Question Is my CPU thermal throttling or just a false temperature reading

[ProPlayerGR]

Hello everyone. So I bought a new AIO about a month ago, the CoolerMaster ML240 Illusion, and everything has been working great until today. I was playing the campaign of Infinite Warfare and I noticed the AIO fans were pretty loud, so I checked the temp and it was a whopping 96 degrees on the CPU and the fans maxed out. I opened up Cinebench R15 and hit run and my CPU was clearly throttling, the clocks started dropping below 3 Ghz and the temp reached 96 again. The score was considerably worse than the previous scores on my system, so I don't know what's going on. I updated the chipset drivers a couple days ago and I wonder if something bugged the temperature reading in the process, tricking my system to think my CPU is throttling when it's perfectly fine. Also when I put my hand above the AIO fans I can't feel any heat (my case has a dust filter above the mounted AIO and has ventilation holes, so I can feel the heat other times but this time I can't). I don't know seems weird when on my old 7 years old AIO nothing like that ever happened and now after just 1 month on the cooler this happens. I have monitored the temps using different software including HWinfo, MSI Afterburner, MSI Center and all of them report the same temperature on the CPU. I updated the BIOS to the latest version to see if that changed anything, but it didn't. What should be my next move here? Thanks in advance.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600
Motherboard: MSI B450 Tomahawk (the original, not the MAX version)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB DDR4 3000MHZ
PSU: EVGA SUPERNOVA 850 G2
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
AIO: CoolerMaster ML240 ILLUSION

 

[Phaaze88]

What should be my next move here?

An RMA.

 

[ProPlayerGR]

An RMA.

Yeah you're right I just wanted to avoid that process if possible. Do you think it's worth repasting and reinstalling the pump or will I just waste my time? Also should I try using the stock cooler to be 100% certain it's a faulty AIO? Thanks for the help!

 

[Phaaze88]

Do you think it's worth repasting and reinstalling the pump or will I just waste my time? Also should I try using the stock cooler to be 100% certain it's a faulty AIO?

1)You only used it about a month, ~BUT... below:
2)Won't hurt to try.

 

[Zerk2012]

I would try for a refund/credit from the retailer and buy a decent air cooler nothing to fail but a fan.

 

[ProPlayerGR]

I would try for a refund/credit from the retailer and buy a decent air cooler nothing to fail but a fan.

I don't really like the look of an air cooler, that's why I've always bought liquid coolers. But I'll consider it if I don't get a refund, they're a lot cheaper. I'll probably try to repaste and reinstall the pump, see if that fixes anything or use the stock cooler just to be sure it's the AIO. Thanks for the help!

 

[Zerk2012]

I don't really like the look of an air cooler, that's why I've always bought liquid coolers. But I'll consider it if I don't get a refund, they're a lot cheaper. I'll probably try to repaste and reinstall the pump, see if that fixes anything or use the stock cooler just to be sure it's the AIO. Thanks for the help!

Repaste after 1 month? I have a 4790K that has never been repasted until I took the cooler to put on my 10600K that is a good bit of years.

Unless your mount somehow broke loose you need a new cooler.