CPU spikes when opening anything

[sovachka]

Hey guys, I'm trying to figure out why my CPU keeps spiking to 47%+ when at idle or whenever I open any application. I'll start up my web browser, refresh a page, open an application, etc. and I can hear my fans briefly kicking up because my CPU is around 56% load for a few seconds and it's actually driving me insane. Any suggestions on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated. If it matters my CPU is a 7700K.

 

[gaius_iulius]

This is normal behaviour for an i7-7700K.

 

[mdd1963]

The fans are spinning up to match the processor temps/clock speed, which ramps up from 800-1000 MHz when idle to 2,3,4.5 GHz, depending on what you are doing. What cooler is on it?

 

[mdd1963]

No one likes hearing fans ramping up and down; just set them to medium or medium- high, and check temps under a gaming load.

 

[Karadjgne]

Intel temp strips are actually on the cores themselves, so any work done by the cores is going to immediately be reported. Doesn't matter if it's active apps or background apps, cpu work = heat created. When you open an app, that's not all that's being done, windows has to make a ton of connections to other stuff such as drivers, cache, hdd, ssd etc so just opening an app will show a spike in workload as the cpu makes all those connections that didn't exist before. That spike in workload translates to a spike in temp, but it's almost a false reading as it's very temporary, not a sustained workload. Windows 10, to date, is the worst for this as it's constantly doing stuff in the background, so getting a true idle temp is not exactly easy, that being a consistent less than 5% workload. With all that's going on in win10, you'll most normally get @5%-30% loads, and the constant temp spikes as well. It's almost getting to the point with new pc's and win10, that if you aren't getting the spikes, there's an issue. Somewhere.

So far, for win10 users, I've found that mobo fan software or SpeedFan works best if the curves are reset to take those spikes into consideration. Basically, instead of a curve starting at @35° at min fan speeds and running up to max at 70°, try setting the curve for min fan speeds starting at @45° and maxing at 70°. That way the fans don't budge off minimum speeds until the cpu is under an honest load, not a quickie spike, eliminating the vast majority of ramp-ups.