.

One thing for sure: a new power supply (nor this power cable adapter) isn't going to fix your excessive CPU usage

I did get the average CPU usage down to 5% by killing off a bunch of stuff at startup and then doing a reboot so I guess that's a good start. But the things I did kill off at startup I just can't believe that they were the ones that were contributing to the issue. Most of these programs were the kind of programs that load, run minimized until I need them, and should have been quiet.

Average usage is about 4 to 5% whereas before it was nearly 15% at idle.

 

[Nike_486DX]

I did get the average CPU usage down to 5% by killing off a bunch of stuff at startup and then doing a reboot so I guess that's a good start. But the things I did kill off at startup I just can't believe that they were the ones that were contributing to the issue. Most of these programs were the kind of programs that load, run minimized until I need them, and should have been quiet.

View attachment 265416

Average usage is about 4 to 5% whereas before it was nearly 15% at idle.

too much viruses in there

 

[trparky]

too much viruses in there

Excuse me? No viruses here man, MalwareBytes has given this system a clean bill of health.

 

[cvaldes]

Startup apps aren't the only things that are running.

I would switch to the Processes tab and sort by CPU usage.

I'd also disable all browser extensions temporarily. There are more than a few browser extensions that are poorly written and Google Chrome is a well known resource pig to begin with.

Not sure why you are running two cloud storage services (iCloud and OneDrive). There are probably other question marks but it's really you who needs to go through them one at a time and decide whether or not you need that software. You list your location as North East Ohio, USA but Windows starts a Korean messaging service (KakaoTalk). Perhaps you have a good reason for it and we're not going to go through every single process you are running.

 

[trparky]

OneDrive is my main cloud storage; iCloud is mainly for my photos from my phone. I could kill off the iCloud Drive part of iCloud since I don't use that aspect of iCloud.

As for extensions, I don't use that many extensions in Edge.

I did some cleaning just now of some extensions that I rarely use but even with that I only removed about four extensions. Now it's down to four with one disabled. CPU idle is about 3 to 4% now. RAM usage has also plummeted like a damn rock from nearly 20 GBs of usage to 16 GBs.

 

[Jism]

Additional 4 pin headers on top of an already 8 pin existing header is only to "distribute" the power more even, rather then doing anything beneficial.

There's no way you could even get close to the limit of how a VRM is designed on a motherboard in regards of power delivery. I mean today motherboards do have overbuild and up to 2000 amps (!) even for just CPU power supply. It's insane.

 

[Nike_486DX]

Excuse me? No viruses here man, MalwareBytes has given this system a clean bill of health.

i mean, why all the weird "auto garbage collection" programs in there, they just waste your resources for nothing ~ "resource viruses". Using common sense instead, plus disabling auto updates, will greatly reduce background cpu usage. 0 to 1% at idle is what you should expect

 

[cvaldes]

See? From 20% CPU usage to 3.5% without spending a single dollar on hardware. A discussion thread with 41 comments and only a handful of them that address your actual situation. It took until comment #25 to get you to cough up the reason. And there are still people who are commenting about this power cable adapter.

I did some cleaning just now of some extensions that I rarely use but even with that I only removed about four extensions. Now it's down to four with one disabled. CPU idle is about 3 to 4% now. RAM usage has also plummeted like a damn rock from nearly 20 GBs of usage to 16 GBs.

Keep plugging away until your system reaches a point where you find its performance acceptable.

And make a note that when you want to buy something state WHY first. What. When. Where. How much.

Stick of PC RAM. Shoes. Television set. Automobile. House. Insurance policy. Hotel reservation. BBQ grill.

 

[trparky]

Did some additional tweaking and a full reboot. After watching the indexer want to eat about 10% of the CPU for about ten minutes after boot doing God knows what, idle CPU is down to about 2%.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Amazon.com : 8 pin to 4 pin cpu power adapter

Obviously, new motherboards are coming with additional power inputs and a lot of us still have older power supplies and by older, not too old but just not ones that have the extra 4-pin cable. I was on another web site talking about a potential future build and I said that if I were to upgrade to the kind of motherboard that he was suggesting, I'd have to buy a new PSU. Then he suggested what I linked to above.

I thought these weren't possible. That the input on that side of the motherboard requires different voltages through the 4-pin than the 8-pin. And let's not even get started on pulling more power through the 8-pin. Is it even safe to use?

Yeah you should be alright with the 8pin to 8+4pin adapter. As Toothless suggested, don't do the 4pin to 8pin of your CPU will pull above 130w.

I guess my next question is... Why are the motherboard manufacturers requiring an extra 4-pin connector or even another 8-pin connector?

Extra CPU wattage needed. For dual CPU systems, each CPU needs one.

 

[trparky]

Holy crap guys, simple changes to my system have resulted in the system responding much faster. There's no longer that noticeable hesitation in... just about everywhere in Windows.

I do have one program that seems to take a long time to load no matter what I do. It's a program that uses that Chrome-like shell thing that a lot of developers like to use to make cross-platform desktop apps with.

Edit: Electron. It's called Electron.

 

[trparky]

Cinebench R23 Scores (Before Overclocking)
Single Core: 1095
Multi Core: 8144

Cinebench R23 Scores (After Overclocking, all-core 4.8 GHz)
Single Core: 1247 (13.88% improvement)
Multi Core: 9364 (14.98% improvement)

Seems to be an interesting bump in performance here.

Honestly, I've always wondered why my system lagged so much behind in terms of Cinebench R23 scores.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Yep evga does send 4x4 cpu cables with higher watt psu's.