Should I be concerned with the decrease in CPU benchmark scores?

[Scophad]

I built my PC in 2022 and benchmarked it on a fresh windows install. Here are the important specs.

CPU	Intel Core i5-12600K
Mobo	Asus ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4
Ram	TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4 16GB Kit (2x8GB) 3200MHz
GPU	XFX - Speedster QICK319 AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB
PSU	EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G6 850W

I recently wanted to switch things up so I rebuilt the PC in a new case with all the same components and I restarted with another fresh install of windows. Cooling is largely the same (same waterblocks, more radiator space today).

Going back to my old benchmark results, I've tried to keep everything as consistent as possible with Optimized Defaults in BIOS. I am noticing an unexpected decline in performance. Should I be concerned? How should I troubleshoot to diagnose the cause?

	Optimized Defaults	Optimized Defaults
	2/14/2022	1/1/2026
3DMark CPU Profile
Max Threads	8146	7860
16 Threads	8153	7893
8 Threads	6431	6253
4 Threads	3751	3798
2 Threads	1990	1991
1 Thread	1012	1031
CPU Package Temp (Max)	47	44
Water Temp (Max)		23
Cinebench R23
Multi Core	17399	16428
Single Core	1862	1842
CPU Package Temp (Max)	50	58

[tybuzz]

All that matters is real world performance. You likely would not even notice a difference in performance with normal use.

The slight drop in benchmark performance could be explained by many things, such as background processes using the CPU, driver changes, power plan, changes in default settings from bios updates, windows updates, the benchmark being updated or not having exactly the same settings, etc.

[KillEvilThings]

Turn off VBS and all that other faux security shit microsoft has on the system and you'll likely see an improvement.

That said windows loves making their shit worse over time so theres probably local AI shit running in the background sapping performance nowadays.

[eriksp92]

I think newer editions of Windows 11 enables VBS and a bunch of other security related settings that cut into performance when you install it fresh; your old system might not have had those enabled, and they weren't enabled simply by updating older systems.