I7 6700k - what is normal load temps?

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Lars01

Lars01

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What is the normal load temps on a i7 6700k when stress testing prime95 version 26,6 or aida64 for example?

Let's say a i7 6700k with a Noctua nh-d15. What would be the temps on 100 % load with prime95 26,6? Or aida64 with cpu and fpu enabled?

I am talking about a stock i7 6700k, not overclocked.

 
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Darkbreeze


The i7-6700k doesn't even begin to throttle until 100°C. Anything below 70°C under full load on all cores is acceptable as being pretty safe and anything under 80°C, while not desirable, is probably not going to cause damage as it would never see those temps under normal usage. Still, if you CAN keep it below 65°C, that would be beneficial.
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The i7-6700k doesn't even begin to throttle until 100°C. Anything below 70°C under full load on all cores is acceptable as being pretty safe and anything under 80°C, while not desirable, is probably not going to cause damage as it would never see those temps under normal usage. Still, if you CAN keep it below 65°C, that would be beneficial.
 
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You see, i got a i7 6700k and a noctua nh-d15 and i am worried that my temps are too high. The i7 6700k is at stock speeds.

When running Prime95 V26,6 small FFT's i am getting max 64 degrees on the cores.

When running aida64 with cpu and fpu enabled i get max 70 degrees on the cores.

I checked the cpu/cashe voltage in The BIOS of my Asus z170-a motherboard and it is 1.267 volt i think, it does not look bad.

I have checked the thermal paste, and it was a little, just a little bit too much. I took on new thermal paste and now i am getting one or two degrees higher than i did before. Now i am getting 64 degrees on prime95. On aida64 70 degrees. Before i got 63 degrees in prime95 and 68/69 degrees in aida64. My room temps was a bit higher after reapplying the thermal paste though.

After reapplying the thermal paste, i am getting temperatures spikes in idle. They are at 24-25 degrees (room temp ca 23) but sometimes it gets a spike up to 45 degrees. Maybe it is because it was not long ago since i applied new thermal paste though.

With a high end cooler like a nh-d15, i should have lower temps, i think i got a "bad" cpu. I am going to contact the retailer tomorrow to see if i can get a new one and send in the one i got.
 
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"With a high end cooler like a nh-d15, i should have lower temps..." Wrong.

And you don't have a bad CPU. Those are very good temps for a stressor like Prime95's Small FFTs test. Temporary spikes at idle are normal, as your system still has stuff going on in the background that will load up one core for a second or two at a time.

The first thing you need to do is change the CPU voltage type to Adaptive. The second thing you need to do is change the CPU voltage to 1.200v (that's the base voltage of your CPU). The Auto setting is over-volting your CPU a bit.

Once you actually start overclocking, then you'll want to stay below 80°C or thereabouts for Prime95 Small FFTs. In gaming when overclocked, you'll want to stay below 65°C or so. That represents the worst real-world temps for most people. Prime95 tests are the extreme worst-case scenario that most people will never have in their entire lives. It's okay to have those be over 80°C when overclocked because you won't have anywhere near that when in everyday usage.

Trying to stay below 65°C in Prime95 Small FFTs when overclocked is a very unrealistic goal. I have a custom liquid cooling loop with two 360 radiators and I can't do that.
 
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Funny because I've got an i7-6700k@4.5Ghz and can stay below 65°C with only the little brother to the D15, the NH-U14S single fan cooler using the Noctua paste.

If you're only getting 65°C you're probably fine, but if there's no overclock on there and it's at stock voltage, might be just a tad bit high. How much thermal paste did you use and in what application method?

How many case fans and where? Spikes are normal as processes are loaded and released.

When you repasted the CPU, did you fully clean both the heatsink and CPU lid using isopropyl alcohol? When you applied the paste did you use about 3/4 of a pea sized or about the size of half a #2 pencil eraser?
 
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Either you've got the best overclocking processor I've ever heard of ... or there's a big difference between Prime95 v26.6 and v28.7 for temps.

I'm currently stress-testing my 6600K at 4352MHz (256x17) Core Clock with 4352MHz Ring Clock, at 1.312v (set at 1.300v but draws slightly more) running Prime95 v28.7 Blend and none of the cores has stayed below 65°C (one 72°C, two 68°C, one 66°C). Obviously, there's no way the Small FFT test would be able to stay below 65°C for me.
 
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There's a HUGE difference. 28.7 uses AVX instructions, which is not a steady state load and creates unrealistic temperatures. Prime95 stopped being a viable stress test for determining thermal margins after version 26.6. Only version 26.6, should be used for thermal testing.

http://windows-downloads-center.blogspot.com/2011/04/prime95-266.html

Computronix, who is just about one of the most knowledgeable Intel CPU technicians you'll find around these or any other forums, explained it like this several years ago.

I can think of several reasons why x264 encoding or AVX / AVX2 / FMA3 apps won't work as a unilateral metric for thermal testing.

(1) A steady-state workload gives steady-state temperatures; encoding does not.

(2) Simplicity in methodology; most users would find encoding apps unfamiliar and cumbersome to accomplish a simple task.

(3) Most users such as gamers never run any apps which use AVX / FMA, so adaptive or manual voltage aside, it makes no sense to downgrade your overclock to accommodate those loads and temps.

(4) Standardization; Prime95 has been around since 1996; many users are familiar with it.

For the minority of users who routinely run AVX / FMA apps, then P95 v28.5 can be useful tweaking BIOS for thermal and stability testing.

Regardless of architecture, P95 v26.6 works equally well across all platforms. Steady-state is the key. How can anyone extrapolate accurate Core temperatures from workloads that fluctuate like a bad day on the Stock Market?

I'm aware of 5 utilities with steady-state workloads. In order of load level they are:

(1) P95 v26.6 - Small FFT's
(2) HeavyLoad - Stress CPU
(3) FurMark - CPU Burner
(4) Intel Processor Diagnostic Tool - CPU Load
(5) AIDA64 - Tools - System Stability Test - Stress CPU

AIDA64's Stress CPU fails to load any overcloked / ovevolted CPU to get anywhere near max TDP, and is therefore useless, except for giving naive users a sense of false security because their temps are so low.

HeavyLoad is the closest alternative. Temps and watts are within 3% of Small FFT's.
Click to expand...

Plus, Blend mode should not be used for thermal or stability testing of the CPU. Blend mode uses the RAM to a significant degree, which is not desirable during stress or thermal testing of the CPU as the methodology and results are skewed. Small FFT should always be used for the 15-24hr stress test or the 15-25 minute thermal verification. After 15 minutes of Small FFT I've rarely seen any additional thermal increases and have never seen temps increase further after 25 minutes.
 
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I already know that I have more than enough cooling. I'm using Blend because I want to stress more than just the CPU cores.

I was stress testing to see whether 256MHz BCLK is stable. The computer blue-screened and rebooted itself overnight, so obviously having BCLK that high isn't stable.
 
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You probably need some additional airflow through the case by way of case fans, but that temp isn't terrible at all. At 58 degrees you're thermal margin is still like another 42°C before the CPU would throttle or even think about shutting down.

If you have minimal case cooling, I'd think about either adding some fans or changing the case fan profile. Adding additional fans with their profile set to silent doesn't increase the average sound level much, but will help greatly when it comes to under load conditions. The CPU cooler is only as good as how much cool air it has to work with.
 
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Then the fact that your temps are much higher than might are clearly more likely to be a result of that fact or possibly you might have a somewhat higher ambient temperature than where my computer is located. It's not really a reflection on the merit of my own CPU, as these are not uncommon temps for the 6700k. My 8320@4.5Ghz had similar thermal results.
 
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The case i am using is a fractal design r5 and i have two intakes and one rear. They are running at fast speed when i am gaming, so the airflow is good i think. I am goong to call intel and hear what they think. Maybe the cpu is a hot one? Maybe i was unlucky?
 
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I would add a top rear exhaust to assist the single rear exhaust. A single exhaust is not sufficient for expelling heated air on systems with high load/demand conditions. Even moving one of your front intakes to the rear top would probably be better than having it in an intake configuration now. Adding an additional fan would be better though. Negative pressure always results in better cooling performance, which is what you would have with two exhausts and one intake. Positive pressure, which is what you have now, helps suppress dust entering the case to some degree, but is not the best configuration for cooling performance.
 
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Ok, so i got one fractal design r5 fan in the rear, one fractal design r5 fan in the front, and one noctua nf-a14 in the front. So i should order one more to have as a top exhaust fan? Then i will have two front intakes and two rear exhaust? good plan?
 
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Yes. Two and two is a pretty standard configuration for overclocking OR gaming machines with discreet graphics that also contribute heat to the internal case temps.

Also, you never answered the question about your cleaning procedure between paste jobs. Did you clean both surfaces with isopropyl alcohol and a LINT FREE cloth or coffee filter? When you reapplied the paste, how much paste did you apply and with what design/technique did you apply it?
 
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Well I do have a 6600k on my system and tried overclocking it to see it's behavior...
I have installed one 120mm fan for intake, one 120mm fan for exhaust and deepcool iceedge mini fs v2 cpu cooler!
I have reached to 4.4GHz by changing multiplier to 44 and setting voltage to 1.200 (adaptive)...it can even run completely stable with only 1.160v @ 4.4GHz

As for stability check I have used Prim95 v26 for one hour and temperatures remain below 63 C at full fan speed!
I didn't go higher than 4.4 GHz, because I'm nervous not damage the cpu!
 
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About the cpu cleaning, i used arctoclean on the cpu and heatsink. I used cofee filters to clean with. When putting on paste i took a little dot in the middle, that was quite small.

And by the way, should my case fans an the cpu fans be on 100% when stress testing with prime95?
 
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If your fans are connected to and controlled by the motheboard bios settings, then they should increase in RPM according to temperature and at some point, yes, they should be going full blast during a Prime run if the temperature is high enough to warrant it. I'd say probably anything over 55 degrees should result in full speed fan operation, if not lower, and depending on how your fans are controlled or what their profiles are set to.

How much is "a little dot". What one person thinks is a little dot isn't the same as what somebody else might call a little dot. You should be applying an amount of thermal interface material about the size of the exposed part of a #2 pencil eraser or about 3/4 the size of a canned pea. Maybe similar to the volume of about three bb gun bb's.

There are other methods as well, but that method has worked quite well for me on many, many paste jobs and when removed has revealed a substantially even, fully covered pattern with no clear evidence of major air bubbles.
 
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I am going to try a new stress test with all fans at full speed. The thermal paste amount was maybe ad big as a soft gun bullet if you know how big it is. probably a bit less than that too.

 
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I have made a custom setup in AI suite 3. They are going 100% on 55 degrees, all fans, exept for gpu.

I also think my temperature sensors is not working properly. I am having 14-20 degrees on cores in a room with 22-24 degrees..
 
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What are you using to monitor the temps? It's more likely to be the software than the sensors. I'd try HWinfo, CoreTemp or Intel extreme tuning utility for monitoring thermals. If you're using HWmonitor, AI Suite or another less credible utility, it could and often will report inaccurate sensor readings.

As you have surmised, it's impossible for the thermal readings to be below ambient temperature without using LN or some kind of cold plate device.
 
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