PSA: High CPU clocks/power consumption on idle on Ryzen CPUs caused by Windows Image Acquisition (WIA service)

[undertaker2k8]

As my posts on this thread indicate https://hardforum.com/threads/5900x...ge-when-gaming.2011653/page-2#post-1045132556, myself and many other users have been plagued by high core clocks and power consumption on Ryzen CPUs when the machine is doing very little. In my case the CPU was idling at 4.5 Ghz constantly using over 65W. After months of debugging on and off, updating BIOS, chipset drivers, and the usually blamed HW utils like iCue, Armory Crate, Precision X1 etc. one by one, turns out it was Windows Image Acquisition (WIA service) causing the problem. I suspect it's related to a scanner or webcam driver timeout issue but restarting the service and putting it on manual immediately brought the CPU clock down from 4.6 Ghz to 3.2 Ghz. Posting this as a new thread in the hopes it saves someone a lot of time debugging.
PS: To be sure, other programs/services may cause it too but in my case none of the usual suspects on the interwebs were the culprit...not sure if this applies to Intel CPUs but very well may.