Question CPU 8700k Unstable Temps while StressTesting

[Shornak]

I'm having a weird problem: when running stress test or when gaming my CPU would always fluctuate by 10c every 1-2 seconds I know it is normal when Idle because of changing frequency and all, but others report stable Temps fluctuating by max 2-5c
It passed each test (simple XTU stress test für 5-30m no serious aida or prime test needed as I don't intent to keep any OC as soon as I managed to get constant Temps)
No matter if @stock settings or @ freaking 5GHz ( always weird low temps no matter if in or decreasing Voltage)

- Idle temps at 28-33c
-Changed CPU Voltage (highest manual: 1.25v ; highest Auto: 1,3v)
-Turned on/off c-states and EIST

• changed LLC
• Tried setting CPU and VRM phase control to Extreme
• Enabled/Disabled/Auto Asus MCE
• changed Power capability from 100% to 130% and to Auto
• let Noctua Cooler run at 100%, custom profile and auto profile
• changed power plan to highest perfoming and even unlocked UltimatePerformance PowerPlan
• let Intel Diagnostic Tool run
• Updated Intel's Managment Engine
• Updated BIOS/UEFI
• Checked XTU and HWinfo: showed no power, thermal or vrm-throttle
• Scanned for Virus

https://imgur.com/NVw2pJi

View: https://imgur.com/NVw2pJi
(click to see second pic)

I only had screenshots for thos higher frequencys, but the graphs look like that on normal turbo-boost stock frequencys, too.
Look at the Green line to see the constant Temp changes.

Asus Z390-E
i7 8700k
seasonic 650w
gtx 1070
Kingston 16GB 3200MHz c16
Noctua 14s Cooler


Can anyone please help me?
If you need any additional Information or screenshots please let me know and I will provide them asap.

P.S.: Found only one thread with someone having the same problem only that his temps changed by 20 cinstead of 10c

I7-8700k temperature not stable under stress test is this normal???

Hi, my i7-8700k OC to 4.9ghz with custom waterloop CPU and GPU, the CPU temperature up down up down every second between 65C to 85C under stress test, why the temperature not stable?? waterloop problem or very normal??

forums.tomshardware.com

Best regards
~Shornak

 

[faalin]

Not sure what the package temp is monitoring? Mine would jump around in 10* increments peaking at 72c but if you open any other temp monitoring software my temps never hit over 57c

Asus AI suit 3 and core temp both had a max reading of 57*c vs the intel that was jumping all around. This was with my CPU at 5.1Ghz

 

[j3ster]

I really dont see a problem tbh you arent reaching TJmax or the neighborhood of 85c.

when i run a stress test with XTU i get 49c to 53c fluctuations and produce the same graph as yours, you dont have anything to worry about.

now if you run something like prime95 (26.6 or latest versions with AVX off) or any similar stress test, you would see a steady temp. and maybe from time to time dip down by 1-2c.

 

[Shornak]

@j3ster Thanks for the reply.
But as I said for most others there will be small fluctuations of 1-4c but I am having 10c constant jumps no matter the load, the frequency or voltage and I am experiencing perfomance problems + I NEVER saw any improvement ingame (not talking about fps, there probably will never be a huge gain through OC, but usage etc) going from 3,7 to 5GHz

@faalin HWinfo shows the same and Package never exceeded 80c or 74c even on 5GHz and 1,3v


Edit: also never reached tdp 95w it seems like it is always throttling back by 10c


Edit: sorry, I overlooked your suggestion of using prime, I was about to perform a prime test anyway, will report back in just a bit

 

[j3ster]

@j3ster as I said for most others there will be small fluctuations of 1-4c but I am having 10c constant jumps no matter the load, the frequency or voltage and I am experiencing perfomance problems + I NEVER saw any improvement going from 3,7 to 5GHz

what do you mean by you dont see any improvement? like in temps or actual performance.

fluctuations in temps are normal especially in games or "stress" test like XTU. since the cpu will actually slow down if its not needed as much and intel XTU isnt really harsh on the cpu like i said when i also run XTU stress test i get from 49c to 53c (min-max) and produce the same temp graph as yours.

when i play Destiny 2 for example i get an average temp of 44c according to HWinfo64 but i can see that i also get a max temp of 61c and a minimum of 35c. its normal behavior. you should worry if you see a constant temp of something like 80-85c when gaming or testing if thats the case it means your cooler isnt seated properly and is not making contact with the IHS or you havent applied enough or the correct amount of thermal paste.

If the system is not being stress tested with benchmarking software, you are going to see temperature fluctuations each second. Gaming is not a load testing scenario since system load increases and decreases very often.

The only times temperatures rarely fluctuate are on 100% system load and at 0% load, or idle.

this is in the thread you provided. if you are really paranoid you can also use like i said prime95 small ffts 26.6 version or the latest but turn off AVX. there you can really just see a steady constant temp.

but so far everything you have shown are normal behavior tbh. nothing too concerning

 

[Shornak]

Thank you for the answer
Well, I feel like it is strange, as most people complain about how hot the i7 gets even @stock frequence and here I am getting that low and jumpy temps even at 5GHz.

Maybe I really need to reseat the cooler and replace thermal paste as I had to reseat it 3 times when I originally installed the CPU, because I couldn't screw in one of the Cooler's screws somehow which resulted in unwanted movement.
I really do not want to reseat it again if it is not necessary, but I also get frameratedrops and frametime spikes, mainly because Nvidia kernel mode driver + directx dpc latency.

AC odyssey for example (all Games no matter how low or high the settings/resolution are affected)
No matter if V-Sync on or off, I get stutter even when the FPS drops from 70 to 66 which is above my 60HZ refresh rate.

For Prime I checked all 3 AVX boxes, should I run the small FFTS that is testing L1/l27L3 Caches?

 

[j3ster]

Thank you for the answer
Well, I feel like it is strange, as most people complain about how hot the i7 gets even @stock frequence and here I am getting that low and jumpy temps even at 5GHz.

Maybe I really need to reseat the cooler and replace thermal paste as I had to reseat it 3 times when I originally installed the CPU, because I couldn't screw in one of the Cooler's screws somehow which resulted in unwanted movement.
I really do not want to reseat it again if it is not necessary, but I also get frameratedrops and frametime spikes, mainly because Nvidia kernel mode driver + directx dpc latency.

AC odyssey for example (all Games no matter how low or high the settings/resolution are affected)
No matter if V-Sync on or off, I get stutter even when the FPS drops from 70 to 66 which is above my 60HZ refresh rate.

For Prime I checked all 3 AVX boxes, should I run the small FFTS that is testing L1/l27L3 Caches?

yea just disable the 3 AVX boxes and do a test to see your temps, if you reach 100c on stock settings then you might need to reseat your cooler and reapply the paste, also dont forget to clean off the old paste before you apply a new one.

if you get actual stutter like your games freezes for a second then run smoothly again, you can try a clean re-install of your gpu drivers, using DDU.

also try to get the latest drivers for your motherboard.

in 1080p 60-75hz cpu would most likely lag behind the gpu even for something as fast a 8700k. AC odyssey i believe is a game that loves cores and clock speed.
whats your graphical settings for odyssey? if you lower it to medium for example what fps do you get? if you dont really see a difference between low-med-high-ultra settings then theres a bottleneck in this case its likely your cpu.


if stutter you also mean dips in fps, its also normal. fps goes down or up from time to time even when looking at the same thing for minutes. so far from what i can tell with the screenshot everything still looks normal, are you running in stock settings atm?

 

[Shornak]

Will do the test @stock settings, good idea but just for clarity: AVX testing needs to be disabled? because unchecking the boxes enables AVX testing and I have them checked, I just wan't to be absolutely sure

the thing is that those framerate Drops and frametime spikes happen in old games like the witcher 1 and dead space as well as in new Games like AC Odyssey, settings don't play a role, even tried Nvidia's newly implemented Low Latency Mode, which is basically the same as the option "limit the amount of frames the CPU..." .blabla

Yeah, problem with DPC Latency is that I did every troubleshooting steps you can even imagine

• swapped GPU with different gpu
• changed psu
• upgraded CPU from i5 8400 to i7 8700k
• upgraded MB from H310 to Z390-E
• upgraded RAM from 2666MHz c17 to 16gb 3200MHz C16
• tried many different Nvidia Drivers, uninstalled current drivers with DDU
• fresh install of Windows 10
• bought EVO 980 SSD
• changed Games from SSD to HDD
• disabled/enabled Paging Files
• used timer tool
• sfc scannow
• DISM
• checked for new drivers @manufacturer's site etc

..the list goes on

They all (Microsoft, nvidia and MB Manufacturers) know about this Issue, MSI even released a dpc tuning program, Asus didn't do that sadly.
Searched for 3+ Months and I found Threads dating back to 2014, most had this problem with Windows Anniversary Update.

 

[j3ster]

oh im sry im not familiar with the latest prime95 since i use the 26.6 version which is in it self has no AVX.

so if checking them disables them then do that, my bad.


for the spikes ive only experienced it once and when i just did a clean driver install with DDU fixed my problem i believe the game was diablo 3 in my case and the only game that did that, stuttering free gaming for me after that. so its a gray area for me and i really cant think of the right direction to point you at but ill do some extra research for you as well. and hopefully someone does come along and knows an actual fix for your problem in the forums.

but for now ive stumbled upon the fact that Low latency mode that nvidia implemented actually stresses the cpu more, now i cant verify this since i havent updated to the latest drivers atm.

now ive also read that for some people not enabling XMP profile and just leaving the RAM settings on default fixed stuttering for them. in their case their memory wasnt supported by their motherboard.

 

[vMax]

I also use Prime95 26.6 and 29.1 and never had an issue, funny thing is XTU does occasionally cause issues and then sometimes not. I have my 8700K overclocked to 4.9GHz for many, many months now and it is at 1.278v max on a offset vcore. Thankfully I delidded mine and temps have never been an issue with the highest temps at 55 degrees on blend and just a fraction under 70 degrees C with the small FFT's and that's only when i punish it with P95 29.1 or 26.6 or AIIDA64 Extreme. Also on a 360mm AIO.

 

[Karadjgne]

P95 small fft runs a consistent 100% cpu load, so voltages should not be jumping around unless the OC isn't stable.
Aida64, xtu, occp, and pretty much all of the other stress testers use higher amounts of ram than small fft and consequently will bounce between 80-100% cpu loads, which changes voltage draws and creates the bounce.

LLC is touchy. For most OC it'll only need to be 50-62% at best, not maxed. Too much LLC is just as bad as not enough.

 

[Shornak]

cannot read everything right now, will do that later on, but I want to say @Karadjgne that XTU ran indeed at constant 100%

 

[Shornak]

First things first: Please excuse my Double-Post, but I think it is best to post another reply rather than editing my last one so that the Thread gets bumped, won't do that again!

Now back to Topic:

but for now ive stumbled upon the fact that Low latency mode that nvidia implemented actually stresses the cpu more, now i cant verify this since i havent updated to the latest drivers atm.

now ive also read that for some people not enabling XMP profile and just leaving the RAM settings on default fixed stuttering for them. in their case their memory wasnt supported by their motherboard.

Thanks for sharing you time/paying attention, J3ster.

Regarding Low Latency Mode, I noticed that it is basically the "Maximum pre-rendered frames"-Setting only "better"
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/cu1c5w/ultralow_latency_mode_new_nvidia_driver_feature/


Well, yeah, as XMP actually is an overclock, too I was in fact mistaken when I thought I've had disabled all OC, so I basically never ran a OC-free System as I had it enabled all the time
Another nice Guy from Anandtech suggested the same as you, btw.
Gonna try that, will test with Prime before doing that, though, as I still couldn't let it run, but I downloaded the older Prime Version you suggested so I may give that a shot rather than the new version.

P95 small fft runs a consistent 100% cpu load, so voltages should not be jumping around unless the OC isn't stable.
Aida64, xtu, occp, and pretty much all of the other stress testers use higher amounts of ram than small fft and consequently will bounce between 80-100% cpu loads, which changes voltage draws and creates the bounce.

LLC is touchy. For most OC it'll only need to be 50-62% at best, not maxed. Too much LLC is just as bad as not enough.

Yes, thanks for the insight, Karadjgne.
Asus' official OC-Guide (In UEFI) suggests LLC to stay at 5 even for an i9 Overclock, so I chose to either set it manually to 4 or 5 or leave it on Auto alltogether.

@All: Would it help if I provide DPC-Latency Log in addition to Prime's Stress-Test results?
It seems that only 3-4 Cores do have high latency while others are quite low.
If I only could reinstall DirectX

@j3ster: any new insights after doing further research? I really appreciate your effort.

 

[Karadjgne]

DX12 is native to windows 10, but that'll also include DX10 and DX11 runtimes so isn't usually an issue. The only DX that really ever needs adding is the DX9.0C sdk if you want to run some really old games from XP/7 era. That you can find at Microsoft.com.

Because DX9 and DX12 are differently labeled files, there's no conflict and you can install DX9 directly with DX12

 

[j3ster]

well ive asked a friend of mine who has a 8700k but with an gtx 1080, asked him if any game he has tried recently has some stuttering issues. he did say that he does but its so rare probably once every few hours he would get a sudden pause in game.


Also watching some reviews on youtube particularly the 9700k vs 8700k by gamersnexus, it did show that the 8700k does produce spiking in frametimes, so i think its normal especially in 1080p where the cpu is being utilized more, maybe upscaling your resolution to 1440p or 150% in certain games like destiny 2 for example can minimize the stuttering, i also do this in destiny 2 since if i leave it on 1080p 100% resolution, i get such a high fps that i get screen tearing and stuttering.

so far these are the only things i was able to look up or ask around for.