ASRock X99 Extreme 4 displaying wrong temperature for i7 5820K

[brunoc]

Hi, I just finished building this PC.
CPU temperatures are being displayed wrongly everywhere, including the BIOS.

The cooler is properly and firmly attached, the PC is on idle and temperature is around 10C on the room.

Right on first boot BIOS showed 105C. It has gone down to ~90C since then. Even after the BIOS was updated it shows same wrong temperature.







I touched the CPU heatsink with the PC on and it is not even warm.

Any fix? Should I return this motherboard?

Machine specs:
CPU: i7 5820K
Mobo: ASRock X99 Extreme 4
Cooler: Alpine 20 PLUS CO (while I decide between Noctua D15 or water cooling)
RAM: 32GB Corsair DDR4 Vengeance
VGA: 4GB Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming
Case: Thermatake Core V71
PSU: 1300W EVGA G2 SuperNova

edits: added more photos, added pc specs

 

[Darkbreeze]

The heatsink isn't necessarily going to be warm if there is a bad mount or other conditions. Too much thermal paste or not enough mounting pressure can cause a lack of heat transfer to the heatsink, which will both, cause the heatsink to remain cool and cause high core temperatures since no heat is being transferred.

How much TIM did you use and what is your case fan configuration. If you are not supplying sufficient cool, outside air to the inside of the case, then the fan will just be blowing warm air through the heatsink, which does not offer much help with keeping it cool.

It could possibly be a separate issue, but more often than not it's either too much thermal material, not enough mounting pressure or the fans are not configured with the correct profile.

 

[brunoc]

Thanks for your suggestions. I will try applying more pressure to the cooler as I think I was very gentle on the screwdriver.

The cooler is a humble Alpine 20 PLUS CO (http://www.arctic.ac/eu_en/alpine-20-plus-co.html). I just bought it to have a running PC while I decide between going full air with a Noctua D15 or diving into Water Cooling for the first time. It came with pre-applied thermal as would any cheap cooler.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Oh, well that's probably part of the problem. You need either a high end air cooler or a 240-280mm liquid cooler for that CPU. That has a 140w TDP which is even higher than any of the FX series CPUs aside from the 9xxx models. Noctua NH-U14S is sufficient for stock applications. If you plan to overclock I'd go with the NH-D14, NH-D15, Cryorig Ultimate, Phanteks PH-TC14PE, any of the Thermalright Silver Arrow models, liquid cooling larger than a single 140mm or something equivalent.

 

[brunoc]

Yay! Thank you so much darkbreeze!

After applying more pressure to the CPU heatsink screws I notice a huge improvement:



As you can see the springs are very compressed now:


I can probably do another turn on each screw but I'm afraid to break the mobo or something.

Running prime95 sends temperatures to 90+ in 3 seconds as expected. I closed it after 4 seconds. I will have to run very basic applications until I get my hands on a decent cooler.

Question: If temperature was really 105C before, wasn't the poor i7 supposed to be fried by now? I suspect the mobo is still slightly lying to me.

 

[Darkbreeze]

You want to tighten them down until either the backing plate screws begin to turn or you can't easily turn the screw anymore with one hand. You don't need to crank down on it but it does need to be firmly seated. I generally say, as tight as you can get it using three fingers. Your thumb, middle and index finger. Also, your judgement. BTW, you do have a fan for it right? It' just off so you can tighten the screws?

Another thing you can do is this. With the system running and your monitor open, press down on the heatsink with light to medium pressure. If you can visually see the temps drop by pressing down on the heatsink, it's either not fully seated or you used too much thermal material. Which, by the way, I don't recommend the pea sized method. A large grain of rice sized amount is almost always sufficient. I've yet to remove a heatsink that I used this method on that did not have thermal material squeezed all or almost all of the way to the edges of the heat spreader.

Too much paste is just as bad as not enough or a lack of pressure.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, and no. When temps reach a certain threshold, the system will simply reduce the voltage and multiplier to stop thermal damage from occurring. If that is not sufficient it will shut down. Don't count on that as a failsafe though. Once it's gotten hot enough to shut down, damage has usually already occurred, at least to some degree.

 

[brunoc]

haha. Yes I have the fan over the heatsink. I took it off just to tighten the screws and take the photo.

I tried pressing the cooler with my hand with the PC on and temps stayed the same. I tried tightening the screws but they are already very tight.

I think I reached the limit of the poor cooler which is: can barely run the i7 5820k on stock clock.

On my previous build with Phenom II X6 1090T and a cheap MSI 35E 880GMA mobo I had problems with motherboard temps going over 75C on stock clocks so I had to resort to the excellent Noctua NH-C14 to cool both CPU and mobo.

But the new build's ASRock mobo is running cool AFAIK so I wonder if it is worth going for Noctua NH-C14 again or the newer PH-TC14CS?
Otherwise I'll get the blue PH-TC14PE as I don't plan to do serious overclocking.

 

[Darkbreeze]

The C14 is probably NOT sufficient for that CPU. Intel recommends liquid cooling for the 140w TDP chips. We know that high end air coolers work fine though.

If you're not going to overclock, you probably don't need a cooler as extensive as the PH-TC14PE though. The Noctua NH-U14S would be fine and is smaller, cheaper and is lighter, which puts lets stress on the motherboard. This could be a factor as ASRock is known for using thinner PC board material on their motherboards than other manufacturers. Even the C14 would be better than what you currently have, but the U14S is a better cooler and is cheaper.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 55.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($65.88 @ OutletPC)
Total: $65.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-12-25 17:29 EST-0500



Or this:

http://pcpartpicker.com/part/thermalright-cpu-cooler-silverarrowibe

This:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4UF1H68938&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

or any of the top coolers on Frostytech:

http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

Liquid:

http://www.frostytech.com/top5_liquid_heatsinks.cfm

 

[brunoc]

Just a note. Noctua's C14 is a very strong air cooler. Even stronger than Phanteks PH-TC14PE as can be seen on the graph you linked: http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

Your suggestion, the U14S looks excellent for my case. If only there was a blue option. :/

 

[Darkbreeze]

You can always change the fan. The heatsink is the main feature on coolers that differentiates performance for the most part. In fact, some don't even need a fan for stock use. You could use one (Or even both in a push pull configuration) of these on the heatsink:


http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Series-Static-Pressure-Cooling/dp/B00L64N9JI

 

[brunoc]

Got news. I took out the Alpine 20 PLUS CO cpu cooler and this is what I saw (if you have heart problems, don't look at the pictures) :

i7 5820K CPU:

Heatsink:

This was too much for my taste. I had tightened the CPU cooler to an extreme and yet this is all the contact it get?!?! No way.

So I went and got this to fix any CPU cooling issues I might have:

Initial fixing:

First run. With the case still opened:

Problem solved:

By the way I got the infamous Kraken X61 rattling noise. But only for the first run and in the first one or two minutes. It runs really silent now.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Nice. Glad to hear you got it straightened out.