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i keep having this issue where one core of my cpu will get held high after a few minutes to an hour. htop wont reveal any culprits, the highest process can vary from chromium to steam to even xorg, ksysguard, and kwin_x11. when i originally found this issue i was using ubuntu 20.04

one of the biggest effects of this is that the ui gets sluggish and unresponsive and any video playing will drop frames and audio and stutter horribly.

the only thing i found is that hitting ctrl alt f2, signing in and using htop the cpu usage will disappear, but reappear when i go back to the gui

my specs are:

  • AMD FX-6300 Six-Core Processor
  • MSI 970A-G43 motherboard
  • AMD Radeon RX480 GPU

so far i have tried:

  • wiping hard drive and installing kubuntu 20.10
  • wiping hard drive and installing kubuntu 18.04
  • installing the official amd video drivers
  • switching web browsers
  • preforming an exorcism

nothing so far has helped me :(

Stella Foxxie
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    If htop doesn't show high CPU use from any process, how did you come to the conclusion that your problems are due to not enough available CPU? – Nmath Oct 23 '20 at 18:52
  • it will show that one core and one thread are at ~100% but no consistent process that is utilizing it – Stella Foxxie Oct 23 '20 at 19:24
  • So the usage is spread across valid processes? If that's the case, it's more likely that your CPU is insufficient for the tasks you've asked of it. Unfortunately the AMD FX series has aged very poorly. The fact that the problem persists over a reinstall also supports this hypothesis. – Nmath Oct 23 '20 at 20:03
  • but its only one core, all other cores are idle at < 10% usage and it works perfectly fine for a while before one core breaks, i think i might've fixed it though? i had a faulty ps2 keyboard plugged in and after removing that i haven't had the symtoms. i bet posting this will jinx it though – Stella Foxxie Oct 23 '20 at 20:08
  • Many processes only use a single core. Actually, this is the reason the FX series has aged so poorly, the single core performance is pretty bad compared to similar CPUs in the same price range released at the same time. – Nmath Oct 23 '20 at 20:12
  • I am actually going to beg to differ on the FX CPUs. I own 2 of them, a FX-4300 Quad and a FX-8350 and neither of them have issues when it comes to Linux and the cores on them. Maybe I got lucky on mine, but I can only report what I see. The only issue I have bumped into with my MB of the FX-4300 is that the USB 3.0 Chipset on it doesn't work well with Linux. If something is plugged into it the system works like garbage with high CPU usage. So, I added a PCIe USB 3.0 card and it works great with that. – Terrance Oct 23 '20 at 20:46
  • yeah i didnt fix it, fun... – Stella Foxxie Oct 23 '20 at 23:14
  • I guess your issue could also be the Radeon card. As much as they are supposed to work with Linux, I have had issues with them in the past. Try using the graphics drivers from a PPA instead of the official ones: https://askubuntu.com/a/939693/231142 My server has a Radeon card in it and those drivers seem to work great with the installation. – Terrance Oct 23 '20 at 23:39
  • Does your MB have latest Bios? Might be worth a try. – Artur Meinild Oct 30 '20 at 08:48
  • i fixed it! it was caused by a crappy wifi card from ebay – Stella Foxxie Oct 31 '20 at 18:09

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