[SOLVED] CPU running way too hot

bencsikistvan14

Prominent
Jul 10, 2018
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Hey, my problem is that I noticed my CPU running really hot lately. It's an i5 3470, and I got a stock cooler for it, with decent enough thermal paste. It runs about 40-45 ℃ idle and under stress, it slowly goes up all the way to 97-100 ℃ where it stays. I assume it throttles down, but there is no sign of it.

I'm pretty sure this is not normal, and I might be in the fault of this error because my motherboard (somewhat) supports overclocking. Well, you can technically modify the clock ratio in the UEFI. I saw this when i was getting my new GPU, (an RX 570 4GB, running unusually well, only at 65 ℃ and barely any noise) and figured, why not try? I bumped the modifier up from x32 to x34, because this CPU has a boost clock of 3.40GHz, so i thought that was still ok. I also never had bad temps before. It performed as expected, but it was late at night, so i only ran a Cinebench test and did not look at the temps. The reason i noticed it, is because i wanted to test the new GPU on the most demanding game i own, AC Odyssey, and used MSI Afterburner for it. I also have it monitor CPU usage and CPU temp to see if i'm bottlenecked.

I also checked if the cooler is mounted good, and changed paste, but nothing.

Is it possible that i fried something in my CPU?

CPU is an i5 3470
GPU is RX 570 ITX
Motherboard is an Asrock H61M U3S3

Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Welp, i figured it out. I was basically cooking my pc. My room is hot by default, the case has terrile airflow, and my one and only exhaust fan broke. I will still replace the stock cooler, but with the side panel open, the CPU runs at 75-80 °C. It was not the <Mod Edit> oc, but te <Mod Edit> pc.

Danymq

Reputable
Jan 9, 2020
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Have you tried undervolting?
I believe that 3rd gen started using thermal paste between the core and the IHS, which naturally will degrade over time, so if undervolting doesn't help, you can try a better cooler (safe) or delid and use thermal paste (unsafe) or liquid metal (unsafe++).
 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
3rd Gen was the start of paste as a Tim, instead of solder.
3rd gen cpus on some motherboards allowed turbo to be raised upto 400MHz, if the bios supported such.
Base clock for the i5-3470 is 3.2GHz, but turbo is 3.6GHz and is enabled by default. It'll boost 1 core to 3.6GHz, 2 to 3 cores to 3.5GHz and 4 cores to 3.4GHz without any modification to settings.

What you didn't do was account for the added voltage the Auto setting for vcore would add to the cpu with the 200MHz bump, which is usually far more than the cpu needs. I'd set the multiplier back to x32 and just make sure turbo is enabled because the stock cooler is only barely adequate to control temps at stock settings with normal use, cinebench is extreme use.

You don't have the cooling capacity for what you want to accomplish.
 

bencsikistvan14

Prominent
Jul 10, 2018
7
1
515
Welp, i figured it out. I was basically cooking my pc. My room is hot by default, the case has terrile airflow, and my one and only exhaust fan broke. I will still replace the stock cooler, but with the side panel open, the CPU runs at 75-80 °C. It was not the <Mod Edit> oc, but te <Mod Edit> pc.
 
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