[SOLVED] 10700K on stock speeds and Noctua NS-D15S - Is Prime95 hitting 90C normal?

Cyber_Akuma

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2002
451
12
18,785
These are the core parts of my system:

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Cyber_Akuma/saved/yWGfyc

I got the CPU as Open Box from Microcenter so I want to make sure there is nothing wrong with it, not planning to overclock it.

I am running a 10700K at stock speeds and motherboard settings, not overclocked. I tried to Google about this, but almost all the results were from people trying to overclock, not run at stock settings, and most were using an AIO.

After putting just the essentials together and running Memtext86+ for two passes successfully, I installed Windows on a temporary drive to perform CPU testing and benchmarking.

I installed MSI Afterburner to monitor temps and then ran Prime95 in testing mode to check stability and temperatures.

The temperatures seem somewhat high though considering it's not even overclocked.

When it started out, it would go between the mid- 60s and mid-80s:

View: https://i.imgur.com/mmHvusg.png


Eventually though, it would peak at the 90s from time to time:

View: https://i.imgur.com/UzgtBXT.png


It seemed to more or less then go in a pattern, about 14 minutes of running in the mid-60s, and then 7 minutes of peaking at the 90s, over and over:

View: https://i.imgur.com/cgSORsP.png


Right now, after having run for about 10 hours, I see that the max it has apparently hit is 93C (From when I am monitoring it manually it normally seems to peak at 90C, sometimes hits 91C for a split-second before going back down to 90C or lower)..... that's a mere 7C away from the limit... and this is on stock speeds and in a rather cool basement (The PC isn't going to stay there, I am just building it there for now). Though, it is also on an air cooler with one fan, but it's supposed to be one of the best coolers out there. So far all cores seem to more or less never go down from 4690MHz so I don't think it's throttling as I looked it up and 4.7GHz seems to be the standard Turbo across all cores at load. All the cores seem to more or less follow the same temperature pattern, with two of them running about 2-5C colder than the rest and a few sometimes having about 5 seconds of uneven jittering here and there, so I don't think the paste was applied unevenly.

Is this normal? It feels like this is way too high for stock speeds with how close it is to throttling, though I understand that Prime95 puts an extreme load on a CPU.... but wouldn't doing some tasks such as encoding x265 or hours of heavy file compression also put such a strain?

Normally in my testing after Prime95 has been successful for about 24 hours I do about 30-60 minutes of Furmark while Prime95 is running to ensure the motherboard/PSU can handle the strain of that power draw, but with the only GPU currently in the system being the CPU, I worry that just simply using CPU tasks alone is at it's limit, and then stressing the GPU on top of that could push it past it's throttle limit.

Also, looking at my cooler, I notice that the fan was placed higher than I thought. I thought I had placed it as low as it can go without touching the mount, but now that I look again it's not covering the bottom of the radiator while the top is blowing past the radiators and could likely be lowered a little more, not sure if just simply lowering the fan about 1-1.5 inches can make much of a difference though, how does this setup look?:

View: https://i.imgur.com/kWXPOuQ.jpg


View: https://i.imgur.com/nFS9TEh.jpg


View: https://i.imgur.com/wZhgmDu.jpg


Also considering adding a second fan, mostly because I have the room for it in my case, motherboard headers, and budget as well as it's pretty quiet right now so noise isn't a concern, though I heard a second fan on this cooler only tends to only drop temps by about 2-3C.

So do I need to be concerned about these temps? Is this normal for a 10700K on stock speeds with the latest version of Prime95? Would it be pushing it too far if I added Furmark for 30-60 min on top of this current test? Anything else anyone can suggest or advice they can give about this?
 
Solution
If your mainboard and current thermals allow for MCE, I'd leave it on; certainly all cores at 4.8-5.0 GHz will provide a benefit... (You can use Intel's XTU to specify the exact top clock speed you want with all cores active, and provide an AVX offset of 100, 200, or 300 MHz lowerclockspeed under those loads, whatever you think might be required, and/or, tweak the core voltage downward in .005V increments if you wish...)

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
It seemed to more or less then go in a pattern, about 14 minutes of running in the mid-60s, and then 7 minutes of peaking at the 90s, over and over:
What were the Prime 95 settings? It sounds like you did Blend mode. It should've been pretty steady throughout the entire run.
Recommended settings for thermal test: Small FFT, AVX/AVX2/AVX-512 off, 15-20mins

Also considering adding a second fan, mostly because I have the room for it in my case, motherboard headers, and budget as well as it's pretty quiet right now so noise isn't a concern, though I heard a second fan on this cooler only tends to only drop temps by about 2-3C.
It's true. The 2nd fan doesn't help much, but it's ultimately up to you if you think that's worth it considering the cost.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CompuTronix

Cyber_Akuma

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2002
451
12
18,785
What were the Prime 95 settings? It sounds like you did Blend mode. It should've been pretty steady throughout the entire run.
Recommended settings for thermal test: Small FFT, AVX/AVX2/AVX-512 off, 15-20mins

Yes, it was set to blend mode. I wanted to test both stability as well as thermals.

Is 20 minutes really enough to test thermals? I am assuming that's not a good test for stability and is for thermals only.
 

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
If you want to test thermal stability, you apply the settings I already posted.

15-20mins is enough time for the cooler to reach steady state.

^Computronix's Intel Temperature Guide. That's where I got that info from.
 

Cyber_Akuma

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2002
451
12
18,785
Ok, I'll do that after about 19-24 hours of this run just to confirm stability, it's at around the 14-15 hour mark now.

I am assuming that AVX was enabled by default for this blend test that I am currently running?

Also, would it still be safe to continue my original testing idea where after that 19-24 hour mark I would do 30-60 min of Furmark wile Prime95 is still running? Or would that be pushing the CPU (considering Furmark would be running on it's IGP) way too far and could damage it?
 

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
Blend runs everything though - smallest, small, medium, and large FFTs - doesn't make it a good stress test though.

On the newer versions of Prime 95, the AVX options are enabled by default, but they are far too hard with this program.
Small FFT, all 3 AVX options off, yields a heavy, steady load, that's not too high or too low, and it even produces thermals close to what a real AVX/AVX2 load would peak at.

Also, would it still be safe to continue my original testing idea where after that 19-24 hour mark I would do 30-60 min of Furmark wile Prime95 is still running? Or would that be pushing the CPU (considering Furmark would be running on it's IGP) way too far and could damage it?
IMO:
You do you, but to me, that's WAY to long for a thermal test. Thermal tests just need to run long enough to allow the cooler(s) to reach equilibrium. No need to run either Prime 95 or Furmark that long.

Voltage/Vcore tests on the other hand, yes - the longer the better. Prime 95 blend mode doesn't really do it, nor does Furmark really fit that category; again, they're better suited to testing your cooling.
The Intel Temperature Guide points out cpu temperature and voltage tests and how hard/soft(?) each one is.
As for gpu, the best tests are as many different apps you can. You can have a gpu OC pass Furmark, only for it to crash within minutes in a game, or it can even give you worse benchmark scores because it's not stable.
 

Cyber_Akuma

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2002
451
12
18,785
Well, I wasn't just testing the thermals alone but the stability of the CPU and RAM too. I thought that a Blend test does all of that at once, but now I see that I need to run different tests for thermals and for stability.

That being said, seems that while Blend with AVX is a good way to test stability, it's not a good thermal test, so I will do a Small FFT test with AVX disabled after this one for thermals. But I also wanted to confirm that the CPU and RAM are stable and working fine, especially singe both of them were open-box items, so this current Blend test with AVX would be a good one for that?

And yes, Furmark isn't the only GPU test I will be doing, that's more just testing to make sure that the CPU (including it's IGP) works and remains stable even under load of both the CPU and iGPU (as well as the Motherboard and PSU can handle it once I put a proper GPU in it).

I just wanted to make sure adding Furmark to this existing test that's already running hot might not be too risky.
 

Phaaze88

Titan
Ambassador
IMO:
Blend test is mediocre with both voltage and thermal tests. It does one of the 4 other tests at a time for a set period and moves to the next.
The 'gravity' of the loads during Blend doesn't change at all, except when it changes between tests.

Prime 95 + any AVX is too hard.
Ram: Memtest86 home edition(free), 8 passes, not the default 4.
 
Is this normal? It feels like this is way too high for stock speeds with how close it is to throttling, though I understand that Prime95 puts an extreme load on a CPU.... but wouldn't doing some tasks such as encoding x265 or hours of heavy file compression also put such a strain?

Also considering adding a second fan, mostly because I have the room for it in my case, motherboard headers, and budget as well as it's pretty quiet right now so noise isn't a concern, though I heard a second fan on this cooler only tends to only drop temps by about 2-3C.
What does you temp curve look like in bios and what's your temp target?
If fans are set up to quiet mode with a target at 90-95° then what you get is pretty normal, a quiet system that doesn't reach throttle temps and only revs up the fans in intervals to keep the CPU at below target.
Also your CPU staying at 4.7 indefinitely is NOT stock settings it has MCE enabled and possibly even PL limits removed which draws much more energy than just stock.
 

Cyber_Akuma

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2002
451
12
18,785
So I think I screwed up my motherboard settings.

As TerryLaze above just mentioned, I had left my motherboard on default settings. When I setup my system I looked through the bios to try to make sure it was not set to overclock it by default, and didn't see any settings that appeared to be so, and any OC settings I did notice appeared to be off, so I left it like that. But apparently this "Multi Core Enhancement" feature that by default is enabled is just a fancy name for "auto overclock"? And it tends to compensate by using voltages that are way too high?

So was I actually overclocking without even realizing it?

Anyway, so that Blend test is over.

Was having longer and longer periods where the temperature stays in the 60s for some reason. It used to be for 14 minute periods and then 7 minute periods of up to 90C but then it started having several-hour periods of 60C with an occasional few-minute burst of up to 90C.

Anyway, so I ran Furmark for an hour just to make sure it remains stable with that, temperatures didn't seem to go up a single degree during that despite running it on the IGP. I was really hoping to run it during those segments where it goes to 90C just to make sure but it was not getting that hot again, so I just did it while it was 60C.

Max temp after about 24 hours was 94C, but that was a spike for about a second, I rarely saw it go beyond 90C during the times when temps were above 60C. CPU-Z was reporting the VCore being around 1.332 the majority of the time, but HWiNFO64 reported a min of about 1.28 to a max of about 1.32, with it normally being around 1.3. Are those normal voltages considering the whole Multicore Enhancement thing?

View: https://i.imgur.com/lzwPUHe.png


Moving on, as per many recommendations I got, I re-started Prime95 in Torture Test mode, set to Small FFT with AVX and AVX 2 disabled (Apparently my 10700K does not support AVX-512, seems that's only in current i9s and Xeons) and reset my monitoring software.

After about 8 hours now (Hey, I got sleepy) the results don't seem any different then the first 15 or so minutes of the test. Where temps hover around the 71-72C range nearly the entire time (had a spike to 78C for about a second) and VCore is between 1.2 to 1.26, generally around 1.25:

View: https://i.imgur.com/IekDJp7.png


That.... looks normal to me, is it? If my motherboard really is auto-overclocking with aggressive voltages then that doesn't sound right.
 
If your mainboard and current thermals allow for MCE, I'd leave it on; certainly all cores at 4.8-5.0 GHz will provide a benefit... (You can use Intel's XTU to specify the exact top clock speed you want with all cores active, and provide an AVX offset of 100, 200, or 300 MHz lowerclockspeed under those loads, whatever you think might be required, and/or, tweak the core voltage downward in .005V increments if you wish...)
 
Solution

Cyber_Akuma

Distinguished
Oct 5, 2002
451
12
18,785
Yeah you already did the worst thing you could do to this CPU and it stayed at 90 degrees and you already tested other stuff and saw that it only reaches 60, you are golden there is no need for you to do anything or to worry about anything.

Not gonna lie, I honestly can't tell if you mean that by "worst" you mean I put my system though the hardest stress test, or that by "worst" you mean the worst conditions I could have done MCE and AVX being enabled that could have potentially caused damage with.

Kind of can't tell if your message sounds like you are angry at me.