New
#21
Well yeah, since it seems to be hardware related. some hardware floods the CPU with IRQs (Interrupt requests) which limits the CPU capacity for other processes. In the worst case, since IRQs are prioritized, the computer becomes sluggish and there is no fun in that.
Those "surplus" IRQs can be caused by a lot of items starting with defective cables (HDD, Network), defective controller (HDD, Network, Video), defective devices (HDD, Network, Video, USB), quite almost everything that is allowed to generate IRQs could be responsible. I'm not so deep into Perfmon that I could pinpoint the real reason, so my advice would be to unhook everything that's not absolutely necessary and see if the count goes down then reattach the devices one at a time and monitor the behaviour.