[SOLVED] Should Handbrake cause max CPU temp???

[Saint Grimm]

I've recently built a PC and this morning I converted a video with handbrake for the first time on this PC and I noticed that core temp was reading all cores at 95 degrees Celsius. The Ryzen master application claims 95 is the MAXIMUM heat for my cpu. Red Dead Redemption 2 got it to 60 degrees Celsius after 10 hours of straight gameplay... I'm not sure how quickly it got to 95 as I just happened to look over and notice it about 25% done with conversion. It stayed at 95 until the conversion was complete, then instantly dropped to 45 and slowly cooled back to 39.

Is this normal? How long can it stay at that temp before it damages something? When I rip a DVD onto my PC, it auto-rips into a format that has no audio on play station 4, so in order to watch it on playstation, it HAS to be converted... Maybe someone could suggest a converter that doesn't put the system under such heat?

I don't recall handbrake ever maxing out the heat on my old CPU (which was only 70 celcius). But I also didn't monitor that PC as closely, by the time I started using handbrake the PC was older so I can't actually recall checking the heat on it while handbrake was running.

SPECS:
Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
ASUS TUF gaming x570 Mobo
2x 8gb g.skill V memory

 

[jon96789]

What you are experiencing is normal. Handbrake is one of the most stressful apps for a CPU. It will run all cores of a CPU at 100% usage at full throttle. I have a 3900X and it easily hits 95 degrees with the stock AMD Wraith Prism air cooler. After upgrading to a Corsair H115i RGB Platinum AIO 280mm radiator, the temps dropped to about 80-85 degrees.

One big issue i had was that my MSi X570 MPG Gaming Pro Carbon had crappy power supply design (e.g. the VRMs) and that would also hit 95 degrees as well. When that happened, the CPU would throttle down its speed until the VRMs cooled down. Luckily, your ASUS TUF motherboard has a good VRM design so it does not exhibit this issue.

One workaround for you is to limit the CPU speed. Go to Control Panel, Power Options and select Power Saver. Then select Change Plan Settings, Change Advanced Power settings, Processor Power Management, select Maximum Power State and select 99%.

This will prevent the CPU from going to turbo mode, i.e. limit you to base CPU speed. It will lengthen your encoding times a bit (depending how much a difference the speed drops by).

If you want to prevent the issue, you would have to get a better cooler for the CPU, either a 280mm radiator or a beefier air cooler.

On a side note. I am not sure what GPU you have, but if it is decent AMD or NVidia card, you can select the encode in the video section to the appropriate video card. Generally, I find that encoding a video in Handbrake is quite a bit faster (up to 50%) using the GPU than the CPU. The drawback is that the GPU encode results in a far larger file size. Also, using the GPU is inconsistent, sometimes it can be longer to encode a video than using software encoder in Handbrake. But generally, using the GPU is faster.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I've recently built a PC and this morning I converted a video with handbrake for the first time on this PC and I noticed that core temp was reading all cores at 95 degrees Celsius. The Ryzen master application claims 95 is the MAXIMUM heat for my cpu. Red Dead Redemption 2 got it to 60 degrees Celsius after 10 hours of straight gameplay... I'm not sure how quickly it got to 95 as I just happened to look over and notice it about 25% done with conversion. It stayed at 95 until the conversion was complete, then instantly dropped to 45 and slowly cooled back to 39.

Is this normal? How long can it stay at that temp before it damages something? When I rip a DVD onto my PC, it auto-rips into a format that has no audio on play station 4, so in order to watch it on playstation, it HAS to be converted... Maybe someone could suggest a converter that doesn't put the system under such heat?

I don't recall handbrake ever maxing out the heat on my old CPU (which was only 70 celcius). But I also didn't monitor that PC as closely, by the time I started using handbrake the PC was older so I can't actually recall checking the heat on it while handbrake was running.

SPECS:
Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
ASUS TUF gaming x570 Mobo
2x 8gb g.skill V memory

Handbrake uses h.264 video encoding CODEC which is uses AVX instruction set heavily in it's algorithm, and as well is pretty well optimized for 4-6 cores/8 - 12 threads. AVX instructions are the difference.

Games, by contrast, use very few AVX instructions and are actually pretty light by comparison with only 1 or 2 threads actually heavily loaded and the rest (assuming they're multi-threaded) being pretty light.

You are right, though, that 95 C is extremely hot.. that's it's safety temp and it throttle itself when it gets that hot. It's not good to bounce off the safeties, but it should reduce clocks and voltage to keep it in the 80's (at most) unless you've manually overclocked the CPU. If you want to manual overclock you'll need a lot better cooling.

 

[Saint Grimm]

Thanks for the info!!

No interest in overclocking as long as it plays the games I want 😛 but my gpu is 1660ti. I didn't even know you could set handbrake to use the gpu like that, really neat I'll check it out 😀

I used to use a different converter, but I can't recall the name.... It never gave a heavy load, but it took much, much longer to convert. I'd rather it take longer and know it's not having adverse effects on my build. I'll try out using the GPU and watch it's temps and see how it's doin, if that don't go the way I want it to, I'll try to find that other converter I used to use years ago.... I wanna say the icon was 2 arrows forming a circle, with the point of 1 arrow pointing into the flat end of the other arrow, forming a circle. Kinda like if Opera browser's refresh button was made of 2 arrows instead of just 1.

 

[drea.drechsler]

....
I didn't even know you could set handbrake to use the gpu like that, really neat I'll check it out 😀
....

Neither do I... maybe they could tell us.

Handbrake can use other CODEC's (h.265 is another one pre-bundled with it) so maybe it's another one I'm unaware of...or an add-on CODEC package...or a cryptically named encoding option that kicks it off.

If you find out let us know.

 

[jon96789]

BTW, you have to enable the GPU encoding feature...
Go to Tools, Preferences, Video and select the GPU you have...

 

[Saint Grimm]

I'm coming back to this to help others who may be looking for an alternative.

I got a free trial of videoproc (formally known as WinX HD). It's $50 for a lifetime ownership one a SINGLE PC (so if u get a new pc, you'd sadly have to rebuy it I believe).

At it's peak, it was using 12% cpu, my cpu temp never went up over 50c (handbrake was using 100% cpu and 95c temp). And it's just as fast, if not faster, than handbrake at converting. Post conversion quality is equal to Handbrake's.

It also has the option to use your GPU instead of CPU (I couldn't find that option on handbrake as described further up the thread). However, I tested it out using the CPU, and the stats I gave are USING THE CPU not the GPU.

 

[jon96789]

What version of Handbrake were you using? The GPU options do not appear until you reboot the PC after it is installed...

 

[jon96789]

FYI, I just downloaded and tried using VideoProc (after paying the lifetime license). Videoproc is a lot faster than Handbrake in transcoding a video. A two hour movie took about 30 minutes in Handbrake and about 12 minutes in VideoProc using the same bitrate (4000 mb/s). While the speed is welcomed, Handbrake's results are a LOT better than VideoProc. There is obviously higher detail in Handbrake, Videoproc image quality is definitely softer.