Stay calm! Dark Rock TF paired with an i7 9700K might cause high CPU temperatures.
Stay calm! Dark Rock TF paired with an i7 9700K might cause high CPU temperatures.
Hello everyone, I recently got an Intel i7 9700k and wanted strong cooling, so I installed the Dark Rock TF air cooler for the CPU. After setting everything up, my average idle temps are about 35°C, while some benchmarks hit 84°C under heavy load. I repositioned the cooler and reapplied thermal paste, even tweaked the fan curve. Running the CPU fan at full speed only gave a slight improvement. I'm using Noctua NT-H1 paste and an MSI Z390 board. So far, temperatures haven't throttled, but they're still higher than what others report around 65°C at max load. Would switching to the be quiet! paste be beneficial? Also, could the cooler be damaged or is the CPU naturally hot at startup? I'm new to this, but it doesn’t seem like a setup mistake or airflow issue. Thanks for any advice.
It wouldn't be considered a bad temperature at load XTU. It's significantly more intense than typical games. How is the cooling system performing? Would you like me to send a photo?
The attached image shows the setup. The performance could improve slightly, but temperatures were only a few degrees lower when the side panel was off. It’s hard to say how much better case airflow would help with around 15°C under heavy load or 7°C at idle unless there’s something else affecting it. Also, don’t worry about the CyberpowerPC I got—it was a good deal, but the motherboard, CPU, and cooler are all mine.
I just wanted some eye candies. Looks good, maybe an exhaust on the back so pressure is lower. Generally negative pressure helps pull heat away. Even with even flow works best most of the time. I don’t care about the specs either. All hardware is the same to me. I don’t pick between Intel and AMD since I own both. Always keep an open mind and don’t judge people for their choices. I have a few, some less powerful than you think. You might want to check MX-4 thermal paste—it’s top quality and worth it.
Interesting, I initially purchased the Noctua paste because I plan to overclock in the future and heard it was excellent. I’m wondering if it’s better to use the paste with the cooler or switch to the MX-4 paste to compare. Also, could you tell me what cooling configuration you have installed on your 8700k?
Additionally, it's confirmed both fans are oriented correctly. I've verified this multiple times now.
I'll check how the MX4 affects things. I've run more tests and noticed the temperatures in those benchmarks don't look right for me. Realbench shows 1 run of all four types capped at 78°C, Blender classroom reaches up to 85°C, while Prime95 hits 99°C and throttles after about 30 seconds on the Smallest FFTs test. Remember this is using a stock i7 9700k that can reach 4.7GHz during turbo. I've seen lower temps with a 5.2GHz all-core overclock of the same CPU. Considering a new Intel CPU at this point... what do you think?