Question Am I cooked?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
caowaii

caowaii

Jan 22, 2025
4
0
10
I've been using a Core i7-6700K for my gaming PC for the last 9 years. While it's definitely overdue for an upgrade, it has served me incredibly well. I’ve been able to play almost every game at 2K resolution—except for Star Citizen. This CPU has done its job, but now it’s 2025, and I think it’s time to move on.

Initially, I planned to repurpose this PC into a NAS to experiment with a home server setup. But now I’m having doubts. Recently, while watching a Super Mario speedrun, my PC fans suddenly ramped up to full blast. The strange part? The PC felt stone cold to the touch.

I checked Task Manager and saw my CPU usage was only at 18%, which was what I expected. But when I checked the core temps, all cores were running around 30°C—except for the first core, which was averaging 75°C. That was concerning.

To troubleshoot, I cleaned the PC thoroughly, dusted it, and reapplied new thermal paste. Unfortunately, that didn’t fix the issue. At this point, I think my CPU might be cooked, and I’m not sure if there’s any saving it.

If anyone has suggestions or ideas—whether for troubleshooting, repurposing, or advice on an upgrade—please let me know.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
If you have a single core with that huge of a discrepancy, and you've tried repasting the CPU, then yes, it's almost a certainty that core is cooked. Anything up to a 10°C variance is considered within spec tolerance. Anything above that, is a faulty CPU.

The only exception I can think of might be if there were a perforation in one of the heat pipes on the cooler and it's internal liquid (Usually distilled water under pressure) has evaporated, but IMO I think if that were the case you'd find more than one core with a problem. Another possibility would be that some piece of large lint or other foreign object got in between the heat spreader and the base of the cooler, but again, likely to affect more than one core AND if you just repasted and still have the same issue then not really likely either.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
caowaii said:
I've been using a Core i7-6700K for my gaming PC for the last 9 years. While it's definitely overdue for an upgrade, it has served me incredibly well. I’ve been able to play almost every game at 2K resolution—except for Star Citizen. This CPU has done its job, but now it’s 2025, and I think it’s time to move on.

Initially, I planned to repurpose this PC into a NAS to experiment with a home server setup. But now I’m having doubts. Recently, while watching a Super Mario speedrun, my PC fans suddenly ramped up to full blast. The strange part? The PC felt stone cold to the touch.

I checked Task Manager and saw my CPU usage was only at 18%, which was what I expected. But when I checked the core temps, all cores were running around 30°C—except for the first core, which was averaging 75°C. That was concerning.

To troubleshoot, I cleaned the PC thoroughly, dusted it, and reapplied new thermal paste. Unfortunately, that didn’t fix the issue. At this point, I think my CPU might be cooked, and I’m not sure if there’s any saving it.

If anyone has suggestions or ideas—whether for troubleshooting, repurposing, or advice on an upgrade—please let me know.
Click to expand...

Do I understand correctly:

You think your CPU might be "cooked" because 1 core was averaging 75 degrees?

Can you clarify that?

Do you have other reasons?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Lafong said:
Do I understand correctly:

You think your CPU might be "cooked" because 1 core was averaging 75 degrees?

Can you clarify that?

Do you have other reasons?
Click to expand...
Yes, if you have one core that is running consistently at 75°C while all the other cores are running consistently at 30°C, then that is very much a problem. Now, if one core was running that high while all the others were running low, but that bounced around from core to core and didn't stay with just a single core, you'd be correct in assuming it's not a problem. But when it's only a single core and it's pretty much all the time, it's a fricking problem.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
BFG-9000 said:
Even if one temperature sensor died and throttled the whole chip down to its minimum 200MHz @ 100°C, that would still be 4 x64 cores/8 threads and faster than many commercial NAS appliances.
Click to expand...
I think you mean 3 x64 cores, 6 threads. I wouldn't want to continue running a core with that much a problem. Better would be to simply disable that core in the BIOS and only run the other three with their accompanying hyperthreads. Which in fact would be still much faster than what's in a lot of commercial NAS devices these days. But, I'd be prepared for the problem to get worse because this kind of issue doesn't usually stay with one core for long. Electromigration and VT-shift are real things and at 9 years old if it's been ridden even halfway hard fairly consistently, there's a very good chance of that especially if it's been overclocked for a while, but even if it hasn't.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Darkbreeze said:
Yes, if you have one core that is running consistently at 75°C while all the other cores are running consistently at 30°C, then that is very much a problem. Now, if one core was running that high while all the others were running low, but that bounced around from core to core and didn't stay with just a single core, you'd be correct in assuming it's not a problem. But when it's only a single core and it's pretty much all the time, it's a fricking problem.
Click to expand...

Speaking of assuming.....what might you be assuming from my post?

Hmmm.............
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
But just for the sake of argument and to be more certain, I'd suggest you download HWinfo, install it, run it, choose the "Sensors only" option and leave it running. Then open whatever you want, some browser tabs, your Super Mario speed run, a game, whatever that has a little demand to it but not really enough to be pushing a CPU core up to 75° (Which by the way, there is no way watching anything on YT should be causing that high of a temp. Ever.) and let it run for above five or ten minutes. Then take a screenshot of the HWinfo CPU thermal sensors, be sure to expand it by clicking on it in the HWinfo window if necessary so we can see Min, Max and Average temperature settings which will absolutely tell us whether the temp is bouncing from core to core or staying with only the first core.

It would also tell us if there is any thermal throttling going on and a lot of other things. You can post the images from your screenshots here by doing the following.

How To - How to post images on Tom's hardware

Posting images on any thread in our forum is a relatively easy process, although some people tend to have problems doing so. Please read the FULL tutorial, or else you likely will not have success linking to a hosted image and will end up simply posting a link to an image elsewhere rather than...
forums.tomshardware.com forums.tomshardware.com
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
@caowaii

The thermal paste Intel used between the integrated heat spreader (IHS) and the cores was not designed to last forever. It is likely that this paste has failed and all of the CPU cores are fine.

They make delid tools but careful use of a razor blade can also be used to remove the lid. Cut through the adhesive and twist the lid off to remove it. If you want an interesting project, do some YouTube research and go for it.

k7bvZhx.png
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
uWebb429 said:
@caowaii

The thermal paste Intel used between the integrated heat spreader (IHS) and the cores was not designed to last forever. It is likely that this paste has failed and all of the CPU cores are fine.

They make delid tools but careful use of a razor blade can also be used to remove the lid. Cut through the adhesive and twist the lid off to remove it. If you want an interesting project, do some YouTube research and go for it.

k7bvZhx.png
Click to expand...
While this is true to some degree, I have like two 6700k's, a 4790k, a Xeon E3-1246v3, an i5-6400 and 6500, a 2500k and a 3770k, all of which are as old or older than his 6700k and none of them have ever developed more than a 10°C variance between cores over the years in core temperature. I've also worked on dozens and dozens of client systems with similar Intel CPUs in them and none of them have either. I realize that it DOES happen, but the numbers in comparison to those I've seen that have simply degraded due to electromigration and VT-shift are miniscule by comparison.

It is however an option if you aren't worried about taking the risk to delid, because there IS always risk involved. I've seen plenty of people, INCLUDING Der8auer, ruin CPUs trying to delid them, but it's certainly a slim possibility that this could be the problem. Usually though, when the internal TIM begins to harden and fail you don't see just a single core jump in temperature. It's usually a package problem. But again, I can't argue that it's an impossibility.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Darkbreeze said:
I'm not assuming anything. When you say this:


I don't think anybody has to make any assumptions at all about where you are most likely going with that.
Click to expand...

That's fabulous.

I well recall when I first heard Humpty Dumpty say “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

From that day forward, I've been a card-carrying member of the Humpty Dumpty Fan Club.

I think memberships are still available online. That's only an assumption.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
caowaii said:
not too sure if I am reading thes
Click to expand...
Darkbreeze said:
While this is true to some degree, I have like two 6700k's, a 4790k, a Xeon E3-1246v3, an i5-6400 and 6500, a 2500k and a 3770k, all of which are as old or older than his 6700k and none of them have ever developed more than a 10°C variance between cores over the years in core temperature. I've also worked on dozens and dozens of client systems with similar Intel CPUs in them and none of them have either. I realize that it DOES happen, but the numbers in comparison to those I've seen that have simply degraded due to electromigration and VT-shift are miniscule by comparison.

It is however an option if you aren't worried about taking the risk to delid, because there IS always risk involved. I've seen plenty of people, INCLUDING Der8auer, ruin CPUs trying to delid them, but it's certainly a slim possibility that this could be the problem. Usually though, when the internal TIM begins to harden and fail you don't see just a single core jump in temperature. It's usually a package problem. But again, I can't argue that it's an impossibility.
Click to expand...
I've seen a lot of vids of people doing this and it's something that I think will be fun. This is like the opportunity I have in my career where I can do something risky like this.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
caowaii said:
@Darkbreeze
After running for about 25 min with a bit of bloon TD play. I'm not too sure if I am reading these numbers right but please let me know what you think.

https://imgur.com/G1rAEwa
View: https://imgur.com/G1rAEwa
Click to expand...
That's a toasty boy, ideally you want to keep those cores at 85c or below. It's nothing catastrophic, but the CPU starts thermal throttling at around 100c, so you're losing performance. Are you sure you didn't have a single threaded app running when you measured one core at 75c? Also, what mother are you using?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom