I have a 2018 Mac Mini i7 with 32gb Ram. I have been having strange performance issues lately. I decided to reinstall the OS but it's still happening. I think I noticed the problems initially when I installed Mac OS Ventura. So i decided to go backwards to Monterrey but the issue is still happening. It could have something to do with some random update, I'm not sure. The problem is that everything is suddenly slow and laggy. Trying to watch a movie in preview is suddenly choppy. Trying to load a Windows 11 or Windows 10 VM is painful. Everything used to be so quick, now it's so slow.

I was thinking it could be a hardware issue, but i'm not even sure where to look. The CPU isn't maxed and nothing seems to be out of the norm. Everything is just... slow.

I am 95% convinced that it is some OS update, but again, I have no idea where to even start looking.

Thanks