Can A Hard-Drive Slow Down a CPU?

Hi guys. I was looking at an older system. When programs aren't open the system uses 2-7% of the CPU with an occasional 24% bump. But opening up Chrome or any program is likely to send the CPU to 100% for a moment. I know that the computer used to be a lot better with the CPU.

Do I require more CPU power due to the aging of the CPU (5 years)? Or can the hard-drive be forcing the CPU to work harder? Honestly, I don't know what to say about it. I just need a lot more CPU power to do things that usually took a lot less a few years ago.

I would be pretty confident that it isn't viruses or malware. I've run several scans over the past few months, and haven't connected to the internet for a long time. There are no suspicious files or anything. I'm sure it's not viruses/maware.

Does anyone have an idea why the CPU needs more power to do the things it did a few years back without an issue? Or is this normal aging? Thank you in advance!

 

Programs are updated over time, and the baseline hardware expectations rise accordingly. Developers assume there is more to work with,and programs end up using more resources. You may still be using chrome like you were a couple of years back, but the program silently updates itself, so it's not the same program you were using then. Similarly, the websites you're visiting have been updated over time.


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No. That's not the answer. Many of the programs haven't been updated. For example Windows Media Player, MS Paint, Photoshop, and the list goes on and on... have not been changed at all.

I worked on this computer for years, and gave it a break for around 8 months. I haven't returned to a computer after abandoning it for years. Most of these programs haven't been updated. So, this wouldn't be the answer.

Edit: Just to add. My homepage hasn't updated either. And IE isn't going to self-update itself.

 

As a hard drive fills it will get slower as it uses the slower inner parts of the platter.

A cpu will perform the same after 5 years of use assuming the cooling system is working properly.

 

this question is impossible to answer without knowing you configuration and OS.

in general, yes a HDD can slow down a CPU under specific situations. Most programs are loaded to and worked on the RAM so unless you are encoding large videos or streaming massive datasets which cannot fit in the RAM completely then yes the CPU throughput is affected. However, loading programs is mostly a HDD bound affair, a slow HDD can actually reduce CPU usage since it is sitting idle waiting for data so again, I can't say more without knowing your configuration.

 

If you're opening up Chrome then you must be on the internet. Sounds like you also haven't used this system in a while considering your statement "I was looking at an older system". It's known as technology creep (no not that weird nerd staring at you in cafe's), basically slowly over time you move with technology but take a step back five years and it all seems so slow to you, but since it was current at the time it seems plenty fast. You see this a lot with people that get SSD's and say, meh it's not that great, then at some point they have to use a computer with an old hard drive and think it's a lot slower than it used to be.

If you've been using this laptop all along, and this happened suddenly then likely something got installed or updated or whatever that makes it move more slowly. I would also defrag the hard drive too, but that wouldn't account for CPU spikes, although it could if it were waiting on data, then poof it got what it needed, then processed it quickly, then waiting again.

CPU's don't just slow down. They have a fixed "compute power" that won't change unless it's throttling due to heat or voltage.

 

Thanks for replying, but the "technology creep" is not an answer. Chrome was only used as an example, but I've tested it with Photoshop, MS Paint, Open Office, and a ton of other programs that didn't change.

I have been using this laptop all the time. In fact, I used this computer in August, and ran photoshop while looking at the CPU. It was fine at the time. In early October, the computer stopped working due to a Windows Update. I eventually did a system restore point. And fast-forward to January, Photoshop causes the CPU to spike to 100% for a moment or two. In the past, it had not gone that far. In other words, I looked at the CPU in August, and it didn't spike. The same program was creating a CPU spike in January (and the internet was disconnected during the time period). I had disconnected it during those months to prevent Windows Updates.

@Marksman30k,

Yes, I just wanted a general answer. I'll provide the configuration later. At the moment I just wanted to know if external factors such as the RAM and HDD can cause CPU spikes. This gives me an idea of how things work. Thank you.

@Meaker
I would fear that I might not have taken good care of the venting and cooling system. Is there a way to test for permanent or temporary damage on the CPU caused by a faulty cooling system?

Thank you all again for these answers.

 

How about a simple hardware answer? Any CPU will be faster than any HDD, I/O-wise. The CPU is usually always waiting for the HDD if it has to save/load data. If it's something like a web browser, usually you're not using the slower permanent storage at all (HDD, etc.) and are usually using RAM, which is also stupidly-faster than permanent storage. Maybe the only time you'll usually use the HDD with a web browser would be for storing cookies or loading them into temporary memory (RAM), as well as other save/load operations. So, for most of the time, the HDD is completely irrelevant, since most of those operations are maybe (at most) a KB or two at a time, which isn't a problem for either the CPU or HDD.

Now, specifically for Chrome, yes there are silent updates, but even then, the speed/bandwidth of your ISP connection is slower than a HDD, so you'd actually be bottlenecked by your Internet connection on that operation, not the drive. My laptop's processor is about a year or so older than your processor (Core 2 Duo L7500) and is even slower than the full-voltage C2Ds or the day, yet Firefox (what I use on it) and other program that are primarily Internet-dependent (say, OS/program updates) run just fine and fast on this machine, just as fast as Chrome/Firefox and updates run on my FX-6300-based desktop. My Internet-dependent programs can perform even better on-campus (50 Mb/s down) than off-campus at my apartment (6 Mb/s down) on my current-ish desktop build.

Anyway, I personally wouldn't worry about momentary 100% CPU spikes. Same thing happens on all four of my computers during their daily use (even with just a web browser) and it never affects my usage of those computers/programs at all. Is your computer freezing whenever there are these 100% CPU spikes? If not, I wouldn't sweat it.

If there was damage to the CPU, you would have a dead computer. It's not like a hard drive where it'll (probably) give you the Click of Death for a little while before finally dying out. If any part of the CPU wasn't functioning, the whole thing will grind to a halt (i.e., it's screwed). If you want to make sure that you prevent this, just make sure that you're not blocking any of the cooling vents and (if needed, or if you'd like cooler temperatures), repaste the CPU with fresh thermal paste (like Arctic Silver 5 or the like), though that's a bit more complicated than taking a can of air to the vents.

Anyway, that's about as general an answer as you can get .

 

Is this a trick question?

Your hard drive is your system volume. The response time of your system is directly affected by the speed of your system volume, but your CPU isn't actually slowed down. I guess the answers are: yes, the hard drive can slow the whole system down; no, the hard drive does not affect the speed of the actual CPU.

 

^^^ If anything, then "sort-of technically" the HDD is *always* slowing the CPU down, in the sense that the CPU is always waiting for the HDD and not the other way around. But for all practical purposes, the HDD and CPU don't really affect each others' performance in any way.

 

Hard drives are not bottlenecking the CPU (well, aside from them being slow) - it's just that with every program update, they become more and more resource hungry. The CPU load could also be a result of the many services that Windows is running in the background - their number increases over time with new installed programs and the latest Windows updates.

On sluggish websites on old machines: It because of the (over)use of JavaScript - not only is it inherently slow and resource intensive, but most websites load a of it from every corner of the world (check sites with NoScript and be amazed).

Contact forms, email subscription forms, fancy buttons and animations, video controls, analytics, social sharing buttons, comments - every damn thing must be downloaded and executed on your computer - heavy Web browsing has become as resource intensive as playing some old 3D games

 

You don't actually download the JavaScript, etc. from a website and run it locally. That's a **massive** security risk, not to mention very inefficient. Most websites I've seen run their services server-side and only provide code (to the browser) to accept user-side I/O (you sending data out to them, advertisements sending data to the webpage, etc.). Now, perhaps with a webpage with a literal ton of animated advertisements (like this, but animated), I could see it causing a non-trivial amount of lag. But a few animated ads, or mostly static ads that most websites display? Shouldn't have any noticeable performance impact user-side, aside from extra data being used (only a problem with cellular data and such with small data caps). But even assuming that static ads and a small handful of animated (or audio, even) ads do actually cause a significant amount of lag user-end, any sane and sensible person should already be using AdBlock Plus, NoScript, etc.

Also, you can use msconfig to disable certain services from running at startup, and you can configure programs to not update unless you give it permission to do so, which can also cut down on performance issues stemming from that. But even then, you're only still being bottlenecked by your ISP and not any of your local hardware. You'd have to be running something like a 1st-gen Atom or maybe a PIII in order to really be non-trivially bothered by current day-to-day software's demands (browser, word processor, etc.). Now, for games, engineering software, graphic design, etc., of course you'd have a decent amount of problems trying to run newer software on (very) old machines, but day-to-day stuff shouldn't be an issue for a 5-year-old computer like what OP is using.

 

Rick Ace, have you run chkdsk on the drive to see if any sectors have gone bad? Do you hear any clicking sounds when the drive is being used?

 

try increasing the ram or its time for cpu or laptop upgrade.

 

More RAM isn't going to do anything that actually deals with OP's stated problem.

 

Since the OP is being vague about his specific system configuration, we do not know if more RAM would help or not.

OP: give us ALL the details you can about your hardware and O/S, program, driver setup.

 

To be simple: No.
The CPU is its own thing and the HDD does its own thing.
CPU runs applications, HDD just loads them.
I guess you can say that an HDD does slow down your system, but not your CPU.

 

HDDs are definitely very slow, compared to the rest of the system (except maybe SD cards ). A SSD upgrade would be a great thing to have, regardless of the CPU spiking issue.