[SOLVED] i7-960 suddenly running hot

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dg27

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I have an old Dell XPS 9100, i7-960 that is due to be replaced. Over the past two days the fan activity has increased considerably and whereas my idle temps were around 70 deg C today it's in the mid to high 90s at idle.

I blew out whatever dust had collected (there wasn't much), but I'm wondering what could cause this sudden jump.

It has been shutting down sporadically.
 
Solution
Have u tried re seating the cpu cooler and re applying thermal paste like I said before? I have a suspicion that could be it.

Yes, this. (Your reply came thru before mine & so I didn't see you ask the same thing lol )

@dg27 - I'd strongly advise you to do this step 1st. Especially since you got it back in '16 and have not done it yourself since you received the PC. As for Dell, I'm not an expert on their processes, but I'd be surprised if they re-pasted during the refurbishing if nothing came up as amiss on their end during the refurbishing process itself, so it could have been... years... since last done..

I'm sure you prob. already know, but make sure you thoroughly clean off the old paste from both the CPU and the...

dg27

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Today the was the first day back full time since resolving the heat issue.

One thing I hadn't anticipated at all was the major jump in performance I's see.

I use Pro Tools extensively (every day): it's a very CPU-intensive program. If you ha e large projects with lots of tracks and lots of "plugins" (things like reverb assigned to a track), it can become be necessary to "freeze" tracks, which in layman's terms means PT renders the track and eliminates the CPU from having to work so hard.

On my latest project over the past several weeks I had to render many tracks because if I didn't the machine would throttle and PT would choke and send up a "ran out of CPU power" error message.

I was attributing this to the processor (i7-960 @ 3.2 GHz). I was very resigned to the idea that I'd be getting a new expen$ive i7-9700k machine very soon.

Today I decided to experiment and "unfroze" all tracks. A week ago it would not have played even 2 seconds of the song with even half still frozen. Today, it didn't even blink. Task manager reported about 75% CPU usage and 12.5 GB memory usage (I have 24 GB). Temps were in the 70s. No sweat, no problems.

I had no idea I'd see such an improvement.
 

InvalidError

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If you need 75% of the CPU's total sustained throughput to do some real-time stuff and you lose 50+% of it to thermal throttling, it does not take much imagination to see an obvious problem there.

I had a similar issue with my Core2's HSF coming loose many years ago. System seems perfectly fine, then one day I try to do something and it looks way more sluggish than it should be, look at CPU temperatures and I get 90+C. Replaced the HSF after multiple failed attempts at re-installing the stock HSF and everything went back to normal.
 

dg27

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If you need 75% of the CPU's total sustained throughput to do some real-time stuff and you lose 50+% of it to thermal throttling, it does not take much imagination to see an obvious problem there.

I just had no idea that I'd lose so much due to the heat. I had learned to live with it (more or less) till things really went south last Friday.
 

Karadjgne

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Everything has a comfort zone, a temp range that it likes to work inside. For pc's it's @ 30°C to 70°C, and the cpu honestly doesn't differentiate between the 2, it's just as happy at 70 as any other temp. It's only when things start going beyond that range that 'it' hits the fan. Too cold and bearings are not happy, electronics get sluggish, voltages are affected, hdds really hate you. It's not good. Too hot and the same thing happens, except the cpu really doesn't like you, and slows down to protect itself from critical damage, that's permanent.
 

dg27

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Everything has a comfort zone, a temp range that it likes to work inside. For pc's it's @ 30°C to 70°C, and the cpu honestly doesn't differentiate between the 2, it's just as happy at 70 as any other temp. It's only when things start going beyond that range that 'it' hits the fan. Too cold and bearings are not happy, electronics get sluggish, voltages are affected, hdds really hate you. It's not good. Too hot and the same thing happens, except the cpu really doesn't like you, and slows down to protect itself from critical damage, that's permanent.

Good descriptions. I learned a lot from this experience. My CPU was despising me last week. It pained me to open Speccy.

Thanks.
 

Mrgr74

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Today the was the first day back full time since resolving the heat issue.

One thing I hadn't anticipated at all was the major jump in performance I's see.

I use Pro Tools extensively (every day): it's a very CPU-intensive program. If you ha e large projects with lots of tracks and lots of "plugins" (things like reverb assigned to a track), it can become be necessary to "freeze" tracks, which in layman's terms means PT renders the track and eliminates the CPU from having to work so hard.

On my latest project over the past several weeks I had to render many tracks because if I didn't the machine would throttle and PT would choke and send up a "ran out of CPU power" error message.

I was attributing this to the processor (i7-960 @ 3.2 GHz). I was very resigned to the idea that I'd be getting a new expen$ive i7-9700k machine very soon.

Today I decided to experiment and "unfroze" all tracks. A week ago it would not have played even 2 seconds of the song with even half still frozen. Today, it didn't even blink. Task manager reported about 75% CPU usage and 12.5 GB memory usage (I have 24 GB). Temps were in the 70s. No sweat, no problems.

I had no idea I'd see such an improvement.

This makes me :) Very happy that things turned out the way they did!
 
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