Performance · 7 min read
Why Is My Laptop So Slow? Perth Heat Edition
A slow laptop in Perth is rarely one single problem — it's usually heat, clutter, and an ageing drive stacking up. Here's how to work out which one is hurting you most, and what actually fixes it (hint: "buy more RAM" is usually not the answer).
1. Check if it's thermal — the Perth summer test
Between November and March, hot CPUs throttle. Badly. A healthy CPU runs at its full clock speed; a throttling one drops to 30–40% of rated speed to protect itself from overheating. You won't see a warning — you'll just see everything feel sluggish.
How to test:
- Download HWiNFO (free).
- Run Sensors only, then look at your CPU package temp while browsing or working.
- If it's idling at 70°C+ or hitting 95°C+ under any load, the cooling is the problem.
Fix: a workshop clean-and-repaste (we pull the laptop apart, blow out years of Perth dust, replace the dried thermal paste). Typically $120 – $180 (see repair pricing) and it gets most laptops back to near-new temps. We see 10–20°C drops routinely.
2. Check if it's your drive
If your laptop is 5+ years old and still has a spinning hard drive (HDD), that's your bottleneck — no software tweak will help. A mechanical drive simply can't keep up with modern Windows.
How to check: Open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) → Performance tab → click Disk. If "Active time" is at 100% while the machine feels slow, your drive is maxed out.
Fix: swap the HDD for a SATA SSD. We charge $149 – $279 for an SSD upgrade including cloning your data across, with the drive itself on top (a decent 500GB–1TB SATA SSD runs about $60–120). This is the single biggest speed-up you can buy for any laptop older than 2019 — the difference between 3-minute boots and 20-second boots.
We cover this in depth in our SSD vs HDD upgrade guide.
3. Check if it's software bloat
Task Manager → Startup tab. Anything with "High" impact that you don't actively use — disable it. Common offenders:
- iCloud, OneDrive, Google Drive (if all three are installed, pick one)
- Adobe Creative Cloud background services
- Steam, Epic, Ubisoft auto-launchers
- Old printer utility bloatware (HP, Epson, Brother)
Then run Settings → Apps → Installed apps and uninstall anything you don't recognise or haven't used in 6 months. You'll almost always find 20–30 things that came bundled with the machine or a one-off installer.
4. Check if it's RAM
This is usually the last thing to suspect, not the first. On Windows 11 with 8 GB, you can run out of memory with 20 Chrome tabs and a few apps open — the system pages to disk and everything grinds.
Test: Task Manager → Performance → Memory. If "In use" is consistently at 90%+ while working normally, you'd benefit from a RAM upgrade. If it sits at 60%, RAM is not your problem and adding more won't help.
Most modern laptops take 16 or 32 GB max. Fitting is $79 – $179 depending on how far the machine has to come apart, plus the cost of the RAM itself — see our repair pricing for the full list.
5. Check if it's malware
A laptop that got fast-then-slow-then-fast-again over days is often infected. Run the free Malwarebytes scanner (malwarebytes.com), or if you're unsure, book a virus & malware removal — flat-rate service that also covers browser hijacks and unwanted toolbars.
Not sure what's slowing it down?
Bring it into the Midland workshop for a free diagnostic. We'll tell you which of the five is actually your problem — and we won't try to sell you on fixes you don't need.