[SOLVED] Modern Day Heat Issues with CPUs

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rwayne

rwayne

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Feb 1, 2007
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I am building a computer again after about a decade of being out of the loop of the latest and greatest in pc hardware technology. One of the most eye opening things to me was today's design of CPUs how they supposedly run super hot (like enough to boil water) and are designed to do so. Really surprised me to see the industry take this direction.

My question to the forum is: "How legitimate of a concern is heat with the latest CPUs from AMD and Intel?"

I suspect it is no where as bad as YouTube may lead you to believe.

I am very interested in an Intel CPU due to its encoding ability for video production. However I hear that the 13600k gets very hot and you pretty much gotta go with water cooling. So I see extra expenses for an AIO and probably a beefer power supply. (not desirable)

This makes we want to go with something cooler like a Ryzen 5 5600 or X with less demands but I hate to miss the advantages that Intel brings to content creation.

Are the concerns about overheating over blown? I am thinking that it only occurs in rare situations when you are running the CPU full throttle in benchmarks for extended periods of time which obviously does not represent everyday use for like 98% of people.

Any insight which can be provided on this topic would be appreciated.
 
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It's not really a concern. However, they do tend to run hotter. Generally speaking, for the high-end SKUs, the makers have taken the approach that thermal margin is a resource to be used. It's the CPU/GPU equivalent of renting of your condo at the beach out on AirBnB when you're not there. There are usually ways to configure it if you don't want that heat.
 
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As with any electronics: as long as you're within the operating parameters specified by the manufacturer, the part will last as long as at least the warranty period it's covered for (if it survives the 30 day sudden death period)

Also the processor itself may not be totally reaching that temperature. For instance, Ryzen processors report the hottest spot as the CPU temperature. The average temperature across the processor is likely lower. Heck, out of curiosity I touched the heat sink on my CPU while it was reporting around 50C and the end furthest from the heat sink was barely warm, indicating it's not dumping a lot of heat.

What I really don't like though, are these companies pushing the power envelope hard for what amounts to single digit percentage point gains. You can power limit a Ryzen 7950X to around 120W and it'll perform almost as good as if you let it go to the full 170W ( which actually it can go up to 230W due to the PPT limit being there). See https://www.anandtech.com/show/17641/lighter-touch-cpu-power-scaling-13900k-7950x/2
 
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Serious question:

Stipulating a 13600K or maybe a 13700 and decent airflow in a case; not overclocked:

For the typical NON-GAMING home user who is NOT stressing the CPU for hours at a time, why not just get an above average cooler and carry on.........letting the hardware throttle itself as it sees fit----rather than endlessly fretting about temps?
 
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Lafong said:
Serious question:

Stipulating a 13600K or maybe a 13700 and decent airflow in a case; not overclocked:

For the typical NON-GAMING home user who is NOT stressing the CPU for hours at a time, why not just get an above average cooler and carry on.........letting the hardware throttle itself as it sees fit----rather than endlessly fretting about temps?
Click to expand...
One answer is many people are not confident they've applied thermal compound or otherwise mounted their cooler correctly. When they see the temps of modern CPU's, their experience with old generation CPU's makes them very nervous.
 
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DSzymborski said:
It's not really a concern. However, they do tend to run hotter. Generally speaking, for the high-end SKUs, the makers have taken the approach that thermal margin is a resource to be used. It's the CPU/GPU equivalent of renting of your condo at the beach out on AirBnB when you're not there. There are usually ways to configure it if you don't want that heat.
Click to expand...
Thank you DSzymborski. The way I have viewed it up to this point is like red lining your car's tachometer. If you push your car to the red line it most likely is not going to have a long engine life and you better change the oil like weekly and run on synthetic
 
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hotaru.hino said:
As with any electronics: as long as you're within the operating parameters specified by the manufacturer, the part will last as long as at least the warranty period it's covered for (if it survives the 30 day sudden death period)

Also the processor itself may not be totally reaching that temperature. For instance, Ryzen processors report the hottest spot as the CPU temperature. The average temperature across the processor is likely lower. Heck, out of curiosity I touched the heat sink on my CPU while it was reporting around 50C and the end furthest from the heat sink was barely warm, indicating it's not dumping a lot of heat.

What I really don't like though, are these companies pushing the power envelope hard for what amounts to single digit percentage point gains. You can power limit a Ryzen 7950X to around 120W and it'll perform almost as good as if you let it go to the full 170W ( which actually it can go up to 230W due to the PPT limit being there). See https://www.anandtech.com/show/17641/lighter-touch-cpu-power-scaling-13900k-7950x/2
Click to expand...
Ideally I would like the processor run cooler in hopes that it would provide a long life span like my current 9 year old PC. I feel at running at those temps there is a risk that it will not last as long. But maybe that is a misconception on my part and it will run a decade at a high thermal level

And I also agree with you that I am not a fan of using all of this extra wattage for just a marginal performance gain.

I heard some motherboards have like an ECO mode which automatically clock things back some in a stable way to tame processor some. I have to research into that further.

Thank you for your post hotaru!
 
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rwayne said:
Phaaze, awesome looking rig! I like the white theme.

Hey, I noticed the 2nd link you posted appears to be dead. Geforce 10 and Up: Just Power Limit the Things
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Well, I was aiming for a little bit of contrast, since most equipment on, and around the desk is black.


"Awaiting approval before being displayed publicly.", message at the top of the page.
Huh, how long has that been there? I don't recall it being there last month...
I'll try to reach out to a moderator about it.
 
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rwayne said:
Ideally I would like the processor run cooler in hopes that it would provide a long life span like my current 9 year old PC. I feel at running at those temps there is a risk that it will not last as long. But maybe that is a misconception on my part and it will run a decade at a high thermal level
Click to expand...
The problem with this also is we don't know how long any electronic component is supposed to last. While yes, higher heat does lead to accelerated wear, we don't know how long the thing is supposed to last nor how much this acceleration is. It could last 10 years at 100C, it could last exactly 3. But until someone gathers data on a large enough sample size, we won't ever know.
 
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rwayne said:
I suspect it is no where as bad as YouTube may lead you to believe.
Click to expand...
One thing to keep in mind is that the video from derbauer is about within speck operation.
While all the youtube channels use mobos that are for extreme overclocking and are pre configured to push the CPU as hard as possible.
So derbauer video talks about 100 degrees at 181W max, in the case of the 13600k, while the youtube channels would be talking about 100 degrees at 250-300w ,whatever the 13600k can reach.
So there is a pretty big difference in the amount of cooling from one to the other.
 
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