In recent years it is a much leaner piece of software. My sis-in-law runs it on her tri-core AMD Phenom II 720 (not exactly a powerhouse processor) and she has no problems with system resources being eaten up, even with all the nonsense she does on it.

I think the PC should still work fine as is and said as much. A faulty part/corrupt OS install/bad driver(s)/malware/bloatware/overheating is what I'd be looking at. It is worth pointing out a performance bottleneck in an otherwise high-end machine though.

The other big issue relates to heat, and a 7,200 rpm doing any work puts off a good amount of it inside a notebook. Remember that there's a discrete GPU and a quad-core i7 in this notebook already. As grizy correctly pointed out, the CPU could be throttling back due to overheating.

Drives aren't comparable to CPUs/GPUs are far as heat output but a full size 7,200 can exceed the heat output of an SSD by 20C, and I imagine that number is greater here given the smaller surface of 2.5" 7,200 RPM drives. Given the lower wattage on newer SSD models that gap has probably increased even more.

My suggestion though was to reload Windows in an effort to get past the bloatware and eliminate the possibility of a bad OS install. But if it's a temperature problem under load that isn't due to a bad fan or shoddy heatsink installation, he'll have to find a way to reduce internal heat and there are only so many practical ways to accomplish that in the case of a brand new laptop.

Firefox had lots of memory taken because it just came out of sleep mode and had about 20 tabs loaded on it.

When I see 100% cpu spikes it's usually in the CPU usage history where I can see it has spiked up too 100%, not watching each program and their cpu usage individually.

I have l702x. I think I turned off the turbo boost, maybe in bios. The power settings you asked about are in the control panel.

Shouldn't have to turn off turbo boost to get it to work though. That's one of the best features of the processor. By the sound of the CPU history there's some kind of crappy bundled processes or malware eating up CPU resources. I'd reload.

OK. I was actually wrong. I have Turbo Boost enabled. I think I deleted the Turbo Boost monitor and all that crap though. I didn't have that issue with this l702x but before this one I had one shipped that had major USB 3.0 issues and it was also having the CPU spike issue you are referring to. I can't remember how I fixed it because the USB 3.0 crap got worse and worse until they just replaced the laptop.

There isn't a lot of bloatware on Dell computers anymore. Not like the last Dell I saw several years ago anyway. The lower amount of bloatware and the processing power of these new processors makes me think bloatware shouldn't even be an issue at all unless you are doing extreme performance stuff. I'd try the Turbo Boost monitor that Dell installs 1st. That is useless.

Mine does great for audio production btw so there is some issue with yours. I have had 30-40+ audio tracks with plugins going and it doesn't even hiccup. It gets kind of warm when playing some games though. I won't be playing games on it after next week.

did you change your power settings to high?
btw, firefox is buggy, I have even better desktop and need to restart firefox every 3 hours or so because it starts eating lots of rams by just being open.

Sounds like a heat problem as most have suggested. A clean install of Windows wouldn't hurt your troubleshooting either.

It may be helpful to set the affinity of the processes you use on a regular basis as a preventative measure.
http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...on-in-windows/

Another thing I didn't see anyone else suggest yet, in addition to maxing out your basic power options, is to make sure Windows isn't micromanaging how much of your processor can be used at any point in time. Check out step 5 of this other guide.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...gs-change.html