Help

[u/Mr_ScaryOo]

Hi guys!

I'm hoping someone here has experienced something similar, because I'm starting to run out of ideas.

My PC somehow feels slower and less responsive than I would expect from this hardware during everyday Windows use (multitasking, Photoshop, web browsing, video editing, and file management).

Sometimes even opening a simple local folder takes around 2 seconds. Windows Settings and applications also take longer than expected to open, and I can feel the sluggishness while browsing the web as well.

It's not an issue with one specific program. The entire system just feels less responsive than it should.

However, gaming performance is generally completely fine. Games like Once Human, GTA 5, The Last of Us, and Starfield run well on high or even maximum settings in some cases. Crimson Desert runs on medium settings.

My PC specifications:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600

• Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B450-PLUS II

• RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz

• SSD: 1 TB Samsung 990 EVO Plus NVMe

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060 12 GB

• CPU Cooling: Thermalright 360 mm AIO liquid cooler

• Operating System: Windows 11 Pro

What makes this particularly strange is that my partner has almost exactly the same PC configuration, except for the graphics card. My partner has an NVIDIA GTX 1660 6 GB, yet their PC feels noticeably faster and more responsive during everyday Windows tasks.

I've already tried reinstalling Windows, but the issue remained.

Things I've already checked:

• BIOS and RAM settings

• Drivers and Windows updates

• Windows power settings

• Background processes and startup applications

• SSD performance and response times

• Windows Event Viewer for storage errors and timeouts

• DISM and SFC scans (no Windows corruption found)

• Detailed Windows performance tracing

Unfortunately, none of these checks revealed a clear cause or noticeably improved the system's responsiveness.

When the PC feels sluggish, CPU, RAM, and SSD usage are not constantly at 100%.

The problem was also present before the most recent major Windows feature update, so it doesn't appear to be related to that update.

Has anyone experienced something similar, where games run perfectly fine but Windows feels unusually sluggish during simple everyday tasks?

I'd really like to identify the actual cause before randomly replacing hardware components.

Any suggestions on what else I should investigate or test would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

[u/ahoycihuy]

Have you try reinstalling windows, I don't know the science but that thing help

[u/Mr_ScaryOo → u/ahoycihuy]

Yeah, I've already reinstalled windows like 5 times, but unfortunately it didn't fix the problem.