Question Intel Core i7-4790 is overheating or thermal throttling

Aug 1, 2019
8
0
10
My CPU is always ~97-100 Celsius while it is idling or using ~3%
Is this normal or I have to buy a new CPU or a CPU cooler?
I have already tried: Using XTU
Replace the thermal paste
Cleaned the dust

What should I do? Please help.
 

Dunlop0078

Titan
Ambassador
Its both, thermal throttling as a result of overheating. 100c at idle is horrible and you will likely kill that CPU eventually running it that hot. The cooler is not mounted properly, if the BIOS is at stock settings nothing else would cause temps like that.
 
Are you SURE that is Celcius, and not F?

If it is, you have a VERY SERIOUS problem and should IMMEDIATELY stop using it until you figure out what the problem is. Either the CPU voltage is way too high, or the cooler is not seated correctly, or there is no thermal paste (Probably even THEN it wouldn't be that high even with a bare heatsink) or the CPU cooler fan has stopped working and you have no case fans.

First thing I'd do is make sure the heatsink is FULLY seated, all the way around on all sides and corners and that it is not loose in any way or sitting on any components that are not allowing it to seat. The next thing I'd do is reset the BIOS to make sure this isn't a voltage issue from changing settings in the BIOS.


BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes, press the power button on the case for 30 seconds. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the hardware tables to reset in the boot manager.

It is probably also worth mentioning that for anything that might require an attempt to DO a hard reset in the first place, it is a GOOD IDEA to try a different type of display as many systems will not work properly for some reason with displayport configurations. It is worth trying HDMI if you are having no display or lack of visual ability to enter the BIOS, or no signal messages.
 

Ahmed21

Reputable
Apr 25, 2016
71
1
4,635
You about to kill that CPU if u keep it running u either have not set the heatsink right or ur cooling is not doing its job try and use a different cooler or even better get the corsair h55 cheap and it does the job but you need to stop running that CPU.