Desktop performance issues

Question

I have a desktop tech specs

Core i5 / 12 GB RAM /
HD Seagate Barracuda ST500DM002 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB

The problem that my PC simply freezes or slow downs during of compilation code/... or whenever I run multiple OS.. I'm trying to figure out why. Right now I'm running VMware and Mac os as the guest machine.. the host machine is Linux(Ubuntu)(as you can see from screenshot below).The same performance issues are on windows as host machine I just tried to compile my android project as result my pc became unresponsive for a few minutes. I took screenshot in the moment of compilation.. it shows that there is no system huge usage:

^{(Click image to enlarge)}

UPDATE: Screenshot of CPU temperature during compilation:

As I can see the temperature is around 50 C..

Can anyone explain why it happens? I assume it 's the Hard Drive fault..but It's about 2.5 years(1 year 10 mo power on hours).. I can afford hardware upgrade. but I need to know exactly what I needs to be upgraded.

Thank you!

Update: As Requested by @Leathe here are results of executing command which shows hard drive's read speeds:

/dev/sdb:
 Timing cached reads:   22754 MB in  2.00 seconds = 11386.87 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 388 MB in  3.00 seconds = 129.13 MB/sec

Answer 1

Let's see through a few possibilities that could contribute to the slowness and freezing.

CPU being the bottleneck:

In your case the issue could revolve around the allocation of CPU cores to the VM and how many are left for the host.

As you mentioned you've allocated 2 cores to the VM, meaning with your Intel i5 with 4 cores, you're left with 2 cores for the host. The host still has all 4 cores available, to all intents and purposes, but as long as the VM is under heavy load, the host is only really capable of using the remaining 2. However, in this case you're limiting the VM to 2 cores. It cannot use more than what it has been given.

If you are compiling a huge software on your VM, the 2 cores given to it might not be enough and it has to use effectively 100% of the processing power for that task (assumption: both cores are used for compiling). This causes all other software to act slow and even freeze the OS for a while, but only on the VM. The host shouldn't really be affected by this, which leads us to another possibility..

Hard drive being the bottleneck:

(Ninjaedit: If you're running your VM on a different HDD that the host is on, this really shouldn't be an issue)

The problem could also be in the hard drive. Not necessarily that the hard drive is damaged or getting old, but that the hard drive simply can't keep up with what it is supposed to be doing.

If you're running a VM on a hard drive and compiling on that same hard drive, while perhaps having additional tasks run on it from the host, this could potentially slow down everything because the hard drive just isn't fast enough, but not show up in the CPU usage.

The Virtual Machine:

The issue could also be at the VM end, if the settings are set up in an incorrect way that might cause a system freeze. The simplest way is to look at guides for the particular VM-software.

In the end.. the reason could be anything. Any of the suggested scenarios or none, something completely different that might be overlooked.

My suggestion before diving into buying a new CPU (if money isn't an issue, then why not?) is to step by step see what part is slowing down the system. Check if there are any bad sectors on the hard drive, check if all cores of the CPU are being utilized while compiling / doing other tasks. The list goes on.

Hope this helps at least a bit.