[SOLVED] CPU overheated and I don’t know why

[JackEyedPea]

This morning my I turned on my pc, started playing some music through Spotify, went away for about 10mins and when I came back the monitor was saying it had no input and the music was stuck on a loop. I googled these symptoms and it sounded like an overheating issue. I did a hard reboot and opened up CPUID HWMonitor and Core Temp which both said my CPU was idling between 60-70C, so I turned it off again.

I built my pc a couple of weeks ago and everything has worked fine up to this point. My CPU was usually idling between 34-45C and getting up to 70-80C occasionally while gaming. This is my first build though so I don’t know if even these temperatures are okay/normal.

My parts:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (Using the stock cooler)

Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory

Storage: Gigabyte 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card

Case: Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower Case

Power Supply: EVGA BQ 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply

In addition to the 3 front case fans I also have another Phanteks SK PWM D-RGB 120mm as a rear exhaust and a 140mm as a top rear exhaust.

Yesterday I added a Deepcool RGB 5v-12v converter into my setup and switched to a 2k monitor from a 1080p tv/monitor. I don’t know if either of these would affect the CPU temperature but I was able to use my pc for gaming for several hours last night without any issues and it wasn’t until this morning when it overheated 10 minutes after startup while only running Spotify.

Having turned my pc on again now it’s saying it’s back to my usually idle temps, however I’m a little nervous it’s going to try to spontaneously combust again when I’m not looking.

Any thoughts as to why it might have overheated and what I could do to prevent it?

 

[Newtonius]

Double-check your CPU fan pwm/speed settings, if it's sometimes idling around 30-45c then the fan is physically installed correctly - the main issue then might be that either the fan stops spinning or that the CPU is ramping up for no reason. Try installing Ryzen master too, this tool allows you to monitor your CPU as well as set voltages and core clocks - Ryzen CPUs are known to pull a lot of juice on stock settings. I've set my 3600 in my server to run at 4GHz all cores at 1.25v on the core voltage and it runs are a cool 40-45c idle all the time.

 

[JackEyedPea]

Double-check your CPU fan pwm/speed settings, if it's sometimes idling around 30-45c then the fan is physically installed correctly - the main issue then might be that either the fan stops spinning or that the CPU is ramping up for no reason. Try installing Ryzen master too, this tool allows you to monitor your CPU as well as set voltages and core clocks - Ryzen CPUs are known to pull a lot of juice on stock settings. I've set my 3600 in my server to run at 4GHz all cores at 1.25v on the core voltage and it runs are a cool 40-45c idle all the time.

Thanks for the heads up about Ryzen master, according to that, it's currently idling around 35-40c. I double checked to see if the fan was loose at all but its sitting on there firmly and seems to be spinning okay. I am a little unsure about the thermal paste layer though as the stock cooler came with it already applied and I didn't do any spreading around when I touched it to the CPU, like I think you would if you applied a blob of thermal paste? I have also noticed the fan speeding up and slowing down while idle, is this possibly the CPU ramping up for no reason?

 

[Newtonius]

Thanks for the heads up about Ryzen master, according to that, it's currently idling around 35-40c. I double checked to see if the fan was loose at all but its sitting on there firmly and seems to be spinning okay. I am a little unsure about the thermal paste layer though as the stock cooler came with it already applied and I didn't do any spreading around when I touched it to the CPU, like I think you would if you applied a blob of thermal paste? I have also noticed the fan speeding up and slowing down while idle, is this possibly the CPU ramping up for no reason?

The pre-applied paste will spread out over time as the heat will loosen it up. As for the fans ramping, you monitor your CPU usage and temps while this happens and see if they're correlated. You may want to check whatever software you use to control your fan speed if the fan curve is set appropriately. If you don't have any you can also check the BIOS to see if you're able to control your fan curve there. Also please double check if you plugged in your CPU fan cable into the CPU_FAN 1 header on your motherboard. That fan header ramps the fan accordingly to the CPU temp.

 

[JackEyedPea]

The pre-applied paste will spread out over time as the heat will loosen it up. As for the fans ramping, you monitor your CPU usage and temps while this happens and see if they're correlated. You may want to check whatever software you use to control your fan speed if the fan curve is set appropriately. If you don't have any you can also check the BIOS to see if you're able to control your fan curve there. Also please double check if you plugged in your CPU fan cable into the CPU_FAN 1 header on your motherboard. That fan header ramps the fan accordingly to the CPU temp.

Okay looks like I’ve got some tweaking to do then. I’ve already tried changing the settings on my cpu and seen an improvement so I’ll look into setting up my fans better. Thanks for all your help!