i5 - 7600k High temps?

[HyPeXeLeD]

So i overclocked my i5 7600k on a 212 evo to 4.6GHz with the automatic "upgrade" function my Z270 Gaming K3 comes, and i went on and played watch dogs 2 on full settings to test temps. The maximum hit was 74°C (72°C image i've got) on one core and all the rest stayed under 72°C. (On Watch Dogs 2 my 7600k hits 100% CPU usage rather constantly)

Now this would be fine with me normally, but i wanted to see the worst case scenario so i booted up Prime 95 and started up the harshest FTT test to get the maximum heat and see how things were.

I almost choked and freaked out when the temps instantly spiked to
97°C within seconds before i rushed to stop the test. Then idle temps went back and stayed at 40°C even after 10 minutes. When last week i had measured an idle temp as low as 28°C before.**

*Everything was at 23°C ambient
**These idle temps were at stock speeds.

Next thing i did was check how cool the 212's heatsink was while the temps were as high as 65°C... and it was as cool as the case itself... (Wth), while the back of the motherboard had an aura of heat that you could feel from getting near with your finger.

So i turned off the PC and removed the cooler to look at how the thermal paste was applied.. this is how the CPU looked. (The Cooler side was pretty full, but still massive difference between parts of the CPU).
I would've applied paste but it was getting late so i left it for today.

Now the inner me decided to try googling and see what the results were arround the internet to check if my experience was correct or i did something wrong... and i didnt find anything conclusive.

So, is there something really wrong here, or just what you'd expect from this cooler and CPU? (Also the heatsink keeping cool while my old FX-4100's stock cooler heatsink was warm at touch makes me doubt it)

Regards,
Tomas.

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

I can't be sure, but it looks like some of the paste has spilled over onto the CPU PCB, so I'd give that a clean. At any rate, if you remove the CPU cooler you should always apply a fresh layer of paste in my opinion. Isopropyl alcohol at 95% or higher and a coffee filter will do the job.

The most likely reason why you're seeing high temperatures is because automatic overclocking tools always apply more voltage than what's actually required. The best (and safest) way to overclock is to learn how to do it manually.

 

[Dunlop0078]

What version of prime95 are you using? What is core voltage set to? If its the latest version of prime95 many people recommend not using it with newer intel cpu's it gets them unrealistically hot, something to do with the AVX instruction set I believe. I would get the trial version of aida64 if you want to stress test. Don't worry about prime95, if you are only hitting the mid 70s in a cpu intensive title like watch dogs 2 I would say your temps are just fine.

 

[HyPeXeLeD]

What version of prime95 are you using? What is core voltage set to? If its the latest version of prime95 many people recommend not using it with newer intel cpu's it gets them unrealistically hot, something to do with the AVX instruction set I believe. I would get the trial version of aida64 if you want to stress test. Don't worry about prime95, if you are only hitting the mid 70s in a cpu intensive title like watch dogs 2 I would say your temps are just fine.

I'm using the lastest version of Prime95 (Downloaded it from the page yesterday), so that might be one of the causes.

I can't be sure, but it looks like some of the paste has spilled over onto the CPU PCB, so I'd give that a clean. At any rate, if you remove the CPU cooler you should always apply a fresh layer of paste in my opinion. Isopropyl alcohol at 95% or higher and a coffee filter will do the job.

The most likely reason why you're seeing high temperatures is because automatic overclocking tools always apply more voltage than what's actually required. The best (and safest) way to overclock is to learn how to do it manually.

Also, i used the automatic overclocking becouse i was kinda lazy, but it never goes over 1.36v. (max registered)
I'll reapply paste (i already started cleaning the PCB last night) and see how it goes.

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

At 4.6Ghz you should be close to 1.2V, so 1.36V is crazy-high and definitely going to be the cause of the high temperature. It sounds like you could get a lot more out of your overclock if you did it manually.

The other issue is that enabling certain power-saving features in the BIOS will dynamically adjust the clock speed and voltage, so these features should be disabled.

 

[HyPeXeLeD]

At 4.6Ghz you should be close to 1.2V, so 1.36V is crazy-high and definitely going to be the cause of the high temperature. It sounds like you could get a lot more out of your overclock if you did it manually.

The other issue is that enabling certain power-saving features in the BIOS will dynamically adjust the clock speed and voltage, so these features should be disabled.

Yeah, part of it was me being cautious about all features i dont know (since i'm new to these features coming from a FX-4100 based system) and after seeing some claims of people literally frying their CPU's becouse the voltage spikes some features created.

 

[HyPeXeLeD]

At 4.6Ghz you should be close to 1.2V, so 1.36V is crazy-high and definitely going to be the cause of the high temperature. It sounds like you could get a lot more out of your overclock if you did it manually.

The other issue is that enabling certain power-saving features in the BIOS will dynamically adjust the clock speed and voltage, so these features should be disabled.

After installing the cpu cooler again i just manually set the vcore to 1.25.

I'm hitting 70°C maximum while on full load maximum heat of 26.6 Prime95. For the test i tried running lastest version of Prime95, but the core 2 keeps failing instantly. It did get to stay on stable for a bit once, and it didnt go over 80°C.

So i guess this is a success.