Faulty hardware or more cooling needed?

[Sebastian St James]

I have computer system that freezes when put under load. I can replicate this under OCCT on a fresh install of windows, thus eliminating installed software issues. It is a FX-9590 system, so there is high heat production at play.

I've recently installed a NZXT Kraken X61 CPU cooler. Using OCCT stress tests and have the NZXT cam software set to silent mode, the system freezes around the 20 min mark. The CPU temperature goes to around 55C out of a AMD max of 62C, so that should be fine. MB hovers in the 40's. Socket temp went to around 70. So temperatures seem fine for max load conditions to me.

The case has 3 fans in total. 1 x 20mm [fan in] case front. 2 x 14mm [fan out] top (x61).

As a test, I ran the x61 cooler on 100% max, and the system passed the OCCT stress tests. This tells me that either
a) The system is healthy but requires more cooling, or
b) The cooling is fine, but some system component is flaky at a warm but reasonable temperature

How do I best determine whether the problem is a) or b)? What temperature readings under OCCT should I be monitoring to determine if any part of my system is getting too hot, and what should their thresholds be?

My system:
NZXT Kraken X61
EVGA SuperNOVA NEX750B 750W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply
ASUS GeForce GTX 770 DirectCU II OC 2GB Video Card
Asus Sabertooth-990FX-R2 AM3+ USB3 4DD3 ATX Motherboard
Corsair Dominator Platinum 16G (2X8G) CMD16GX3M2A1866C9 Memory
Aerocool X-Predator Case Red Edition
AMD FX-9590 8-Core Black Edtion

There is no overclocking, and all BIOS settings are default.

 

[Demosthenest]

The temps seem normal to low for an fx 9590, I don't think that's what's making your pc freeze. When using the nzxt at full speed, does it still freeze?

 

[Sebastian St James]

No. I can past tests on full cooler settings

 

[cin19]

If your MB has the 1708 version BIOS, the problem maybe from the 750WPSU, AMD did recommend to have 1000W PSU. I don't know it is true or not. http://www.pugetsystems.com/parts/CPU/AMD-FX-9590-4-7GHz-220W-9542

 

[Sebastian St James]

The MB BIOS version is 2301 x 64, 01/06/2014.

As to the PSU, I've read on forums people claiming that AMD recommends a 1000W and 1200W - both which can't be right, and I haven't been able to actually confirm this on AMD's website, whereas other people say such large PSUs for a single card machine in nonsense. For instance: See here

Can I get a second opinion about PSUs?

Also, if the system was under powered, why would raising the cooling level make it more stable?

 

[cin19]

You may try to disable one of 8 cores to see what happened.

 

[Sebastian St James]

I wouldn't know how to do that. And what would you be testing for there? That disabling a core makes it run on a 750W PSU? My thinking is that I can already demonstrate that I can run it on all 8 cores, as long as I shove massive amounts of cooling at it.

 

[Sebastian St James]

I've noticed that during the OCCT stress tests, the CPU freq is throttling. Here, you can see it bouncing between 4.7k and 1.3k constantly.

While there are a number of reasons that a modern CPU can reduce frequency, temperature thresholds is certainly a highly likely one. Notice, that there is no throttling before the test, but it appears to cut in around the 3 minute mark.

However, when we look at the socket temperature, we see it bounces between 65C and 80C.

CPU core temperatures, which OCCT didn't record for me, where around 45C and the X61 coolers fluid was also around 45C.

Although the cpu core temps were low, the CPU throttling suggests over heating is possibly going on. Can we make sense of this?

 

[Sebastian St James]

I've found that with some extreme cooling, I'm able to have the CPU not throttle. I now just need to decide a way to do without extreme fan noise.