High powered laptop completely unusable

[crux]

Hi guys, hoping to get some help with an issue I've been having. I run several PCS laptops for my video editing business. One of which I'm having problems with. Purchased 8 months ago and as of late it has became unusable for anything graphically intensive.

It's almost like the CPU and GPU are throttled.

I ran a UserBenchmark for this laptop and GPU came out at 0%. (And yes, this is tested also with dGPU enabled to make sure it's not using integrated graphics. And yes, plugged into power, tested on Office, Gaming and Turbo).

I recently cleaned the laptop of dust but haven't repasted as it's only 8 months old.

Thermals are in normal ranges. Even video editing 1080p footage at a GPU temp of 45c is impossible.

Specs posted below.

Solutions I've tried:
- Driver updates and reinstalls after DDU
- Fresh Windows install from ISO
- Tweaking Control Centre settings
- Resetting BIOS to optimised defaults

I have heard a few users talk about upgrading to Windows 11 breaks Control Centre and then BIOS has to be reflashed. Brought this up to support and they've acted like they don't really know what I'm talking about so haven't had much luck. Just got told "You're on the latest BIOS already..."

Does anyone have any experience with this or have any suggestions for obvious fixes I may have missed? This is driving me mad because as far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with the laptop!

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi guys, hoping to get some help with an issue I've been having. I run several PCS laptops for my video editing business. One of which I'm having problems with. Purchased 8 months ago and as of late it has became unusable for anything graphically intensive.

It's almost like the CPU and GPU are throttled.

I ran a UserBenchmark for this laptop and GPU came out at 0%. (And yes, this is tested also with dGPU enabled to make sure it's not using integrated graphics. And yes, plugged into power, tested on Office, Gaming and Turbo).

I recently cleaned the laptop of dust but haven't repasted as it's only 8 months old.

Thermals are in normal ranges. Even video editing 1080p footage at a GPU temp of 45c is impossible.

Specs posted below.

Solutions I've tried:
- Driver updates and reinstalls after DDU
- Fresh Windows install from ISO
- Tweaking Control Centre settings
- Resetting BIOS to optimised defaults

I have heard a few users talk about upgrading to Windows 11 breaks Control Centre and then BIOS has to be reflashed. Brought this up to support and they've acted like they don't really know what I'm talking about so haven't had much luck. Just got told "You're on the latest BIOS already..."

Does anyone have any experience with this or have any suggestions for obvious fixes I may have missed? This is driving me mad because as far as I can tell, there's nothing wrong with the laptop!

How did you configure drivers after clean installing?

What process did you take to clean install?

 

[crux]

How did you configure drivers after clean installing?

What process did you take to clean install?

Hi Spyder, thanks for replying. It's your messages I've seen previously on similar issues.

I downloaded drivers from PCS website and installed in order. Any other configuration recommendations/concerns I should know about with PCS laptops?

For install I used ISO USB and wiped SSDs using cmd while installing. I didn't use any special software to clean out the SSDs.

 

[DarkPaladin]

It's potentially a tedious suggestion, but I'd personally suggest the following:

• Download and install Windows Media Creation tool (USB)
• Install a clean version of Windows 10 or 11 (whichever you're using)
• Let Windows install the updates for you
• Do NOT install the Control Centre
• Go through the list of driver downloads on PCSpecialist websites and check which ones may require updating yourself (e.g. Intel Chipset, NVIDIA GPU)

Once you're fully up to date:

• Open the NVIDIA Control Panel
• Set PhysX to NVIDIA GPU (RTX 3070)
• Manage 3D Settings
• Select a game/application (e.g. User Benchmark) and choose "prefer maximum performance"
• Select the battery icon at the bottom-right of the screen and (if available) choose "prefer maximum performance" (or whatever the equivalent is)
• Run User Benchmark and see if there's any improvements

Summary: Try installing a clean version of Windows without the Control Centre to see if it's potentially conflicting with software/hardware configurations.

 

[ubuysa]

With laptops you generally want to avoid generic drivers (Nvidia drivers from the Nvidia website, for example) because laptops often need customised drivers specific to the laptop.

In general, with a laptop, I'd advise allowing Windows Update to install all drivers that it can - you need to look in 'optional updates' to find them. For anything that doesn't have a driver afterwards, or any device that doesn't function properly, I would use the PCS drivers or the chassis manfacturer's drivers (if they make drivers available).