Using an SSD for the boot and a 4TB HDD for games on my desktop.
As far as the laptop situation goes, I initially assumed it was a Zombieload update on Windows fucking up my cpu speed since everything else looked fine. Did a system restore that took forever, but seemed to reset fine, but the CPU throttle persisted. Shut it down, and when I turned it on again, I got the "Preparing Automatic Repair" boot up screen.
On the recovery options, an Admin account wasn't detected so I couldn't reset or even start windows in safe mode. Shit sucks, so I bought a new laptop :/