CPU Overheating Under No Load

[Bryan Miller]

Fairly new i5 4690k (less than 3 months) was running fine at 1.040v (no overclocking). I use it for music production and gaming, havn't run it under any crazy stress recently (as i havn't yet moved my production setup). Was playing kerbal space program then fired up bf4, ran fine for a little then quickly started dropping frames. Found that the cpu was running hot, shut down the computer and opened bios to find the cpu temp skyrocketing under no load (bios screen), quickly hit 88c, so i figured it must be the stock thermal paste dried up or something. Reseated the stock cooler after cleaning off the old paste, put some as5 on it, about a pea sized dot in the center. Fired it up into bios and found the temp to slowly heat until 40c then skyrocketed again up to 80c before i shut it off.

I am fairly up to date on most bios and have been running the computer with these settings for atleast 3 weeks before this problem occurred.

Specs:
CPU: i5 4690k
GPU: gtx 970
MOBO: asus z97 pro (not wifi)
Power: corsair 750 watt (overkill i know but at like 10$ more why not?)
Ram:16gb
Storage: 250 ssd and 2 tb hdd

I think it might be good to note that the audio also has terrible emi, even transmitting through the usb to an external sound card. All relevant drivers are up to date.

Really don't want to rma this sucker, don't even really know what/how to trouble shoot as i can't exactly place the cpu on another mobo. Bios says the mobo is sititng fine at 15c, and the gpu is about the same

 

[ezskills]

The intel CPU cooler is great for non gaming rig but is under sized and cheap for a gaming rig.

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

A pea size piece of thermal material seems a lot

Also are you sure all 4 push pins are locked down?
Is cpu fan running fast ?

If there is a hole under the cpu in the base plate check if all 4 push pins are locked down
If you can't see to confirm this , unplug all cables remove the motherboard , then the heat sink & fan
Re fit with a small amount of material on the heat sink
Assuming there is a copper slug in the base of the heat sink , just put thermal material on this copper slug

Most people talk about a rice grain size of thermal material
If smeared over the surface a layer 0.1 or 0.2 mm thick will do

Refit heat sink while motherboard is out of case and you can confirm the push pins have expanded the barbs under the motherboard so locking the heat sink in place

A Intel standard heat sink with copper slug in its base is good enough if no over clocking is carried out.
If you are using the K feature of the cpu for over clocking then getting a better heat sink may be necessary

If the system was working ok but then over heated later then I suspect the heat sink was not locked down correctly or maybe the fan is no longer running correctly

Regards

Mike Barnes

 

[Bryan Miller]

thanks for the help,

I am still not certain what went wrong the first time, but i reseated it again with a bit smaller amount of thermal paste (somewhere between a pea and a grain of rice) and it seems to be working for now. I was planning on overclocking it but wanted to see what the cpu can do w/out any over clocking first. For gaming it has been relatively fine, i am just worried that once i get my production set up going it is going to max out quickly. Then i will upgrade the cpu cooler