[SOLVED] CPU Cores at Full Load with Low Utilization

Oct 15, 2021
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I have a Ryzen 7 5800x and I am at a loss, CPU heats to 90º+ within a minute, cores are shown to be under heavy load (10-90% per core), yet CPU isn't being used at all, only 3-5% on task manager. I have photos of this all, just dont know how to add them. All of this is while at most Core Temp, Task Manager, and HW Monitor is open, so no background apps as shown.

I have:
Reset BIOS
Clean boot
(When I thought it was a cooler issue) Reapplied thermal paste and reconfigured my AIO (240mm MSI something)
Updated drivers
Done other Windows Updates
Lowering Max Processor State to 50% made it idle at 75º for a minute, then it spiked back to 90º after
Turned on Power Saver, Passive Cooling Policy
Different cooler that works in different build
Malwarebytes (0 detections) and SUPERantispyware (only ad tracker from google sites noticed)

Here are my complete specs and the rating from User Benchmark a few weeks ago
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X - 95.3%
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060 - 97.9%
SSD: HP EX920 NVMe PCIe M.2 1TB - 351.3%
HDD: WD Blue 4TB (2015) - 98%
RAM: G.SKILL F4-3600C18-32GTZN 2x31.5GB - 102.8%
MBD: MSI MPG B550 GAMING EDGE WIFI (MS-7C91)
 
Solution
What is your idle temperature?
It should be 10-15c. over ambient if your cooler is functioning and mounted well.
A processor will monitor it's own temperature and if it detects a dangerous temperature, it will reduce the multiplier to slow down or shut off to protect itself.
For ryzen, I think that is 90c.
You can get a very high cpu utilization when the cores are running at 10% of capability.

AIO coolers do not last forever.
In time, air intrudes making them inefficient or inoperative.
Such a cooler needs to be replaced.
Make a free account on imgur.com upload your images there and copy the link into a post of yours.
Also upload a pic of task manager sorted by max CPU usage.

Windows update scanner doesn't show up in task manager and can cause a high usage on cores.

For the high temps it could be that your mobo overclocks by default meaning you would have to go into bios and check that everything is set up correctly.
 
Oct 15, 2021
3
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Make a free account on imgur.com upload your images there and copy the link into a post of yours.
Also upload a pic of task manager sorted by max CPU usage.

Windows update scanner doesn't show up in task manager and can cause a high usage on cores.

For the high temps it could be that your mobo overclocks by default meaning you would have to go into bios and check that everything is set up correctly.
Thank you, image attached. And I haven't checked BIOS settings after restarting this time, but in the past when I have and looked my motherboard hasn't overclocked by default, and I've never set up overclocking, I've only ever changed my RAM speed. This also was a new issue that started overnight a few days ago, had been fine for past 4 or so months, no updates/hardware changes/anything changing. Sorry for bad phone photo, PC overheats too quick to try to screenshot and send to myself on the PC, this was taken after only a minute or so uptime after not being on for 30ish mins. View: https://imgur.com/a/Lg4txY8
 
Oct 15, 2021
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Yeah if you have 85 to 95 degrees with your CPU running at 550Mhz it's definitely something wrong with your cooling,
Why would a cooling issue cause my CPU to be under such load? As well, tried with a different cooler that works when tested in different builds, I still get this same response.
 

gamerbrehdy

Honorable
Jun 15, 2018
320
29
10,790
Why would a cooling issue cause my CPU to be under such load? As well, tried with a different cooler that works when tested in different builds, I still get this same response.

Could be two things:

  1. You left the plastic protective film on the cooling surface on your cooler. Definetly not the case though since you get the same result with a different, normaly working cooler.
  2. Thermal coupling between the silicon and IHS is bad. Can you try the CPU in another system? If it still runs hot, the thermal coupling is the issue. If not, then your problem is most likely software related.

There can be a multitude of other reasons, but these two are the first that come to mind. Has it been running hot outof the box?
 
Why would a cooling issue cause my CPU to be under such load? As well, tried with a different cooler that works when tested in different builds, I still get this same response.
You would have to double check, if the CPU only runs at around 550Mhz then even the smallest thing that is running is a big percentage of that 550Mhz, 500Mhz is 12% of 4Ghz so anything will create a big load because it's calculated as an percentage of that 500Mhz/12% and not of the real clocks that you could be getting.
 
Just another thing, do you have Norton Utilities? I noticed on my kids PC he had it and when enabled in the power plan, it locked all his cores at 500Mhz so I switched it back to balanced and it was fine. (probably not the issue but just thought I'd mention it.)
 
What is your idle temperature?
It should be 10-15c. over ambient if your cooler is functioning and mounted well.
A processor will monitor it's own temperature and if it detects a dangerous temperature, it will reduce the multiplier to slow down or shut off to protect itself.
For ryzen, I think that is 90c.
You can get a very high cpu utilization when the cores are running at 10% of capability.

AIO coolers do not last forever.
In time, air intrudes making them inefficient or inoperative.
Such a cooler needs to be replaced.
 
Solution

kognak

Commendable
Apr 19, 2021
32
9
1,565
Clearly very bad cold plate contact or the pump is not running(disconnected or broken). It's not possible to get 90C temps with just 30W load otherwise. Basically heat is not conducting out of CPU properly.