AMD A10-5800K Overheating and cutoff.

[Dave Trouser]

Hi all, first post...

I've been trying to find a reason for my newish HTPC overheating, and subsequently doing an immediate power-off (no shutdown). I'm assuming it's reaching a thermal limit, but I can't see how this is possible.

The setup is a Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 mainboard and 16GB Kingston 1600MHz RAM, all running at stock speed. 500W PSU, no additional PCI/PCIe devices. First, I had a Zalman CNPS8900 heatsink, which was a little too large for all 4 RAM sticks, but that's another issue. At first I didn't notice a problem, as the PC hadn't really been under high load. The idle temp was 50C, which I thought might be OK as I was expecting an APU to run hotter than a CPU. The machine has been running fine all year, but the most taxing thing it's done is rip Blu-Rays to be shown in Plex.
However, I recently wanted to re-encode a 1080P video (MKV@20+Mbps) to a lower bitrate for streaming purposes, and after about 2-3 minutes, the PC just powered-off without warning.
Running the machine in BIOS for 10 minutes showed the CPU temp rising toward 70C over 5-10mins. So I monitored the CPU temp within Windows during a video transcode... the temp reached 100C+ and the machine cut out.

I just tried a Scythe Samurai ZZ Rev.B (it solves the RAM issue, and has a nicer and smoother interface with teh APU) and the idle temp in BIOS rises to 70C in around 5 minutes - I am not going to risk damage from stressing it further with some video conversions.

Now, I have checked that the heatsink is making proper contact. The heatsink is very hot to touch, so it's doing its job, but the 5800K is genuinely reaching a high temperature, and this isn't bad sensor data (which my Google searches found plenty of results for).

Both heatsinks I have are more than capable of cooling this APU, and further searches show people with idle temps of 30-35C with this APU.

My question is: Is it likely to be the 5800K at fault, or is there some fault with the mainboard that could cause the CPU to run hot? I don't know which one to return, and I can't test them as I don't have another FM2 socket processor or mainboard available to try.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

 

[MajinCry]

You most likely didn't seat it right.

Get some thermal paste (Arctic Silver will do just fine), remove the stuff already there (Credit card, then alcohol on a lint-free cloth) and re-apply using the bought stuff.

 

[Dave Trouser]

You most likely didn't seat it right.

Get some thermal paste (Arctic Silver will do just fine), remove the stuff already there (Credit card, then alcohol on a lint-free cloth) and re-apply using the bought stuff.

I assure you it is seated correctly, and I use Arctic Silver and MX-4 thermal pastes. It currently has MX-4 but had Arctic Silver the first time.

The issue is not caused by bad thermal contact or a poorly fitted heat-sink - as my post said, the heat-sink is getting very hot because it's doing the job it should do (the hot air coming out of the case demonstrates this nicely), but the APU is generating more heat than it can dissipate, hence the APU is reaching 70C+. The query is - is it the APU or motherboard to blame?

 

[swifty_morgan]

I use a heatsink and fan from an old 4800/939 dual core processor. has heat pipes and a lot of copper. I don't get terrible temperatures like you're getting.

reset cmos to put settings back to stock..........thinking of voltages here.

the memory controller may be getting hotter than normal.

cpu might be bad..??

what about air flow?

 

[Dave Trouser]

I use a heatsink and fan from an old 4800/939 dual core processor. has heat pipes and a lot of copper. I don't get terrible temperatures like you're getting.

reset cmos to put settings back to stock..........thinking of voltages here.

the memory controller may be getting hotter than normal.

cpu might be bad..??

what about air flow?

Aha... your mention of voltages made me take a closer look, and the mainboard is over-volting for some reason. Everything on default, the VCore is set to 1.475V (at 3.8GHz) if "auto" is selected, which it is when you reset BIOS to default. I've just manually set the voltage to 1.35, and so far it's sitting at 34C in BIOS (was previously 60C).

Now in Windows and idles at 27C (1.4GHz).

Thank you swifty_morgan - it appears the problem is solved! I should have spotted that voltage, but I wasn't expecting stock settings to be so badly wrong! Oh well, this thread is here now for anyone else with this CPU/MB combo and heat problems...

 

[swifty_morgan]

2thumbs up.

 

[Dave Trouser]

Make sure you give swifty best answer as he answered your question correctly

Someone beat me to it!