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I'm having a problem with my girlfriend's PCs where CPU0 gets a constant 30-50% load. I'm not sure which process is using it but it keeps the CPU on boost clock at all times, and fans ramped up a bit. This is annoying since I can't even be sure of which process uses this specific thread.

I checked the windows event logs and didn't see any error or warning. Is there a way for me to find which process is responsible of this ? I see that Hardware Interrupts stays fairly high with a constant 2 to 3% usage.

The PC is running Windows 10 with the latest update. Drivers seem up to date and the problem surfaced about 2 weeks ago.

Edit: As harrymc suggested in the comments, it doesn't do it in safe mode however. Could it be a driver issue ?

Thank you for your help, you will find below some screenshots to illustrate my problem :

HWMonitor, you can see that CPU0 is at 34% load, preventing the CPU to lower it's clock.

HWMonitor

Task Manager : You can see that System Interrupts is at 3.7% usage. Which seems odd, on my other PC it never goes over 0.1. Could it be the culprit ? What does System Interrupts mean ? Task Manager

Task Manager Performance Tab : This is what I always see, CPU-0 usage stays high but stable, while all the other cores are idling Task Manager CPU Usage

Edit 2: Here is a process explorer screenshot (Edit 3: taken as administrator) enter image description here

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  • Does this happen if you boot in Safe Mode?
    – harrymc
    Sep 29, 2018 at 17:58
  • I didn't try it, I'll try as soon as I can and report back
    – Drewman
    Sep 29, 2018 at 18:07
  • Thank you harrymc, you had a good point : It doesn't do it in safe mode. I'll update my question.
    – Drewman
    Sep 29, 2018 at 19:16
  • Task Manager may not be showing all processes. Use Process Explorer to view processes, sorted by "CPU time" in descending order. Please post a screenshot.
    – harrymc
    Sep 29, 2018 at 19:54
  • I added a process explorer screenshot in my question after a fresh restart. As you can see, system interrupts is still high on CPU.
    – Drewman
    Sep 29, 2018 at 20:19

1 Answer 1

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More than three years later, and for posterity, I have found the solution!

The front panel audio connector of the case must have been at fault : disconnecting the front panel audio cable from the motherboard fixed the problem. It was a 10 years old case that has now been replaced by a newer one.

I tried to disconnect everything during my tests : GPU, USB devices, secondary hard drives... Everything but the front panel cables...

Good PC cases matter, don't cheap out on it!

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