Question Odd CPU behavior, or is it?

[Nznezx]

Hello everyone reading this,

I have an intel 11400F, I bought it last summer and I've had 0 issues with it up until today when I came back from work. I was doing some light tasks on my computer, like transferring work files, and I had noticed that my computer fan speeds had went up rapidly for 5 seconds and then went down. At first, I had thought nothing of it as I am running a multiple monitor setup, so my gpu might've just turned on it's fans for a bit to cool off. So alright, I kept on transferring my files and noticed it doing it again, I turned on HWmonitor to investigate further, then continued to transfer my files and saw that my CPU was spiking in temperatures even thought it had 5-15% usage. It was running wild, going rapidly from like 60's to mid 70's, and I had no idea why. Logically I'd blame the cooling solution, but get this, I also ran a couple CPU/GPU intensive games and it's peak temperature was 64 celsius whilst 70-100% load. I run a AIO liquid cooler.

And it's not just that, I tried doing some other minor windows tasks, and the result is similar. (When doing absolutely nothing, it's fine. As well if I browse the net, also fine.)

I'm very confused, does anyone know what could be the cause of this? It just doesn't make sense to me.

 

[Eximo]

Trying to do whatever it is doing as fast as possible. If light loads on the desktop, might be taking a single core to a high boost using a lot of voltage.

If you have left the stock settings in place, it may be providing too much voltage for a given frequency. Coupled with an aggressive fan curve, if it sees mid-70s and is commanded to go to a high RPM, it will.

You can change the fan ramp/curve, limit the power to the CPU, change the boost profile.

In gaming you are typically going to have a main core running the game engine and several other threads related to the game across the rest of the CPU. It will not stay at the highest clock speed possible if multiple cores are doing work.

Another note, Windows can often do things in the background that can cause spikes. SSD Trim, updates and merges, checking for updates, Anti-Malware and Windows Firewall scans, etc.

 

[Nznezx]

Trying to do whatever it is doing as fast as possible. If light loads on the desktop, might be taking a single core to a high boost using a lot of voltage.

If you have left the stock settings in place, it may be providing too much voltage for a given frequency. Coupled with an aggressive fan curve, if it sees mid-70s and is commanded to go to a high RPM, it will.

You can change the fan ramp/curve, limit the power to the CPU, change the boost profile.

In gaming you are typically going to have a main core running the game engine and several other threads related to the game across the rest of the CPU. It will not stay at the highest clock speed possible if multiple cores are doing work.

Another note, Windows can often do things in the background that can cause spikes. SSD Trim, updates and merges, checking for updates, Anti-Malware and Windows Firewall scans, etc.

Thank you for your reply. This makes a lot of sense, as for the Windows doing things in the background, I tried turning off Anti-Malware and Windows Firewall scans by making an exclusion for MsMpEng.exe, while also configuring the task scheduler turning off the highest privilges mark for scans. The result was the same.

It was completely fine yesterday, I did the same tasks as well. (Or maybe I didn't even notice up until now) Even when booting up now in the log-in screen it ramps up the fan speeds for a couple of seconds.

I'll take your advice for limiting power to the CPU and changing the fan curve.

Thanks again.