Recently, I've been having a lot of slowdowns. I am thinking about what could be possible reasons. At the moment, I'm seeing a lot of refresh lines in games, even on just High settings. Are these lines indicative of a problem with CPU, or the GPU? Both are top of the line, and I just reinstalled windows, so I wonder if there's a problem with the parts themselves?

Okay, I'll check out the temps and the GPU's power usage when I get home. Thanks!

Alright, well, I don't think it is the GPU.

Every time I start up my computer, it takes longer and longer to boot up. When I finally get to the desktop, it takes like 30 seconds or more to load all the icons (about 20), and probably a minute just to be able to open any programs.

I have a CPU/RAM monitor on the side, and it shows constant activity while it is loading all the icons and everything. It also is starting to get choppy results during videos. When I play a game like Crysis, Dragon Age, or Starcraft 2, occasionally, if the screen is changing a lot at once, I'm seeing a lot of lines on the screen that stand out quite a bit. The RAM monitor doesn't show it exceeding about 30% unless something huge like SC2 is being played, then it goes to about ~55%. I don't know what it could be.

I played SC2 earlier, on ultra settings, and ran FRAPS. Mid-battle, I got a minimum FPS of 52, and average of 70. So, I don't think it is the graphics card...

I find the computer occasionally even freezing when I do something as small as clicking on a bookmarked page. Other times, I'll be typing too fast for the computer to keep up with it.

I've also disabled a lot of unnecessary startup services. I've checked using AVG, Spybot, and Adaware, and everything is clean.

Does anyone have any ideas where to check for bottlenecks now? Thanks!

Installed into a new partition, If I recall correctly, but I am not 100% sure. I think I manually deleted old system files, and did a couple of registry checks. I didn't back up the last time I was at a stable condition, so I'd probably have to transfer the most important data onto another drive, and then do a complete reformat, and reinstall back onto either of the hard drives.  I was just really hoping to avoid the hassle. Might have to though... :/

I think some of my problems point to a faulty hard drive (longer load times and such), but I was hoping maybe there was a bottleneck somewhere that was causing problems all around. I am not entirely sure, but I just bought a third hard drive on newegg. I'll attempt to RMA this current hard drive, and send it in once the new one comes in. God, I hope this makes things smoother.