Nikesh

UPDATE: I decided to bite the bullet and replace my old cooler with a new one (Corsair H150i RGB Pro XT 360mm AIO). Also reset all BIOS settings to default except for XMP which I enabled. This means no CO undervolting or thermal throttle limits, etc. Case fans, AIO fans and AIO pump set to "balanced" settings. Idle temps immediately settled in at low to mid-30*C, maybe maxing at 40*C. It has been relatively cool in Johannesburg and at times it was showing min temps in the high-20*C. This means almost half the idle temps I was having before and that's without having to use CO undervolt! Ran Cinebench R23. Multi-thread score of 20,907 and single-thread score of 1,572. Max temps during the test was about 70*C. I believe these scores are within 5% of the expected scores and, if I were to turn up the cooling on my case and AIO, I could squeeze out a few more points. Played Warzone for a couple of hours last night and temps maxed out again at 75*C but mostly lower than that. Good performance as well - between 130 and 150 fps at 1440p medium settings. I will keep monitoring the temps and try out some other games and benchmarks. Thanks to all for your comments, feedback and suggestions - appreciate it!

Replaced my cooler last night. Initial signs are good but will post an update once I have tested a bit more later today.

I removed my old cooler last night and could definitely hear the water moving inside when I shake it. I have installed a new cooler as well. Initial signs are good, just want to do a bit more testing after work before I post a (hopefully!) final update.

Unfortunately Arctic coolers are not available in SA, at least not at a reasonable price. I could buy via Amazon US but feels like it would be more of a hassle if I have any issues with it.

UPDATE: Apologies for not providing an update sooner, I have been busy with work and personal stuff so haven't had time. 1. BIOS Update I successfully updated my BIOS to the latest non-beta version. I now have more access to PBO options - I assume this is PBO v2 whereas the older BIOS had PBO v1. There was no noticeable difference in temps following this update. 2. Curve Optimizer I have been having another go at using CO after I found this really helpful video: I used Ryzen Master to identify my best cores and setup a custom view in Event Viewer to track WHEA errors so that I can see which core crashed when the system crashes. After a crash, I am going back into CO and adjusting the offset - this time I am setting it per core rather than all core like last time. 3. Current Temps Following the CO tweaks, I've actually seen some good idle temps at times, e.g. last night after 30 mins of idle, it got as low as high-40s which I think is acceptable. But most of the time it is in the 50s/low 60s now which I think is less good. Problem is as soon as you hit it with a load, it goes up to 90+ pretty quick - that happened in Cinebench R23, Warzone and F12020. Cinebench R23 scores were on the low side as well. I've now set my thermal throttle limit to 75 as well. I'm still not convinced my cooler is working well. Maybe it is still good enough to handle my 6700K but feels like it is struggling a bit with the 5900X. I am looking into replacing it with a 360mm cooler. This PC needs to last me another 5-6 years and I reckon I would need to replace my cooler during that period anyway. We are a bit limited with stock and options in South Africa but there some good Corsair and NZXT coolers around. I thought about getting a Noctua NH-D15 but I prefer the look of an AIO so going to stick with that for now. I will post a further update once I have tuned my CO settings a bit better.

100% agree with your logic here which is why I’m so frustrated. I’m going to try reapplying thermal paste and reseating the cooler again. I’ve not yet been able to test whether it still works in the old system but will do the checks you mention above when I do.

I’m going to give curve optimizer another go and see if I can dial something in that works well

My PBO was set to "Default" as well. I read somewhere else that "Default" actually means "Disabled" but I don't know if that is true for Aorus BIOS as well. I would like to try running with PBO disabled but I am currently applying a lower platform thermal throttle limit which requires PBO to be in Advanced mode unless there is another way for me to set that limit...

UPDATE: 1. BIOS Tweaks My initial attempts at tweaking in the bios have not been 100% successful. It might just be my inexperience here meaning I'm not dialing in the best settings. I was able to get idle temps down a bit but when running a game, it would spike. I tried each of the following separately: (a) Set CPU VCore from "Default" (1.225V) down to 1.175V. >> Idle temps came down to around 50*C but when running a game, spiked to 90*C (b) Set CPU VCore from "Default" to "Normal" and set "Dynamic VCore (DVID)" to -0.05. >> Similar temps to (a) (c) Set PBO to "Advanced", PBO Limits to "Disabled", CO to "All Cores, Negative, 20". >> Had some instability here almost immediately, PC went into a boot loop (d) Set PBO to "Advanced", PBO Limits to "Motherboard", CO to "All Cores, Negative, 20". >> No boot loop but didn't notice better temps TBH I don't know how the CO Magnitude works. It lets me enter almost any number but I know this maps to a mV amount and that there should be a limit. I should play around a bit more but didn't want to break something. 2. Windows Re-Install After the above didn't work, I reset everything above back to default. I did a fresh install of Windows 10 Home 64-bit. I don't see any meaningful reduction in idle temps - it's now about 60-70*C. 3. Thermal Throttle Limit Prior to reinstalling Windows, I decided to lower the thermal throttle limit so that I can at least use the PC without temps going up to 90*C. I know this reduces performance but, for now, that's OK. I set PBO to "Advanced", PBO Limits to "Auto", Platform Thermal Throttle Limit to "70". I'm even considering dropping it to 65*C until I find a solution to this problem. 4. BIOS Update Does anyone think updating the BIOS is worthwhile trying? I've never done it before so a little wary. PS. For testing, I ran F1 2020 benchmark for a single lap at 1440p ultra high, DLSS on >> basically getting the max 165fps my monitor can do for all configs above. Also ran some Warzone at 1440p medium-high, DLSS on quality >> fps fluctuating a lot depending on where I am in the map but getting 120-150 fps in Verdansk and maybe a little higher in Rebirth. For (1) above, I did also notice random fps drops, i.e. it would momentarily drop to like 80 fps from 120+ and then it goes back up, which feels very much like stutter/lag. I guess this is when the CPU was hitting 90*C under load.

Thanks, will try that route over the next couple of days. Hope it works. I plan to upgrade RAM and to Gen 4 SSD in future. Didn’t have budget right now for those.

OK so maybe I will try and fresh install as well

Thanks all for the suggestions and advice so far. Learning a lot! I have disabled PBO in the bios for now just to see what happens. And hopefully to lower temps until I sort the cooling issue out. Does anyone think a clean install of Windows will help? Not sure to what extent moving from Intel to AMD hardware would cause software/driver issues. Or is this purely a hardware issue?

My pump also gets loud so maybe I am due to change the cooler. Some reading now suggests one should consider changing AIO after 5+ years. I’m just under 5 years and I don’t think I abused mine but I’m not expert at PC maintenance and fine-tuning, so who knows. I’m going to start looking for a new cooler. Will also stick this one back into my old system and see how the temps look on the 6700K

OK I think I’m leaning towards buying a new cooler. I thought I could save some cash by using my old cooler but looks like that hasn’t worked out…

I still would have thought my 280mm AIO would have been enough. But it is 5 years old and was using it with i7-6700k. Recommendations for a new cooler?