Question ASUS ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4 unusual / bouncing "Temp 6" monitor, BIOS at idle also shows very high (70C+) - is the board bad?

[ibumpthis]

BIOS Monitor Image

Hey everybody! I have an ASUS ROG Strix Z690 Gaming WiFi D4 in a build I put together last week. The GPU is a 3080 RTX, i7-12700K with a Corsair H150i cooler top mounted running 6 fans for push/pull exhaust. Three front intake fans, two side intake fans, and one rear exhaust fan, 12 case/radiator fans overall.

The CPU temps at idle are 27-32C, GPU temps on fan curve idles around 35 and peaks around 70 now.

While in iCUE I noticed that I have a Temp 6 sensor (haven't confirmed with 100% what this is but I believe it's the Chipset sensor) that fires temperatures all over the place, between 0 and 113C,

https://imgur.com/dHHoZ20

View: https://i.imgur.com/dHHoZ20.png
and it bounces around a lot between those pretty regularly, when it's stable it's sitting in the 80s.

I pulled up the monitor in BIOS to see if it was just a sensor issue, but noticed it was sitting at 75C for chipset temp, and did move slightly back and forth, no bouncing like in iCUE.

Airflow in the case is really solid, all other temps are doing quite well. Is this a bad sensor, or a bad board? I do have two NVMe drives as my primary devices, and the 3080 is pretty large. Should I be concerned about this? Is there a way to help bring the temp down? I really don't have any leads for for additional Corsair fans if I bottom mount something on the shroud, nor do I know if that's even a good idea. I found some magnetic fan mounts online that I have no issue putting one or two other fans at the bottom pointing up if it will help with the board (and maybe the GPU also), but it seems like overkill when my other temps are so good/stable.

Looking for help as I "finished" the build yesterday and am already dreading having to back everything out to swap a dead MoBo. Is there a chance the NVMe drive is too close and heating the board up to unreasonable levels? There are four mounts on this motherboard but I read to use the lower two to keep the GPU PCIe slot operating at full speed.

CPU temps in iCUE just for reference with a few dozen chrome tabs running and photoshop/other basic idle items

https://imgur.com/DSbCQBy

View: https://i.imgur.com/DSbCQBy.png
- everything cool as a cucumber, really it's just this one temp that's giving me issues.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rest of the specs if it helps, there is a minor AI Tweaker overclock from the ASUS board running to get the RAM up to actual speed. Everything has been completely stable but this one heat point.
Case: Corsair iCUE 5000X Tempered Glass Mid-Tower
MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4
CPU: Intel i7-12700K
GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW Ultra
PSU: Corsair RM850x Gold
RAM: 64GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro (4x16) 3200MHz
HDD1: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 NVMe (Boot)
HDD2: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe (Game)
HDD3: WD Black 5TB USB-C (Data)
Cooler: Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix 360mm (Push/Pull)
Extra Fans: Corsair iCUE SP120 RGB Elite 120mm (6x), 12 total (6 radiator, exhaust. 3 front chassis, intake. 2 side chassis, intake. 1 rear chassis, exhaust)

Edit: also worth noting, all benchmarking was well done and extremely stable. Prime95 was handled by the CPU and cooler very well, and 3DMark ran the gambit of tests without issue. Just this motherboard chipset heat spot remains.

 

[dwd999]

BIOS Monitor Image

Hey everybody! I have an ASUS ROG Strix Z690 Gaming WiFi D4 in a build I put together last week. The GPU is a 3080 RTX, i7-12700K with a Corsair H150i cooler top mounted running 6 fans for push/pull exhaust. Three front intake fans, two side intake fans, and one rear exhaust fan, 12 case/radiator fans overall.

The CPU temps at idle are 27-32C, GPU temps on fan curve idles around 35 and peaks around 70 now.

While in iCUE I noticed that I have a Temp 6 sensor (haven't confirmed with 100% what this is but I believe it's the Chipset sensor) that fires temperatures all over the place, between 0 and 113C,

https://imgur.com/dHHoZ20

View: https://i.imgur.com/dHHoZ20.png
and it bounces around a lot between those pretty regularly, when it's stable it's sitting in the 80s.

I pulled up the monitor in BIOS to see if it was just a sensor issue, but noticed it was sitting at 75C for chipset temp, and did move slightly back and forth, no bouncing like in iCUE.

Airflow in the case is really solid, all other temps are doing quite well. Is this a bad sensor, or a bad board? I do have two NVMe drives as my primary devices, and the 3080 is pretty large. Should I be concerned about this? Is there a way to help bring the temp down? I really don't have any leads for for additional Corsair fans if I bottom mount something on the shroud, nor do I know if that's even a good idea. I found some magnetic fan mounts online that I have no issue putting one or two other fans at the bottom pointing up if it will help with the board (and maybe the GPU also), but it seems like overkill when my other temps are so good/stable.

Looking for help as I "finished" the build yesterday and am already dreading having to back everything out to swap a dead MoBo. Is there a chance the NVMe drive is too close and heating the board up to unreasonable levels? There are four mounts on this motherboard but I read to use the lower two to keep the GPU PCIe slot operating at full speed.

CPU temps in iCUE just for reference with a few dozen chrome tabs running and photoshop/other basic idle items

https://imgur.com/DSbCQBy

View: https://i.imgur.com/DSbCQBy.png
- everything cool as a cucumber, really it's just this one temp that's giving me issues.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rest of the specs if it helps, there is a minor AI Tweaker overclock from the ASUS board running to get the RAM up to actual speed. Everything has been completely stable but this one heat point.
Case: Corsair iCUE 5000X Tempered Glass Mid-Tower
MB: ASUS ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4
CPU: Intel i7-12700K
GPU: EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 FTW Ultra
PSU: Corsair RM850x Gold
RAM: 64GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro (4x16) 3200MHz
HDD1: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 NVMe (Boot)
HDD2: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe (Game)
HDD3: WD Black 5TB USB-C (Data)
Cooler: Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix 360mm (Push/Pull)
Extra Fans: Corsair iCUE SP120 RGB Elite 120mm (6x), 12 total (6 radiator, exhaust. 3 front chassis, intake. 2 side chassis, intake. 1 rear chassis, exhaust)

Edit: also worth noting, all benchmarking was well done and extremely stable. Prime95 was handled by the CPU and cooler very well, and 3DMark ran the gambit of tests without issue. Just this motherboard chipset heat spot remains.

The data sheet for the Z690 chip is kind of confusing, at least to me. It indicates that a temp of 110C would be considered a catastrophic failure which would trigger a shut down the motherboard. That sort of implies that anything less than that would be OK. But it doesn't seem to indicate what an average temp might be. You may want to read the data sheet yourself. It also seems to indicate sensor accuracy is + or - 5 degrees.

 

[ibumpthis]

The data sheet for the Z690 chip is kind of confusing, at least to me. It indicates that a temp of 110C would be considered a catastrophic failure which would trigger a shut down the motherboard. That sort of implies that anything less than that would be OK. But it doesn't seem to indicate what an average temp might be. You may want to read the data sheet yourself.

Yeah I don't think the chip is actually hitting 110C, but I do think it's running warm. It pretty consistently bounces from 110C to 0C in iCUE, however I did pull up ASUS Armoury Crate to check it out just to see what it was reading and Chipset in there is sitting around 65

The temp breakdowns are not the same way iCUE sees them, so perhaps iCUE is having an issue reading the Z690 chip from the ASUS board?

Do you know of any reliable temp monitoring software I could test both against?

 

[dwd999]

Yeah I don't think the chip is actually hitting 110C, but I do think it's running warm. It pretty consistently bounces from 110C to 0C in iCUE, however I did pull up ASUS Armoury Crate to check it out just to see what it was reading and Chipset in there is sitting around 65

The temp breakdowns are not the same way iCUE sees them, so perhaps iCUE is having an issue reading the Z690 chip from the ASUS board?

Do you know of any reliable temp monitoring software I could test both against?

I usually rely on the ASUS AISuite software to monitor temps. You could also try the AIDA64 software or the HWInfo software. In these 2 latter programs you need to look for the PCH sensor temp. These three should all give you the same consistent reading as Armoury Crate. Perhaps you could increase the speeds of the front and side fans to see if that helps. Or for the ultimate test set every fan you have to full maximum speed and watch for a few minutes to see just how low the chip temp goes.

 

[ibumpthis]

I usually rely on the ASUS AISuite software to monitor temps. You could also try the AIDA64 software or the HWInfo software. In these 2 latter programs you need to look for the PCH sensor temp. These three should all give you the same consistent reading as Armoury Crate. Perhaps you could increase the speeds of the front and side fans to see if that helps. Or for the ultimate test set every fan you have to full maximum speed and watch for a few minutes to see just how low the chip temp goes.

Okay, after installing HWInfo and digging in a bit it gave me temps similar to what Armoury Crate was seeing (basically exactly the same). I think iCUE is pulling some random invalid information for that sensor so I'm just going to remove it from that monitoring list. Using ASUS AC to mess with the fan tuning did show a drop in PCH sensor value from like 65C to 58C with the fans cranked, so it seems to be reading valid temps and the intake fans do lower it when running full blast.

Seems to be that 70C is warm but well within operating temperature, so I think iCUE lead me down a deep rabbit hole for nothing (but I learned a lot).

Greatly appreciate your help, I'll keep an eye on it for a day or so and if everything looks good I'll call this one solved.