Checking if CPU thermal throttling occurs with the Noctua NH-D15 is necessary. Attached screenshots provided.
Checking if CPU thermal throttling occurs with the Noctua NH-D15 is necessary. Attached screenshots provided.
This setup seems unusual for an i7-9700k. The temperatures you experienced—jumping to 100°C and then stabilizing near 95°C—are quite high, especially with Prime95 running at full load. At 4.9GHz, the CPU should be pushing close to its thermal limits, which is why you saw throttling. Using a Noctua NH-D15 is a good choice for better cooling, but it still shouldn’t handle sustained high loads without proper airflow or power management. Make sure your case has adequate ventilation and consider lowering the clock speed if you want to keep temperatures down. Overclocking at this level without careful monitoring can quickly lead to overheating issues.
It seems like throttling is happening: you're reaching temperatures above 95°C, which means clock speeds will drop. The 9700K contains eight cores in a compact package, and running them at high speeds here puts a strain on the cooling system. Despite this, P95 delivers strong performance—your usage won’t trigger it as much. If you're determined to push it, consider lowering the CPU voltage, reapplying thermal paste, adjusting internal fans for better airflow, or using cooler air from your GPU instead of hot air.
I initially aimed to push my CPU to 5GHz, but it seems unlikely without managing temperatures. I also observed that changing the vcore in BIOS and checking voltage via CPUID often shows a slight discrepancy—like 1.345 when set to 1.305. Is this typical behavior or an issue? Thank you for clarifying the temperature details. Additionally, according to HWInfo, my CPU is currently drawing about 1.4200V, fluctuating near that range and up into the high 1.3s.
Did you review your BIOS for any CPU voltage offset configurations? There might be other settings like dynamic power adjustments or TurboBoost affecting the voltages slightly.
Even with a D15 processor, it can't compete against a 9700k peak because the default voltages would exceed safe limits. In BIOS, go to M/I/T → advanced voltage settings and keep the voltage on auto. Use DVID to adjust; a negative value reduces the voltage compared to the standard setting. For example, if it drops to 1.4V during testing, a -0.05V adjustment brings it to 1.35V. Always back up your settings before making changes, or else clearing CMOS will erase everything.
Describe your CPU performance during this situation. If you run prime95 on your 9700, it quickly reaches 170W and the heat spikes to 70°C right away, then rises to 100°C within half a minute. Your cooler supports 130W, so you’d need to be drawing a lot of power to cause such throttling with an NH-D15.