[SOLVED] Just bought a pre-made PC, but the cooling doesn't seem to be working properly.

[ApplesGoneBloopie]

Recently, I bought a pre-made PC (though I would've preferred to build my own) because the deal seemed pretty good and I was in a big rush to replace my older PC. In a few days, I'll have a bit of time to potentially fix some issues I'm having with the PC, namely cooling. I bought the PC in the link here: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16883227875Item=N82E16883227875 I also got a warranty for it just in case. I saw that the 650W power supply was a flag, but went through with the purchase anyway. Also, I bought a new 1440p monitor and started using it. So far, the PC actually performs really well for the most part and it's been smooth, but it has a major cooling issue from what I can tell.

So, while idle, my PC runs at about an average of 40 degrees Celsius and about 3% utilization, but it'll shoot up to an average of 56 degrees Celsius and around 38% usage if I play World of Warcraft. This PC is a bit overkill for WoW, nor is it necessarily well set up for such a game, but it still struck me as peculiar that the temperature would be so high while playing the game and that the idle temperature is so high, especially since I have an AIO (closed loop). Furthermore, the PC crashed a few times during specific points in raid fights during the game, and then proceeded to reboot itself.

When I noticed those issues, I checked the GPU a few times and it was usually at about 36% usage and a pretty average temperature, IIRC. It was like that for about four or five days. However, I just downloaded NVIDIA's new driver that released yesterday and, while I got a higher framerate in WoW, my GPU's usage shot up about 50%, and the temp also shot up like crazy, but my CPU's temperature and usage didn't change at all.. My average framerate in a large overlook area used to be about 56fps or so, and it went to about 67fps.

One other significant thing that I noted was that the PC shipped with the boost clock applied, meaning that the CPU was overclocked to 4.6GHz right from the get-go. However, that proved to be too much and actually crashed WoW on numerous occassions during hefty fights, but the voltage wasn't even set for that high of a clock. I toned down the PC to 4.1GHz for now. The voltage is at 1.12 IIRC, and I believe it's supposed to be around 1.25. However, given how hot everything was running, I'm not sure if the PC could even handle the voltage increase as well as the 4.6GHz.

So, I've been trying to figure out what's causing all this. Do I need to refill the AIO? I don't know how, but maybe the wattage of the power supply being too small is causing it? Maybe something is being bottlenecked? Maybe, since it's pre-built, the thermal paste is old or the water has evaporated? I'm pretty inexperienced with PCs in general, so I don't know how to interpret a lot of this stuff, and I'm sorry if some of this information doesn't seem well-worded.

Last thing to say is that I'm unaware if there's any software I can use to check power supply usage and AIO usage so that I can maybe see if the power supply is being pushed too hard or if the AIO is even running properly.

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

56C under a light load is completely normal and is nowhere near "high".

Higher framerate and higher GPU usage sounds very normal. If the driver found a way to utilize the GPU more to get you higher framerates, then hooray!

4.6GHz is probably the stock all-core boost. That's not overclocked. It's normal. Voltage should be on Auto if it was all stock. I would reset BIOS settings to default if you are still experiencing issues.

As for your game crashing, that's the only thing you mentioned that isn't normal.

Oh, and your PSU. A high-quality 650W unit is all you need... but, not all PSUs are high quality. Can you look at the PSU and tell us exactly what the make and model is?

 

[USAFRet]

From the newegg link, that appears to be a 120mm liquid cooler. Not optimal for that CPU.

But those temps aren't 'bad'.

However...$2300+ for that is probably 4-500 too much.

 

[mdd1963]

WHy not set assorted CPU clock speed and voltage options to default/auto, and see what performance is like with default 4.9 GHz turbo, all core at 4.6 GHz....(default core voltage is likely 1.31V or so, but, will go down to .8V or so at 800 MHz idle/low activity periods...; you can see what voltages others are using, but, try default/auto first, COncur with you can likely not expect 60C load temps with a smallish 120 mm radiator, and would probably be quite typical to see at least 70-75C in my opinion, and 80-85 C under any sustained stress testing)

Seeing sustained 4.6 GHz is not an 'overclock' unless a BIOS profile has the mainboard manually (or via an OC profile) locked to that speed manually in the BIOS , as 'normal' TUrbo/speedstep operation even in Balanced power mode of all-core 4.6 GHz is normal...

Crashing. of course, is not normal, but, that could easily be an overly aggressive XMP profile selected...

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

120mm is a small cooler for an i7.

If you start seeing temps above 80C, then you can look at replacing that cooler with something bigger/better.

 

[Karadjgne]

Make sure XMP is enabled and MCE (multi-core enhancement) is Off. Pretty much the same build, but how much of Linus recommended fixes and how much of Steve's recommended fixes are actually implemented is unknown.

 

[ApplesGoneBloopie]

Thanks for all the replies! I've not messed with the BIOS at all, and I've not touched XMP or MCE or etc. So, I'll go ahead and see about resetting to defaults via either the BIOS or the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (IEXU) and then post in the thread again with some results. Also, even though it's not relevant, I'd have loved to save that cash if I had that time. But, I'll have time in a while and still a bit to spare, so I can see maybe about replacing some stuff cuz I will still have a bit left over.

As for my temperatures and such, that's just me receiving conflicted info and such. I just thought that my PC would be a bit more quiet and colder, but if it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be. Still, though, I would think that my framerates should be higher, and I definitely shouldn't be getting crashes as well as the occasional screen blackout for two seconds or so, which I forgot to mention. I know WoW is an awful game to judge PC performance off of though given that it's optimized for older GPUs and doesn't use many cores or something like that, all the while being poorly optimized to begin with.

So, does anybody have any software or something wherein I can compare myself to other PCs with the same specs and just determine my PC's health? I know IEXU has something like that, and I believe there's a software called like UserBenchmark or something. I'll try that out. Yet again, thanks for the replies!

 

[MrN1ce9uy]

userbenchmark.com can give us a decent overall benchmark for your PC. You should probably create and account and save your results. We want to see the actual page of results and not the summary result of percentages. So share a link to the page when it's finished.

If you want to really benchmark your GPU you should use 3DMark FireStrike.

 

[ApplesGoneBloopie]

Gonna close this one up as fixed. I managed to fine-tune voltage and clock settings with one of my friends and my PC hasn't crashed since, all the while I've increased my FPS and decreased my temperature simply by fixing some voltage settings, but I've managed to leave my settings relatively similar, which is almost at max.

However, I still don't get as much FPS in WoW as I'd quite like, and there's some strange thing that happens wherein having a setting like SSAO max'd out decreases my FPS by like 30 in a HUGE area, all the way down to 70fps. However, maxing out other settings leave the FPS relatively the same and I only lose about 5 fps or so. So, essentially, having my normal settings puts me at 100fps in that open area, but maxing out a lowered setting decreases my fps by 30, BUT then maxing everything else doesn't decrease my fps any further. Can anybody give a potential reason for this? If not, that's okay; I appreciate all the replies. Thank you!

Edit: No idea how to change the thread from question to solved. If I can't solve my last problem here, I'll post a new thread on a different forum on the site.

 

[Karadjgne]

There's a trophy on the upper left corner for best answer. Choose the one that was most helpful/useful.

SSAO is spacial occlusion. Basically it's the seriously uber fine details designed to make graphics more realistic. Like the uber tiny shadows in the tiny cracks in brick, or 16 million colors in the glint off water instead of a few hundred, or smoke from a cigarette having 50 different shades of grey instead of 3. In a generally decently realistic game, it'll add a serious amount of detailing, which most will barely, if ever, notice, especially in a faster moving game. But all those uber tiny details add up to a massive amount of dedicated pixels and a huge amount of resources from the gpu. And fps tanks.