My laptop was slow. Slower than what normally seemed possible. So I did the obvious. I checked everything I could. Backed up and reinstalled. Backed up and then put in a fresh install. That seemed to work slightly better but it still felt slow. I checked the graphics card. It wasn’t utilizing the powerful one it came with, so I again reinstalled drivers software, etc. Nothing seemed to work, but thankfully COVID kept my project load down somewhat so it wasn’t too necessary.

I tried running some benchmark tests using userbenchmark. And low and behold, my processor was being kneecapped at .8 Ghz. That’s a computer from the 90s, not one that’s supposed to play VR games and edit 4k video. So, I looked around on the internet and found something interesting. I figured I needed to replace the motherboard or even the processor potentially.

Inside my computer, there’s an actual physical line that detects temperatures, and when it gets triggered, brings the processor down to safe levels-i.e, 800 mhz. AND it can also get stuck. Go figure. So my computer was stuck at 800 MHZ for a year. The only solution, posted on the company website as well (besides smashing it), was to use a software suite that overclocks your machine. Which is great but in my opinion is completely inelegant for the solution. Sigh

Anyway, for those of you that use Dell, beware.