AMD FX-8350 Thermal throttling when gaming?

[dapandaa]

Hi everyone,

So when I start gaming (mostly bf1 atm) within maybe 15 minutes, I always have a huge FPS drop for a few seconds, and then it goes back to normal. This happens at fairly frequent intervals while playing. I'm pretty sure it is not because of my GPU, because the temps are at 60C and the fans are barely at 40%. I have a fairly big air cooler on my CPU (be quiet! dark rock 2) and its TDP is at 180W and my CPU only at 125W.

Looking at HWMonitor, my CPU "Package" temps are max of 59C before the FPS drop, and 71C according to the motherboard (?) sensor. (CPUTIN)

So my question is, is it because of my CPU temps and not anything else? The FPS drop happens also in other games btw, so not a bf1 problem there. If it is my cpu, why is it running so hot? I have dust filters on the air intakes and I clean the inside out of excess dust pretty often. I also changed the thermal paste to Arctic Cooling MX-2 and used the pea sized dot method to spread it, and it still does the FPS drop while gaming. CPU is at stock clock speed.

If it helps, here is my setup too:
CPU: AMD FX-8350 (Cooler be quiet! dark rock 2)
GPU: Asus GeForce GTX 660
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X (2x4gb 1600MHz CL9)
MB: ASRock 970 Extreme 4
Case: Fractal Design Define R4

 

[atljsf]

the game is cpu intensive so forces the cpu to run 100% all the time, but surely uses only the first 4 cores

the be quiet, did you installed it alog time ago or is it a recent build?

on that r4, do you have a good airflow?

are you overclocking that fx cpu?

 

[Dunlop0078]

Well your close to where an 8350 will throttle according to HWmonitor. For amd fx cpu's I prefer to use amd overdive to get temps, it will give you thermal margins and is the only software utility I have found to be somewhat accurate with amd fx cpu's.

My old hyper 212 evo did better than that in my old fx system and it was overcloked to 4.6ghz at 1.39v. Your cooler may not be mounted quite right, unless you are pumping a lot of voltage into that cpu. What is core voltage set to?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Due to the boards power and thermal design a 125w CPU will usually be unstable.

"For cooling the CPU and its surrounding components, please install a CPU cooler with a top-down blowing design."
They have this warning on the CPU compatibility page because of the poor thermal design.

This board is known to throttle with 8 core 125w CPU's , REGARDLESS OF COOLING

 

[dapandaa]

the game is cpu intensive so forces the cpu to run 100% all the time, but surely uses only the first 4 cores

the be quiet, did you installed it alog time ago or is it a recent build?

on that r4, do you have a good airflow?

are you overclocking that fx cpu?

As I stated earlier, CPU is running stock clock speeds, so no overclocking on the cpu (nor the gpu) Regarding the be quiet and the R4, I've had the cooler installed right from the beginning, so it's been running about 3-4 years, but I did check it thoroughly for any dust buildup when I changed the thermal paste (few days ago) and there really wasn't anything compromising the cooling.

I think the R4 has a decent airflow, it has 2x140mm fans, 1 pulling in front and 1 pushing on top (right on top of cpu cooler which also pushes the air up) BUT, I do use the fan controller that is part of the case, which runs (I think) at 5, 7 or 12 volts.

 

[dapandaa]

Well your close to where an 8350 will throttle according to HWmonitor. For amd fx cpu's I prefer to use amd overdive to get temps, it will give you thermal margins and is the only software utility I have found to be somewhat accurate with amd fx cpu's.

My old hyper 212 evo did better than that in my old fx system and it was overcloked to 4.6ghz at 1.39v. Your cooler may not be mounted quite right, unless you are pumping a lot of voltage into that cpu. What is core voltage set to?

I think the cooler is now like it should, after putting the new thermal paste in, the temps have gone down atleast a bit, but not much. And about the voltage, everything is at stock settings so I think the voltage is just fine.

 

[sizzling]

Blackbird has the answer

 

[dapandaa]

Due to the boards power and thermal design a 125w CPU will usually be unstable.

"For cooling the CPU and its surrounding components, please install a CPU cooler with a top-down blowing design."
They have this warning on the CPU compatibility page because of the poor thermal design.

This board is known to throttle with 8 core 125w CPU's , REGARDLESS OF COOLING

Ok, thanks for the response. After some testing, I think atleast one of the problems is my rooms ambient temperature, because as I stated in a previous comment, I use the cases own fan controller for the case fans, and if I put them to full power (12V) the FPS drops seem to disappear, atleast for a while. After longer gaming sessions, my PC warms my fairly small room so much, that the ambient temp might go up about 2C or even 3C higher and that affects the CPU's temp A LOT. I'll be fine during the winter time cuz I can just open the window and let Finlands temps take care of the rest (sometimes over -20C outside) but probably have problems during the summer.

I've also thought about upgrading my pc since it's starting to be quite old, and go with intel the next time since they are a bit cooler than amd imo. I'll do a new thread about that.

 

[kilyan]

I have an fx 8350 with a noctua u14s cooler+a 150mm additional pwm fan, and i tell you i can game at 4.8ghz and it never throttles down. Temps can reach also 62 degrees in ghost recon wildlands, but as long it's not constant and yo have no freezes or crashes is fine. i fi'd play gta 5 temps woudn't go so high because is less demanding than ghost recon wildlands. If the cooling is done properly, there is no reason that fx 8350 will throttle the frequencies down.

 

[sizzling]

We know the FX8XXX series can be overclocked, that's not in question. However to overclock requires a good quality motherboard with strong VRM's that have good heatsinks. These 125w CPU are known to overheat many motherboard VRM's when overclocking and this causes throttling even though the CPU itself is well within safe temperatures'. There are several motherboards that struggle to run these 125w CPU's at stock speeds under prolonged high usage.

Overclocking is like anything high performance, its only as good as the weakest link. That means all parts need to be of a high standard, even the case as poor airflow can cause issues.

 

[kilyan]

We know the FX8XXX series can be overclocked, that's not in question. However to overclock requires a good quality motherboard with strong VRM's that have good heatsinks. These 125w CPU are known to overheat many motherboard VRM's when overclocking and this causes throttling even though the CPU itself is well within safe temperatures'. There are several motherboards that struggle to run these 125w CPU's at stock speeds under prolonged high usage.

Overclocking is like anything high performance, its only as good as the weakest link. That means all parts need to be of a high standard, even the case as poor airflow can cause issues.

I use a 10+2 phases motherboard, gigabyte ga 990xa-ud3, not quite the best but i never had any kind of problems overclocking with it.

 

[sizzling]

Exactly my point, your motherboard is significantly better than the OP's 4+1 power phase board.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

We know the FX8XXX series can be overclocked, that's not in question. However to overclock requires a good quality motherboard with strong VRM's that have good heatsinks. These 125w CPU are known to overheat many motherboard VRM's when overclocking and this causes throttling even though the CPU itself is well within safe temperatures'. There are several motherboards that struggle to run these 125w CPU's at stock speeds under prolonged high usage.

Overclocking is like anything high performance, its only as good as the weakest link. That means all parts need to be of a high standard, even the case as poor airflow can cause issues.

I use a 10+2 phases motherboard, gigabyte ga 990xa-ud3, not quite the best but i never had any kind of problems overclocking with it.

Board is 8+2 phase design.

 

[kilyan]

Y 8+2, Sorry,well anyway much better than 4+1😛

 

[dp.software.engineer]

Hi! I have the same problem.

CPU: AMD FX-8370 (GameMax Iceberg 120)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
RAM: Transcend JM1333KLM-4G (x2 = 8Gb)
MB: ASRock 970 Extreme4

Solved: replase GameMax Iceberg 120 to Noctua nh-d15s.