I have FPS drops and during the FPS drops my CPU Temp goes DOWN

Feb 21, 2018
10
0
10
PC Specs:
AMD-FX 8350
NVIDIA GTX 1070
M5A78L-M PLUS/USB3 Motherboard
Windows 7
16GB RAM

Hello people,

I lately have been having issues whilst playing games. Each 30 to 60 seconds I get a FPS drop from like 100 down to always 40 or 30. When I look at MSI Afterburner my CPU temp drops from like always 65 or 68 always down to 40-41 and then rapidly spikes up again after it has dropped. During these drops my Core Clock and Memory Clock drop aswell. I have these issues since I changed out the thermal paste from my CPU because it was overheating. Does anyone know what might be causing these problems ?
https://prnt.sc/iw71pg CPU TEMP DROPS
https://prnt.sc/iw72cj CORE CLOCK (MHz) DROPS

 
Solution
A common issue on boards like yours when paired with the 125w cpus is VRM throttling. Your board uses a weak 4+1 VRM setup that has no cooling(heatsinks) so when paired with a 125w cpu the VRMs tend to overheat and throttle the cpu to stop the motherboard from melting or catching fire.

A possible fix/work around is adding mosfet heatsinks to the VRMs and using a top down style cooler to get air moving over the VRMs to help cool them. But ultimately the load that CPU puts on the VRMs will likely drive it into an early grave(even with the added cooling).


Dropping core clocks on your processor are bound to lead to framedrops and are usually a sign of overheating. Your readings might be incorrect, I would suggest checking if your cooler is seated properly etc. It may also be a problem with power delivery. What power supply do you have and which games do your get fps drops in?

 
A common issue on boards like yours when paired with the 125w cpus is VRM throttling. Your board uses a weak 4+1 VRM setup that has no cooling(heatsinks) so when paired with a 125w cpu the VRMs tend to overheat and throttle the cpu to stop the motherboard from melting or catching fire.

A possible fix/work around is adding mosfet heatsinks to the VRMs and using a top down style cooler to get air moving over the VRMs to help cool them. But ultimately the load that CPU puts on the VRMs will likely drive it into an early grave(even with the added cooling).
 
Solution


Power Supply says it's Max Output is 750W
I get the drops on games like CS:GO and GTA V. I rarely get these drops in games like League of Legends
I will have to look into the cooler being seated properly, might be the problem since I changed out my Thermal Paste.

 


Alright, might aswell look into that, do you suggest any new coolers ?
 


https://pcpartpicker.com/product/TCBv6h/raijintek-cpu-cooler-0r100004
 


The best course of action here is getting a better motherboard (used or new doesn't matter).
 


Unless the OP can find a great deal on a decent board it's likely going to cost more than I would invest into an AM3+ platform. The decent AM3+ boards are getting hard to find and are rather spendy.

VRM heatsinks + the Pallas heatsink is going to cost ~$50 and imho thats about all I would want to put into it. That fix will hopefully last long enough for the OP to save up for a platform upgrade(cpu. motherboard and ram).
 
Your motherboard is not suitable for a FX-8350.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2384030/motherboard-tier-list-am3-chipsets.html

What I think is happening is that the motherboard is throttling because of heat.
That causes the cpu to slow down which allows the temperature to drop, but the slower core speed causes stuttering.
The single thread performance is likely the main issue.

What to do?
I do not recommend replacing the motherboard with a 990/990fx motherboard unless you can buy one dirt cheap used.

FX is essentially obsolete today and I would not spend another dime on it.

For some $250, you can buy a G4600 cpu, a lga1151 motherboard and 8gb of ddr4 ram.
You can go up from there, preferably with an 8th gen intel processor.

The FX-8250 has a decent passmark rating of 8940, but a relatively slow 1509 single thread rating.
A G4600 with 4 threads has a rating of 5218, but a much better 2057 single thread rating.

How many threads can you usefully use for your games?
You can test this by removing one or more threads.
You can do this in the windows msconfig boot advanced options option.
You will need to reboot for the change to take effect. Set the number of threads to less than you have.
This will tell you how sensitive your games are to the benefits of many threads.
If you see little difference, your game does not need all the threads you have.

Most games seem to be optimized for 2-4 threads.