Question CPU "overheating" at ~50% usage. Programs still running after monitor loses PC signal.

[IDredMan]

Hey. Hope you're having a good one.

I've been trying to rack my head around this issue I've been having, and I seem to be getting a lot of contradicting clues that I don't even know what the real problem is, so I figure it's best to just put it in layman's terms and hope somebody here has a better guess.

The issue happens primarily, for whatever reason, when I'm playing a game called Yakuza Kiwami. At seemingly random points while playing the game, my monitor will lose signal from my PC, and I'll have to shut it down via holding the power button. If I try to start it again immediately, it'll tell me that the CPU is over temperature. Opening BIOS will read the CPU at 88 degrees Celsius, constantly, and without ever going down no matter how long the BIOS is left open.

So, the CPU is getting too hot? That's okay. I replaced the thermal paste - twice - and even replaced its fans. But the issue still persists.

The kicker? Whenever my monitor loses signal, some programs still run just fine even after that. If it happens when I'm in a Discord call, I'll still be able to hear everyone else in the call, and they'll still be able to hear me as well. Same goes for any other sound that might be playing, it'll still just keep going.

Which - to me - that says it might be a GPU problem rather than a CPU issue. But again, the boot screen does say that the CPU is over temp, not the GPU. Especially since the GPU is usually sitting at a cool ~50 degrees Celsius while running Yakuza. Not to mention that CPU and GPU usage are usually between 50-70% while the game is running, almost never even actually hitting that 70% mark.

And I should specify that this problem primarily only happens when playing Yakuza. It's happened in one or two other video games before, but only persistently in Yakuza. I've run more demanding games and more demanding processes that have easily driven the CPU and GPU usage into the 80-90%, and this issue just doesn't happen with those processes at all.

So maybe it's a problem with the game, right? Except I can't find anyone online who's had their entire CPU or GPU crash from the game and require a full restart. And for whatever reason, every time I have to restart the PC after such a crash, my Wi-Fi adaptor will stop working within 2 minutes of the restart, and I'll have to unplug it and plug it back in for it to work again. Which seems so unrelated to the potential issues at hand that it almost strikes me as a red herring, but it's 100% reproducible and happens every single time I run into the primary issue.

So does anyone even have a clue on where to start fixing this issue?
Thanks either way.

EDIT: PC specs are as follows:

CPU: Intel i5 12400F
CPU cooler: Attached fan
Motherboard: ASUS PRIME H610M-A D4-CSM LGA 1700 (Intel 12th Gen) Micro-ATX. (BIOS version: American Megatrends Inc. 1620, 8/12/2022)
Ram: 2x 16Gb DDR4 3200
SSD/HDD: 2x 1Tb Crucial CT1000BX500SSD1 (SATA (SSD)), 1x GIGABYTE GP-GSM2NE3100TNTD SSD.
GPU: 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti
PSU: 650W 80+ (3ish years old now)
Chassis: Xigmatek Lamiya
OS: Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19045 Build 19045)
Monitor: DELL S2421HGF

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

 

[IDredMan]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

Hey, thanks for letting me know. I just updated the original post with the specs. Sorry I don't have the specific model/make of the CPU cooler, as I've lost the receipt for it. But the issue was present with a previous fan, as well as the current one.

 

[Phaaze88]

Hi.
Do you have a box fan, or other large appliance fan? Remove side panel, and have the fan blow inside the case, and play Yakuza again.

88C isn't 'hot enough' for this kind of behavior from the cpu. It throttles at 100C.
Your case doesn't look to be a good player with airflow, so I'd imagine the case ambient temperature gets quite warm... and if case ambient is hot, all your equipment inside is going to report high(er) operating temperatures when you look them up.
Something else could be overheating and thus causing the black screen. Cpus and gpus aren't the only devices with thermal limitations - that's why the suggestion of using a fan to blow inside the case.

 

[cdrkf]

That motherboard looks quite basic - I've had problems in the past where the motherboard VRM overheats and causes issues rather than the CPU. As Phaze88 suggests a fan blowing at the side of the case might help keep other components cool.

I'm not familiar with Yakuxa so I don't know if it's a competitive game that needs high frame rates or not? If very high FPS isn't critical then you could take load off the system by capping the FPS (for example by turning v-sync on for your monitor to limit the game to the refresh rate). Might be worth a test to see if it's more stable?

 

[IDredMan]

Hi.
Do you have a box fan, or other large appliance fan? Remove side panel, and have the fan blow inside the case, and play Yakuza again.

88C isn't 'hot enough' for this kind of behavior from the cpu. It throttles at 100C.
Your case doesn't look to be a good player with airflow, so I'd imagine the case ambient temperature gets quite warm... and if case ambient is hot, all your equipment inside is going to report high(er) operating temperatures when you look them up.
Something else could be overheating and thus causing the black screen. Cpus and gpus aren't the only devices with thermal limitations - that's why the suggestion of using a fan to blow inside the case.

Well, I tested it out last night. Popped open the side of the case, pointed a fan directly at it, and everything ran just fine for hours and hours. Even a side issue I was having in the form of the Wifi adaptor not working after coming back from idling was no longer happening. (If I left the PC idling for 10-20 minutes or more and came back to it, the wifi adaptor would stop working until I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Did not happen with the fan blowing directly into the case).

So now what might be a good solution for this problem? 'Cause having a box fan blowing directly into the case is not exactly a permanent solution with my current physical space.

Is this a situation where switching to Liquid Cooling might help at all? I've been meaning to switch some time this year, so I figure I might as well if it's gonna help. Intel's page on Air Cooling vs Liquid Cooling does say that Liquid Cooling is better at pushing the heat outside the case itself, but companies just be sayin whatever some times. Figure I ought to ask here.

I should also add - I think - that the motherboard temperature is more-often-than-not just reading at around 50 degrees Celsius during the crashes. I'm gonna be honest, I don't know just how much the motherboard temperature does or does not correlate to the VRM potentially overheating, but I figure it couldn't hurt to include.

I've tried limiting the framerate, experimenting with different limits, and haven't had much luck finding a permanent solution.

 

[JayGau]

Your not supposed to need a liquid cooler to prevent PC crashing. Liquid coolers help to improve temps with less noise, but if the PC is crashing because of overheating it's certainly not because "you don't have an AIO".

I personally suspect that since the problem goes away with air blowing in your open case, your case airflow is terrible and the heat from the CPU and GPU stays inside and heats up everything (RAM and VRM included). What is your case fan configuration? How many do you have, where are they and which ones are intake/exhaust? How do you control them?

 

[IDredMan]

Your not supposed to need a liquid cooler to prevent PC crashing. Liquid coolers help to improve temps with less noise, but if the PC is crashing because of overheating it's certainly not because "you don't have an AIO".

I personally suspect that since the problem goes away with air blowing in your open case, your case airflow is terrible and the heat from the CPU and GPU stays inside and heats up everything (RAM and VRM included). What is your case fan configuration? How many do you have, where are they and which ones are intake/exhaust? How do you control them?

3 fans in the front and 1 in the back right next to the mobo. I usually just have them running at default settings, since they haven't really been much of a problem before.

I've had this setup for about 3 years now, and this has only recently become a problem. Is it possible that the bad airflow has caused heat damage to any specific part of the system? If so, what part is most likely to have taken the brunt of that damage?

 

[Bob.B]

Well, I tested it out last night. Popped open the side of the case, pointed a fan directly at it, and everything ran just fine for hours and hours. Even a side issue I was having in the form of the Wifi adaptor not working after coming back from idling was no longer happening. (If I left the PC idling for 10-20 minutes or more and came back to it, the wifi adaptor would stop working until I unplugged it and plugged it back in. Did not happen with the fan blowing directly into the case).

So now what might be a good solution for this problem? 'Cause having a box fan blowing directly into the case is not exactly a permanent solution with my current physical space.

Is this a situation where switching to Liquid Cooling might help at all? I've been meaning to switch some time this year, so I figure I might as well if it's gonna help. Intel's page on Air Cooling vs Liquid Cooling does say that Liquid Cooling is better at pushing the heat outside the case itself, but companies just be sayin whatever some times. Figure I ought to ask here.

I should also add - I think - that the motherboard temperature is more-often-than-not just reading at around 50 degrees Celsius during the crashes. I'm gonna be honest, I don't know just how much the motherboard temperature does or does not correlate to the VRM potentially overheating, but I figure it couldn't hurt to include.

I've tried limiting the framerate, experimenting with different limits, and haven't had much luck finding a permanent solution.

Turn off the fan.....leave the side panel off the case....test.

 

[JayGau]

3 fans in the front and 1 in the back right next to the mobo. I usually just have them running at default settings, since they haven't really been much of a problem before.

I've had this setup for about 3 years now, and this has only recently become a problem. Is it possible that the bad airflow has caused heat damage to any specific part of the system? If so, what part is most likely to have taken the brunt of that damage?

What is the air flow direction? Are the fans on the front intake and the back exhaust? There seem to be a significant unbalance here (you ideally want to have as much air in as air out).

Also are you cleaning up it the inside of the case, the fans and and CPU heatsink time to time? Is there any dust inside or on the meshes? (there is usually meshes on the top and the front to prevent dust to enter the case when fan are intake and they need to be clean up regularly.)

You would very likely benefit from installing two extra fans on the top of the case. The 3 three front intake, the three others exhaust. And you should set the curve as a function of the CPU temp.

Since it works fine when the case is open with the fan blowing in it, there is likely no damage. But I'm pretty sure something is preventing the air to circulate properly in the case when it's closed.

 

[IDredMan]

What is the air flow direction? Are the fans on the front intake and the back exhaust? There seem to be a significant unbalance here (you ideally want to have as much air in as air out).

Also are you cleaning up it the inside of the case, the fans and and CPU heatsink time to time? Is there any dust inside or on the meshes? (there is usually meshes on the top and the front to prevent dust to enter the case when fan are intake and they need to be clean up regularly.)

You would very likely benefit from installing two extra fans on the top of the case. The 3 three front intake, the three others exhaust. And you should set the curve as a function of the CPU temp.

Since it works fine when the case is open with the fan blowing in it, there is likely no damage. But I'm pretty sure something is preventing the air to circulate properly in the case when it's closed.

The front face of the case is actually glass, and the front fans are drawing air from little mesh slits on the side of the front face. They're about an inch wide and run along the vertical length of the PC.

Would I be correct in assuming that those are not enough, or at least no longer enough for good airflow?

I'm considering my options in replacing the glass face on the front of the case with a mesh, and how I might go about doing that. Would that help?

In terms of cleaning, I've been cleaning it on the inside every 6 months. Should I be cleaning every 2-3 months instead?

 

[IDredMan]

Turn off the fan.....leave the side panel off the case....test.

Just tried this, and while it did run it for longer than normal, the issue did still happen eventually.