Intel i7 4790K overheating, need help/advice ASAP.

[Stormer1]

Hey, i've recently bought a new PC i'll put all the specs below, now on the very first day, I got constant shutdowns/restarts etc which I quickly assumed the PC was overheating (temps of 80+ and rising in games), I went into bios and turned all fans to max which solved the problem to a degree (no shut downs while gaming/doing things etc).

Now my PC idles anywhere from 19 degrees at lowest and 32 degrees on average, which I assumed is ok. But whenever I start up a game like Arma III, War Thunder, Rome II etc the CPU just instantly spikes to 70's for Arma III to 80's for Rome II, this worries me as I assume this is a bit high considering the box states 72 for the 4790K and I keep hearing keeping it at around 80 is bad for the CPU.

I have a i7 4790K and GTX770 card, someone I know has a i7 4770 and a GTX770 card, and their temperatures sit at 68 degrees regardless of what they do on Ultra, so why is my CPU overheating so much more? I'm only running the 4790k on the stock cooler and this PC was prebuilt for me, specs below.

Does this CPU basically NEED to have the stock cooler upgraded? If so will the Noctua NH-D15 drop my temperatures by a large degree?

CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz
GPU - Gainward GTX770 4GB
RAM - Corsair Vengeance 8GB Kit(4GBx2) DDR3-2133
SSD - Samsung 840BW EVO MZ-7TE250BW 250G SATAIII Solid State Drive SSD
HDD - 2x WD 3.5" Green 2TB WD20EZRX 64M SATA3 HDD
Mobo - Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5
Case - Thermaltake VP200A1W2N A41 Black USB3.0 Mid Tower Case without PSU
PSU - Antec TPC-750 750W True Power Classic 80Plus Gold Power Supply Unit

 

[volcanoscout]

You don't NEED an aftermarket cooler, but it's highly recommended, and yes a D15 will make a huge difference compared to stock. I would recommend two things to start:
- make sure your cooler is properly seated and pins are fully engaged
- check to see if you have the latest BIOS. If you just built it, chances are you've got an older BIOS that isn't managing the chip properly.

You'll also want to make sure that you've got good airflow in your case, i.e. make sure you don't have a bunch of cables blocking airflow.

 

[legend001523]

Yes a noctua will drop off 10-20c but it's only advised if you oc to get that, a coolermaster hyper evo 212 will be fine if you don't oc and just want to keep temps low

 

[manish khan]

yeah it's overheating first upgrade your heatsink fast as possible and tell me which thermal [ast your are using

 

[pm4]

You can also try if it can't be issue of compatibility. I have i7-4790k and NH-D15. At start I had problem with temperature on motherboard VCore during load (CPU itself had ok temperatures). I was getting too high and PC was shutting down. Pumping up all fans helped, but still it was too high. Fix for me was to update bios which had compatibility patch for i7-4790k for my motherboard (Z97 Sabertooth M1). Now I have np with temps of CPU nor VCore and my CPU temp at full load sits somewhere around 60 C°.
Maybe you have similiar issues. You can check if there is any newer version of bios which have in patch notes something about increasing compatibility with i7-4790k or something relate to heat issues.

Other than that option 1 is better CPU cooler. NH-D15 is nice, but it's also big so be careful to check if your memories will fit under it.
Option 2 is better case cooling which can have effect too but not so direct as better cpu cooler.

 

[Stormer1]

Also i'm running into a problem with my Bios, I can't install the latest version of gigabyte bios (F4) it says something about not compatible with 64 bit when I attempt to run the autoexec batch file, there's only two other files in the folder an F4 file called Z97MXGG5.F4, and Efiflash which is an application, could someone assist with this to see if it helps with the CPU temp?

Do I need to load these files onto a USB or something?

 

[4745454b]

If you bought this computer and it doesn't work right, SEND IT BACK. Tell them the computer overheats and you want a working computer. Once you start poking around in it there goes any warranty you had and you're out of luck getting them to fix anything later. There should be some sort of 30day warranty at least. I'd contact them ASAP.

 

[Stormer1]

You don't NEED an aftermarket cooler, but it's highly recommended, and yes a D15 will make a huge difference compared to stock. I would recommend two things to start:
- make sure your cooler is properly seated and pins are fully engaged
- check to see if you have the latest BIOS. If you just built it, chances are you've got an older BIOS that isn't managing the chip properly.

You'll also want to make sure that you've got good airflow in your case, i.e. make sure you don't have a bunch of cables blocking airflow.

Could you give me a guide on how to update my Bios, I have checked and am running a older version but I can't find a guide even on gigabytes site of how i'm meant to actually update my bios?

 

[4745454b]

You would run the Efiflash application, and point it to filename.f4. But it's not a bios problem you are having.

 

[Stormer1]

Can anyone who actually owns a i7 4790k tell me what their stock temperatures were idle/in games? I see alot of posts on here about i7 4790k's overheating from stock, if this is true could it just be that the CPU runs at these temperatures/needs a cooler?

I keep hearing that the CPU isn't faulty and I probably just need a cooler.

 

[legend001523]

You should get a cooler yes

 

[4745454b]

The stock cooler has to be able to handle the heat, or else it wouldn't ship with it. It's probably just mounted wrong, whoever you bought it from should be able fix it.

 

[volcanoscout]

Can anyone who actually owns a i7 4790k tell me what their stock temperatures were idle/in games? I see alot of posts on here about i7 4790k's overheating from stock, if this is true could it just be that the CPU runs at these temperatures/needs a cooler?

I keep hearing that the CPU isn't faulty and I probably just need a cooler.

I can't tell you what my stock temps were with the stock cooler because I've never used it and I only ran stock speed and voltage for as long as it took to get the OS loaded and GPUs installed before I overclocked it, but from what I've seen posted by others, 85C while stress testing with Prime 95 (CPU 100%) is not unusual. Arma and other CPU-intensive games are going to get your CPU warmed up fast. The CPU temps are not going to rise gradually - if you go from 5% to 80%, your temps are going to jump to match.

One thing you'll want to do, in addition to the BIOS update, is check your voltages (using BIOS, HWMonitor, etc.). Stock voltages and those imposed by software like EasyTune, tend to apply more voltage than necessary which affects your temps. At stock, you CPU should be stable at 1.15V or lower. If it's at 1.2V, as is common, or 1.3V or higher as some of the software programs like to set, dialing your voltage back will reduce your temps.


http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

 

[Stormer1]

Can anyone who actually owns a i7 4790k tell me what their stock temperatures were idle/in games? I see alot of posts on here about i7 4790k's overheating from stock, if this is true could it just be that the CPU runs at these temperatures/needs a cooler?

I keep hearing that the CPU isn't faulty and I probably just need a cooler.

I can't tell you what my stock temps were with the stock cooler because I've never used it and I only ran stock speed and voltage for as long as it took to get the OS loaded and GPUs installed before I overclocked it, but from what I've seen posted by others, 85C while stress testing with Prime 95 (CPU 100%) is not unusual. Arma and other CPU-intensive games are going to get your CPU warmed up fast. The CPU temps are not going to rise gradually - if you go from 5% to 80%, your temps are going to jump to match.

One thing you'll want to do, in addition to the BIOS update, is check your voltages (using BIOS, HWMonitor, etc.). Stock voltages and those imposed by software like EasyTune, tend to apply more voltage than necessary which affects your temps. At stock, you CPU should be stable at 1.15V or lower. If it's at 1.2V, as is common, or 1.3V or higher as some of the software programs like to set, dialing your voltage back will reduce your temps.


http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html

Lowered my voltage and i'm now getting 68 temp max, I put my CPU Vcore and set it at 1.120v and it says it's running at 1.116v on the bios, now the weird thing is arma 3's not passing 68 temp but the PC's restarted twice? Am I now not getting enough power into the CPU or something?

I'm really confused by this, I haven't had any restarts since I set the fans, but now that i've clocked down two have occured? Do you know what's going on or what I should set my Vcore to exactly?

 

[volcanoscout]

Awesome! If you're not going to be overclocking, the stock Intel CPU cooler should be fine for keeping your chip within an acceptable temp range. If you're going to overclock, which I assume you will considering the CPU and mobo that you bought, you're going to want to upgrade the cooler. The D15 is one of the best, if not THE best, air coolers you can get. Unless you got a chip with a poor temp profile, it should cover you to at least 4.6GHz, probably 4.8GHz. If you don't plan on trying for 4.6 or higher, there are very good alternatives that are cheaper, like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (@ $30).

Alternatively, you could consider a liquid cooler like a Corsair H-series. You'll want to do some research before buying, and make sure that the cooler you decide on is compatible with your case. It would suck spending $75-$80 on a D15 to find out it won't fit in your case or you have DRAM clearance issues

 

[Stormer1]

Awesome! If you're not going to be overclocking, the stock Intel CPU cooler should be fine for keeping your chip within an acceptable temp range. If you're going to overclock, which I assume you will considering the CPU and mobo that you bought, you're going to want to upgrade the cooler. The D15 is one of the best, if not THE best, air coolers you can get. Unless you got a chip with a poor temp profile, it should cover you to at least 4.6GHz, probably 4.8GHz. If you don't plan on trying for 4.6 or higher, there are very good alternatives that are cheaper, like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO (@ $30).

Alternatively, you could consider a liquid cooler like a Corsair H-series. You'll want to do some research before buying, and make sure that the cooler you decide on is compatible with your case. It would suck spending $75-$80 on a D15 to find out it won't fit in your case or you have DRAM clearance issues

Yeah sorry to bother you but i've run into the PC restarting twice even though temps are only sitting at 68 or under in game, i've got the CPUvcore set to 1.120v under the bios is this enough to actually power the core?
Why is it resetting now that the heat issue is gone, yet even when the temperature was 70+ in game it never reset?

 

[volcanoscout]

Two related, but different issues. For the voltage, you need to find a level that is both stable (no crashing, etc) and doesn't cause the CPU to heat beyond the cooler's ability to keep it within an acceptable temperature range. Your CPU can run on much lower v's than 1.12 when idling and just running background processes, but if it's getting stressed, especially when Turbo is kicking in under load, it will need more. 1.15V-1.17V would probably work as a default voltage until you work up to fine tuning it - enough juice for your CPU to work well maxed out, but not so high that your temps get out of hand.

You can test your system stability using synthetic stress tests. I use AIDA64 - you can get a 30-day free trial. If you load that and under tools, select System Stability Test, run that for a while. If you're system is stable and your voltage is appropriate, it won't crash and your temps with the stock cooler should stay @ 85C or lower. If it crashes, raise the voltage .01. If temps go over 85C, lower the voltage .01. Do this until it doesn't crash AND it doesn't overheat. With the stock cooler, I wouldn't recommend running stress tests longer than you absolutely need to to feel comfortable with your settings. You can consider voltage over 1.3V and temps 90 and over as your upper safe limit - the farther below either of those limits you can get, the better.

http://www.aida64.com/downloads

 

[Stormer1]

Set my voltage to 1.250, it's currently starts out in A3 at roughly 50's and very slowly as i play rises to around high 60's/70 at max, no resets for the past hour or two so it's looking pretty stable so far, and i assume the CPU can easily handle temps of roughly 68?

 

[volcanoscout]

Yes, 68C is well inside the acceptable range.

Generally speaking:
100+ = Thermal throttling, possible damage.
90+ = Bad. Reduce overclock multiplier and/or voltage. Improve cooling.
80+ = Undesirable for sustained use.
70+ = Okay
Less than or equal to 69C is good. The lower the better.