CPU throttling after reapplying thermal paste?

[gunznrozez85]

Okay so my CPU has been running hot recently so I thought maybe I would reapply the thermal paste, I did that and temperatures dropped to the normal 23C on idle and mid 30s under load (used to go up to the mid 60s under load), but my FPS in games has went down noticeably.

Here's where the weird part begins, I go to BIOS because I thought maybe my voltage was too low but it seemed okay, after rebooting from BIOS without messing with anything in it, my PC boots up as normal but get this, the temps go sky high in the 60s and 70s under load, like they were before I applied the thermal paste, but my FPS in games goes back to its normal state.

Can anyone explain this to me, my specs are below.

AMD FX 6300 six-core 3.5 GHz
EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2 GB VRAM
MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard
G-Skill RipJaws 8GB DDR3 RAM
Two Seagate 1 TB HDDs (No RAID)
500W ATX Bronze Certified PSU

The thermal paste I used is Arctic Silver 5.

EDIT: I also failed to mention that recently before applying the thermal paste, I had to reset the BIOS by removing the CMOS battery for 5 minutes and putting it back in because I was messing with the voltage of the processor in an attempt to reduce temps and I set it too low by accident.

 

[GhislainG]

Check the thermal margins with AMD Overdrive. Temperatures and FPS probably go down because the CPU is throttling (frequency drops to 1.4 GHz), but you need to determine if the thermal margins are close to 0°C or negative when it occurs.

Edit: How much thermal paste did you apply? It has to be just enough to fill the voids, not to isolate the heat sink from the CPU.

 

[gunznrozez85]

Check the thermal margins with AMD Overdrive. Temperatures and FPS probably go down because the CPU is throttling (frequency drops to 1.4 GHz), but you need to determine if the thermal margins are close to 0°C or negative when it occurs.

Edit: How much thermal paste did you apply? It has to be just enough to fill the voids, not to isolate the heat sink from the CPU.

I did a stress test with Prime95 and thermal margins come back around 4.5 on average on all cores without the CPU throttling.

Also I applied a pea sized amount of thermal compound.

 

[GhislainG]

They are low; you normally want them at 10°C or more. Pea size could be quite a bit of thermal paste, particularly if you didn't spread it very very thin with an old credit card or a similar tool. Let AOD run in the background and check it when the FPS is significantly lower than expected. Check both the thermal margins and the CPU frequency.

 

[gunznrozez85]

They are low; you normally want them at 10°C or more. Pea size could be quite a bit of thermal paste, particularly if you didn't spread it very very thin with an old credit card or a similar tool. Let AOD run in the background and check it when the FPS is significantly lower than expected. Check both the thermal margins and the CPU frequency.

Yeah I didn't spread the paste at all, I figured it would spread itself after putting the heatsink on.

Thing about that is the CPU hasn't throttled from overheating from me using it, it just gets that way when I start up the PC and when I restart to go to BIOS and, without doing anything in BIOS, I boot from there and my CPU goes back to normal, normal FPS, normal high temps under load and everything.

EDIT: Also I reduced the voltage by a bit on the CPU and temp margins went up from 4.5 to 6.1.

EDIT 2: Also I did a test with both Core Temp and MSI Command Center, Core Temp shows 64-65C while Command Center comes in at 57-58C, which one is wrong?

 

[GhislainG]

They are both wrong; that's why AMD Overdrive exists. What's your ambient temperature and what cooler are you using? Your thermal margins should be way higher than that.

 

[gunznrozez85]

They are both wrong; that's why AMD Overdrive exists. What's your ambient temperature and what cooler are you using? Your thermal margins should be way higher than that.

Ambient temp is around 73-74 degrees in my room but sometimes goes up to 76 or 77 if I am using my PC and not just this one either, my room is small and gets warm easily.

I am currently using the stock cooler, according to reviews I heard they're pretty crappy.

 

[GhislainG]

Does your case provide good airflow? There has to be a reason why the thermal margins are that low. I presume the CPU fan is connected to the correct header? If you use the stock fan, does it get loud when running Prime95? If not, check the fan profile in the BIOS.

 

[gunznrozez85]

Does your case provide good airflow? There has to be a reason why the thermal margins are that low. I presume the CPU fan is connected to the correct header? If you use the stock fan, does it get loud when running Prime95? If not, check the fan profile in the BIOS.

My case provides excellent airflow from what I presume, some friends of mine were helping me out a bit with some small tweaks and reversed the case fan which is almost right next to the processor.

No it doesn't get too loud at all, the fan profile looks good in BIOS last I checked (which was yesterday), it's all set to auto or what MSI likes to call it "Smart Fan" where it speeds up and slows down based on the heat of the processor, I can over ride this and manually set it myself in the MSI Command Center if I must.

Also the fan is connected to the correct header, I just checked it after dusting it out a bit, I've been planning on get a new cooler, particularly a liquid cooler, for the CPU and a couple new front case fans.

 

[GhislainG]

You could increase the fan speed until you get a better cooler.

 

[gunznrozez85]

You could increase the fan speed until you get a better cooler.

I'll probably do that, from what I know everyhing looks good, it's just the stock cooler that I have sucks really bad, I'll probably get a liquid cooler so I can do some good overclocking.

 

[GhislainG]

To overclock a FX-6300, a good air cooler like the Cryorig H7 is plenty. Liquid coolers are nice, but they have a higher failure rate.

 

[gunznrozez85]

To overclock a FX-6300, a good air cooler like the Cryorig H7 is plenty. Liquid coolers are nice, but they have a higher failure rate.

Okay, I appreciate your input in all of this, it helped me a lot more than you think

I'm going to get a new cooler as soon as I can, I talked to my friends about it and they recommended the Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo, one of them has an FX-6300 like I do and can overclock up to 4.7 with that cooler.

 

[GhislainG]

The Cryorig H7 is slightly better than the 212 Evo.

 

[gunznrozez85]

The Cryorig H7 is slightly better than the 212 Evo.

Okay I'll probably go with that, everyone I run into is advising against liquid cooling so I'll stay away from those, so thanks for the help.