Question CPU too hot under heavy load

[i76700hquser]

Hello.
I'm having an issue with my PC, after being rebuilt, it runs too hot when stressing with Prime95, a few seconds after starting the stress test it goes up to 100°C and starts to throttle the speed, without affecting the temperature.
When playing GTA 5 the CPU runs at around 60°C if I recall correctly.
Here are my specifications:
Intel Core i5 11400
Stock Cooler with Stock thermal paste (I already tried pressing the mounting pins on the cooler, no effect)
ASUS TUF Gaming B560M Plus
16GB RAM T-Force Delta
SSD Kioxia Exceria 500GB
Custom Dell GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (with case fan and modded heatsink).
Seasoning B12 BC 850w Power Supply
Cooler Master MasterCase H500
Thanks.

 

[logainofhades]

The stock cooler is pretty bad. I would definitely recommend getting a better one. Did you mean B560 for the motherboard? B550 is an AMD chipset.

 

[i76700hquser]

The stock cooler is pretty bad. I would definitely recommend getting a better one. Did you mean B560 for the motherboard? B550 is an AMD chipset.

Yeah I meant B560, my bad, I get confused between Intel and AMD chipsets.
Is the stock Cooler really this bad? I thought the new design would make it better but it really doesn't seem like it.

 

[geofelt]

The stock cooler is decent, up to a point.
The fan can get noisy under full load.
Prime95 is a test that puts a not normal load on your cpu to stress it.
If your temperatures in actual use are 60c. or even <85c. then I would not worry much about it.

The stock cooler can be tricky to install level.
The trick is to push down on diagonal pins at the same time.
If you do not, it will not go on level.
Look at the back of your motherboard. All 4 pins should be through and locked.
If you nudge the cooler(with power off), it should not budge.
At complete idle, your cpu temperature should be about 10-15c. over ambient.

You probably can do better by cleaning off the old paste and applying new.

Your case is excellent for air cooling.

 

[i76700hquser]

The stock cooler is decent, up to a point.
The fan can get noisy under full load.
Prime95 is a test that puts a not normal load on your cpu to stress it.
If your temperatures in actual use are 60c. or even <85c. then I would not worry much about it.

The stock cooler can be tricky to install level.
The trick is to push down on diagonal pins at the same time.
If you do not, it will not go on level.
Look at the back of your motherboard. All 4 pins should be through and locked.
If you nudge the cooler(with power off), it should not budge.
At complete idle, your cpu temperature should be about 10-15c. over ambient.

You probably can do better by cleaning off the old paste and applying new.

Your case is excellent for air cooling.

Yeah, it seems to use 180w when stress testing, which is a lot for a Core i5, even with the power limits unlocked.
The cooler seems to be mounted correctly, although it's upside down, since otherwise the cable wouldn't reach the header, but I don't think it matters.
Temperatures when I boot up Windows are around 40-50°C, on the Bios they seem to be 40°C, Web browsing puts it at 55-60°C and GTA 5 after a few minutes seems to put it at 70°C.
The thermal paste is less than a year old, would this matter?
Yeah I got a good deal on this case less than a year ago, thank God I didn't buy a new one at the same price.

 

[logainofhades]

Those temps are fine, for gaming use. Your CPU doesn't have to work very hard with that GPU, so that is probably helping to keep temps down. The stock cooler as mentioned earlier can be quite noisy. A $20-25 Thermalright assassin would be a major improvement, for temps, and noise.

 

[Phaaze88]

runs too hot when stressing with Prime95
Intel Stock Cooler

They, including the newly designed ones, are not intended for those kinds of loads, so of course the experience was going to be crap.
If you are going to run tasks that are on Prime 95's level, then yes, you need a new cooler.

 

[i76700hquser]

They, including the newly designed ones, are not intended for those kinds of loads, so of course the experience was going to be crap.
If you are going to run tasks that are on Prime 95's level, then yes, you need a new cooler.

Not really, I'm just wondering, since my old Haswell (i5 4590) PC with a stock HP Cooler runs at 70°C, but it's probably because of it having a lower TDP.

 

[Phaaze88]

Not really, I'm just wondering, since my old Haswell (i5 4590) PC with a stock HP Cooler runs at 70°C, but it's probably because of it having a lower TDP.

The TDP applies to base clock only. It does not include Intel Turbo Boost.
The thermal density between those 2 cpus isn't be the same. Smaller die surface area is harder to cool compared to a larger one, and as process nodes continue to shrink, thermal density goes up with it.
Intel also bridged the die to the heatspreader with paste on Haswell. Not as effective as solder, like they used with Rocket Lake, but the paste they used lasted a very long time.

 

[i76700hquser]

The TDP applies to base clock only. It does not include Intel Turbo Boost.
The thermal density between those 2 cpus isn't be the same. Smaller die surface area is harder to cool compared to a larger one, and as process nodes continue to shrink, thermal density goes up with it.
Intel also bridged the die to the heatspreader with paste on Haswell. Not as effective as solder, like they used with Rocket Lake, but the paste they used lasted a very long time.

Good to know this info, since I'm also studying to be an IT Technician.
Shouldn't the CPU heat less with a lower process? I thought a lower fabrication process would produce less heat due to it being more efficient.

 

[Phaaze88]

Shouldn't the CPU heat less with a lower process? I thought a lower fabrication process would produce less heat due to it being less efficient.

A smaller process is MORE power efficient, but is going to have smaller 'power heavy' hotspots. Not as easy to cool as larger spots.

 

[i76700hquser]

A smaller process is MORE power efficient, but is going to have smaller 'power heavy' hotspots. Not as easy to cool as larger spots.

Oops that was a typo.
That's interesting, I should probably study about that during my free time.
What I don't understand is why Intel made CPUs use more power, wasn't "65w" enough for a Core i5?

 

[logainofhades]

They enabled them to use more power, to get the most performance they can, out of the chips. With AMD actually competing the last few years, Intel has had to actually put in some effort to stay relevant. Hence why both sides have been bringing us such great chips. I do not miss the days of 2nd-7th gen, where we were stuck at 4c/8t, and minor gains at best, gen to gen.

 

[i76700hquser]

They enabled them to use more power, to get the most performance they can, out of the chips. With AMD actually competing the last few years, Intel has had to actually put in some effort to stay relevant. Hence why both sides have been bringing us such great chips. I do not miss the days of 2nd-7th gen, where we were stuck at 4c/8t, and minor gains at best, gen to gen.

Yeah I don't understand why 2nd to 7th gen didn't bring any improvements on the CPU side.
I think 4c is still usable if you're not into new games, but new games really require more cores. I mean my core i3 10110u laptop is pretty usable for normal use, too bad it has 4GB of soldered RAM, Windows 10 basically uses 80% of it when idling on the desktop.

 

[logainofhades]

There were little improvements, because AMD was not competing. FX was an epic failure of an architecture. Intel had no incentive to push performance higher.

 

[i76700hquser]

FX was an epic failure of an architecture.

I remember seeing a lot of AMD A Series laptops and desktops as well, were those based on the same FX architecture?

 

[Karadjgne]

With the move to 10th Gen complete, Intel started working on 13th gen. 11th and even 12th gen were no more than drop-in afterthoughts. 11th was the standard toc, just to bump up because of 3000 series success, 12th was what they'd worked on so far with 13th. Right now 17thgen is most likely in the planning stages and we'll get another tic-toc for 14th-15th, and the progress so far on 17th when 16th drops.

So Intel is thinking 3-5 years in the future, planning for it. What they can't do is predict software with any reliability. Games like BF4 were a serious problem since reliance on core speeds and single thread performance basically went out the window, and core count became the major player. Even the disaster called FX got given life in that game, the FX 8350 came in 2nd, right on the heels on the i7's, beating the i5's handily. That's when Intel shifted to more than 4C +HT and why it took so many gens to shift out of that previous way of thinking.

AMD's mukti-core thought process was developed too soon for the software, and failed as a result, Intel came late to the dance, but survived due to its IPC.

 

[logainofhades]

I don't think the multicore was too soon, just poorly implemented, on an architectural level. AMD was a driving force with multicore, thanks to Ryzen's price/performance, early on. This would have happened sooner, if not for Faildozer being such a terrible architecture. Clock for clock, they were slower than a Phenom II.

 

[i76700hquser]

It's interesting how we thought the FX 9590 used so much power, but nowadays enthusiast Intel CPUs use almost the same, at least they perform very well, unlike Bulldozer.

 

[Karadjgne]

Heh. The biggest problem with the 9370 and 9590 wasn't so much its power use, but cooling it. Back then the Noctua NH-D14 was the cooler of choice, wasn't til later the NH-D15 showed up. And that was basically it for Big Air, and AIO's were 240mm/280mm, and the vast majority of cases were lucky to get those in. There were very few cases able to put a 360mm rad, many custom loops had external mounted radiators, I built a setup that involved a car radiator from a Honda.

Advances in case design and cooling tech mean even a 9590 let loose would be tamable today.
300w cpus, I'm not all that surprised. Ppl have been hitting those power levels with OC for years, Intel just put the kibosh on the OC and did it for you, so there's no more 1GH+ headroom anymore.