Question: I'm on an i7 core but monerod consumes up to 300% CPU at times. When I am catching up on the blockchain, it renders my computer nearly unusable. Is this normal?

When the chain is synced, CPU use is OK.

Answer: 
Basically what jwinterm said.

I think your best bet, assuming you want to do something else with your computer while catching up rather than catch up ASAP, would be to add `--prep-blocks-threads 1` (or 2; it defaults to 4) to your command line. This will make it use only one (or two) core(s) to compute POW while in "catch up" mode.
I think it tries to sync as fast as possible and the verification is CPU intensive. I believe there are options to limit the bandwidth usage in the daemon, or you could just limit the resource usage of the daemon from Windows or Linux.