Using stress tests to pinpoint why your CPU is choking
I decided to simulate a full-on performance collapse to see what was happening. Under processor report 2026-088, I used CrystalDiskMark to rule out the SSD, then ran the 3DMark CPU benchmark. Single-core clocks were bouncing between 4.8GHz - 5.1GHz, and multi-core scores were fluctuating from 12000 - 13500 with the power wall hitting at 88W - 95W. Core voltage stayed between 1.25V - 1.35V. I capped it off with a Cinebench R23 loop and confirmed the bottleneck was just poor single-core scheduling. After optimizing, the minimum FPS during duels stayed stable and within 5% of the public benchmarks. It's better, but heavy particle effects still trigger the power limit, causing instant clock drops.