Question about high temperatures with a new air conditioner.
Question about high temperatures with a new air conditioner.
Hey everyone,
I just swapped out the Phanteks T-C14PE for a cooler master ML240R. It wasn’t because that air cooler was bad—it really was—but because it fit perfectly in the X16 slot. My new GPU has a big backplate, so with the cooler installed it wouldn’t fit in the X16 slot and caused random performance drops. This meant my FPS in games like Fortnite dropped from over 200 to around 5 FPS. The issue still exists in the X16 slot, so I think the 3770k is probably the bottleneck now. But honestly, it’s still a bit confusing.
With my old cooler, I never had more than a 11°C difference between core 0 and 4. (I’m running an i7 3770K, P8 Z77M Pro, 16GB Corsair LP RAM, RTX 2060). Now with this cooler, the temps are way higher—over 22°C difference between core 0 and 4.
I don’t usually pay much attention to individual core temperatures, but this feels odd. The chip was delidded, liquid-milled, and re-lidded recently, and it worked fine with the Phanteks cooler. Now it seems a bit too hot for my taste. Any thoughts on what might be going on?
Thanks in advance,
Julian
P.s. Let me know if you can share more details
The observed variation in core temperatures suggests the thermal paste may not have been applied uniformly or the cooler might not be seated correctly. Usually, Intel components show minor temperature differences of 3-6 degrees, but a 22-degree gap is unusual. The CPU at 4.5 appears to run at a high vcore of 1.36. Many users who overclock find much lower values, around 1.3v. Have you checked stability under OC conditions? Running stress tests could help identify the lowest stable vcore and improve performance.
Yeah I've done plenty of stress testing using prime95 small fft's to produce maximum heat for said purpose. Ive ran it continuously for over 24 hours straight and not had any WHEA errors thrown up, no bsods or anything like that.. vcore is high I know, but ultimately I'm going to be upgrading when Intel finally bring out 10nm so hopefully I won't have the i7 past the end of the year (presuming they don't delay it again in which case I might make the switch to ryzen), but thats why I was happy with a slightly higher vcore as chip longevity at this point is not my highest priority, just maximum performance.
Also fyi I cannot get 4.6ghz with this chip stable no matter how high my voltage is so I'm pretty sure 4.5 is my limit. Bit unlucky with the chip lottery I think which is probably why I've needed a relatively high vcore to get things stable at 4.5ghz.
Ive just dropped the oc down to 4.4, with a lower voltage offset and that has closed the gap slightly but not by much. It has also naturally dropped my max temps a bit.
I also want to mention that at idle once the computer has been running for a while the difference between core temps is only about 5 degrees (core 0 is currently 39 and 3 is 34 and that's 5 seconds or so after stopping prime95 small fft's test which was running for an hour and 6 mins this time) according to hwinfo64 but under a heavy avx based workload it stretches out to that 20ish deg figure.
I've since reseated the block and re-applied thermal paste and it hasn't changed anything too drastically.
Also sorry I wasn't totally clear in my first post but I had been running the exact same overclock and voltage for 6 months or so with the phanteks air cooler.
All I've done recently (prior to reseating the block) is removed the phanteks cooler, cleaned the CPU lid of the old paste, re-applied new paste (that came with the CoolerMaster ml240r) and installed it as per the instructions.
After reseating the block and getting booted back up I found my core 3 to be pretty much the same, however core 0 is still running a fair bit hotter as previously stated.
It is a different thermal paste (to what I used with the phanteks cooler), and I'm kinda wondering if that could make that much of a difference but I'd be surprised if a thermal paste had such variance between brands.. I was very careful to apply the thermal paste the second time as well but it not made a huge difference..
I just don't get why changing the cooler from air to water has affected core zero so much but not the other three cores.
Going to buy some thermal grisley tomorrow, hopefully that helps and if not I'll probably ignore it as I don't work with avx workloads normally anyway so its not like my temps will be anywhere near that under a normal workload. When gaming under full load it sits at 70 on core zero and 60 on core 3 which I can deal with, I guess i just don't like knowing why it's misbehaving lol
Edit: I should also probably mention that I still have speed step on and turbo boost on and as such I'm using the voltage offset function rather than a straight up manual voltage.. like whist I don't necessarily care about potentially burning the chip out and obvs want the best performance I can currently get from this chip I also don't want to just waste electricity when the extra power isn't needed..
I hope the answer isn't something stuffed up with the delid lol as I don't have my der8auer die mate anymore and I'd really rather not have to buy another one. Lol with Intel using solder again I thought my delidding days were over 😭😂
It seems the system had only been inactive for a short time before I removed the old cooler, though it might have been open to the air for 15 to 20 minutes without a cooler. The device didn't feel hot, and I had only used it for about 10 minutes prior to the new cooler arriving. I never released the CPU clamp during this process, so any movement would be unlikely, but I'm not surprised if something unusual happened. Thanks for your assistance so far!
Not at all. I'm happy to discuss it. To be truthful, I've never replaced a CPU (I don't perceive any benefit, plus I'm currently using AMD which doesn't have that issue or need).
I'm just attempting to analyze it logically. The thermal grizzly could possibly lower CPU temperatures by 5-10 degrees compared to the other option. However, I don't see how this would resolve the significant differences in performance between cores. As you mentioned, if everything is done according to the manual, then the common factor might be the base unit. Perhaps the replacement TIM after installation, no matter how thin, could have degraded—especially if you've been pushing an OC. It's difficult to say without a closer inspection. But as you pointed out, your temperatures are within acceptable ranges, and given your usage, it might be something you can tolerate or attribute to an odd occurrence. Still, I'm curious about the final answer.
lol I wonder if after replacement, it would be wise to 'boost' it? If so, maybe give it some aftercare and TLC. Perhaps repeat the process for better durability. But if your device fails completely, then just keep monitoring it regularly and see how things develop now.
I'm also really curious about this too, lol it'll be a nightmare! I'll update you once I've tried some conductonaut, which should probably be tomorrow at the latest. As for what I can do to hopefully narrow things down, I plan to reinstall the phanteks and check if that brings the cores back within the 8-10 Degs range. If that works, I might consider returning the cooler for a replacement, but if not, I've found a business in Melbourne that can fix it for less than the other option. They're happy to let me watch them do it, so it's an alternative if the cores are still failing despite the phanteks.