So HW monitor is telling me my CPU is heating up to 79 C. :-(

[John PRuckman]

I have a desktop with an AMD FX-8350 and so far i have loved the setup and haven't had any problems with the rig. Upon running Total War: Warhammer I played for about 3 hours and then without warning my system shut down, not blue screening, just off. This has happened about three times total but only when the CPU has been under a load it would seem.

Upon doing a little digging I found that temperature is often the cause of something like that happening, I then proceeded to download HW Monitor and found that the CPU temp is topping out at around 79 C. What happened? I have had the computer for two years and never had an issue, or so I thought as I'll admit I'd never actually seen what the normal temp was when I first built it. (This was my first "build your own" job) I have removed the heat sync and fan and re applied the thermo paste and I saw no difference.

Is it possible that it's always run hot and just now it's shutting down?
What do you folks think? Any help is appreciated. 🙂

My rig consist of
AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-core processor
8.00 GB of RAM
Gigabyte 970A-UD3P Motherboard

 

[Supernova1138]

79 is too hot for an AMD chip, though HWMonitor can have issues properly reading temperatures on AMD processors, so you might want to double check with AMD Overdrive and make sure your thermal margin is not approaching or getting below zero.

Which cooler are you using and what is your ambient temperature like? The AMD stock cooler can struggle to keep the FX 8350 cool at times, especially if there is poor case airflow or the ambient room temperature is high due to summertime heat.

 

[John PRuckman]

79 is too hot for an AMD chip, though HWMonitor can have issues properly reading temperatures on AMD processors, so you might want to double check with AMD Overdrive and make sure your thermal margin is not approaching or getting below zero.

Which cooler are you using and what is your ambient temperature like? The AMD stock cooler can struggle to keep the FX 8350 cool at times, especially if there is poor case airflow or the ambient room temperature is high due to summertime heat.

I assume by ambient you mean the chip's temp upon start up?
summertime heat is something we just started dealing with, it just happened to coincide with my purchase of Total War: Warhammer and I am in fact using the stock cooler, is that a big problem?

 

[Supernova1138]

By ambient temperature, I mean your room temperature. If you don't have air conditioning and your room temperature is 35 celsius or higher, that might well be the problem. The AMD stock cooler isn't very good, only barely adequate for stock speeds, and that's if your room temperature is close to the standard 22 degrees celsius. You may want to look into an aftermarket CPU cooler.

 

[John PRuckman]

79 is too hot for an AMD chip, though HWMonitor can have issues properly reading temperatures on AMD processors, so you might want to double check with AMD Overdrive and make sure your thermal margin is not approaching or getting below zero.

Which cooler are you using and what is your ambient temperature like? The AMD stock cooler can struggle to keep the FX 8350 cool at times, especially if there is poor case airflow or the ambient room temperature is high due to summertime heat.

By ambient temperature, I mean your room temperature. If you don't have air conditioning and your room temperature is 35 celsius or higher, that might well be the problem. The AMD stock cooler isn't very good, only barely adequate for stock speeds, and that's if your room temperature is close to the standard 22 degrees celsius. You may want to look into an aftermarket CPU cooler.

Any suggestions on which kind would be good for my system. Thanks for all your knowledge by the way. 🙂

 

[Supernova1138]

There are a variety of aftermarket coolers out there at varying price points. The Cryorig H7 is generally considered to be the best budget option these days, though it isn't available in all markets. The Coolermaster Hyper 212 Evo is the second place budget choice and is more widely available, but is taller than the H7 so it might not fit in all cases and doesn't dissipate heat quite as well as the H7 does. There are better coolers at higher price points and things like closed loop liquid coolers, but they aren't really necessary unless you want to push a really high overclock on your CPU.