i9-9900KS was melting VRMs, so I went Team Red

[ValkyrieStar]

i9-9900KS running stock, with a slight undervolt (can see VID vs VR Vout), running a long FFmpeg x265 encode, it just sits at 120-130c (depending on how hot my room is).

 

It's also throttling my cpu back to 4ghz which is annoying, it runs at 5ghz until the VRM hits 110c then downclocks to 4ghz. It reaches 110c within about 30 seconds. The CPU never actually overheats (or well, i cant actually test that out, because the VRM overheats so fast, but its never reaching throttling temps at any point (max is 115c for the CPU).

 

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9

32GB DDR4-3200 C16

i9-9900KS

 

[Tristerin]

Easiest way to tell is put a fan on the VRMs - I recently put a 80mm Arctic P8 on my VRMs on my ASRock board after putting a GPU in the loop (3x fans less of air movement in the case) the VRMs would hit 120c during benchmarks or even crash the PC where I was stable before.  Put the fan on it, now it reaches 89c.

 

Anyhow, easiest way to tell is plug in and hold a fan on the VRMs, does it change anything?

[ValkyrieStar]

Just now, Tristerin said:

Easiest way to tell is put a fan on the VRMs - I recently put a 80mm Arctic P8 on my VRMs on my ASRock board after putting a GPU in the loop (3x fans less of air movement in the case) the VRMs would hit 120c during benchmarks or even crash the PC where I was stable before.  Put the fan on it, now it reaches 89c.

 

Anyhow, easiest way to tell is plug in and hold a fan on the VRMs, does it change anything?

2-3c drop and that's about it. I even removed the plastic cover around the IO shield in the hopes that would help, it just slightly prolonged how long it took before reaching these temps.

 

The VRM is definitely HOT though, i touched one of the heatsinks for a fraction of a second and got burnt by it (enough so that it felt tingly for a few hours afterward!)

[Haro]

5 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

2-3c drop and that's about it. I even removed the plastic cover around the IO shield in the hopes that would help, it just slightly prolonged how long it took before reaching these temps.

 

The VRM is definitely HOT though, i touched one of the heatsinks for a fraction of a second and got burnt by it (enough so that it felt tingly for a few hours afterward!)

Make sure that behind the mobo there isn't any burnt marks 

And update the bios it could be wrong readings because you can still get burnt at like 85c 

 

[Tristerin]

I was inside my case just yesterday finger-banging my VRMs and Im not having this issue.

 

Looks like 1.4v may be just to much for those VRMs which doesn't make sense, I pump the same through my ASRock B450 no problem for almost a year now.  I just looked at a pic of your board though, is that a heat sink or just shroud flair?  I would assume heat sink.

 

What is your ambient temp?  Mine is 20c.

 

Also, someone else with more Intel experience can chime in - that seems like way to much voltage based on what Ive read on those chips (272w to the CPU before throttle)

[mariushm]

 

93c makes sense. That's most likely a sensor between the power stages/mosfets.

 

127c is a false measurement, it's like a default number that's never updated, the software is reading the incorrect sensor or the motherboard never updates that.

It's the maximum value that can be stored in a byte, if you ignore the sign 0b01111111  or 0x7F

Well,,, i suppose it COULD be internal measurement from within a power stage/mosfet (direct from chip die) so that would be acceptable because that would correlate to around 95-100c on the surface of the chip, outside the packaging.

 

Basic measurements

 

1. Lick your finger

2. Place your wet finger on a heatsink

* Can hold it indefinitely : under around 50-60c 

* can hold it for at least 3-5 seconds until it gets too hot ... you're under 80c - ish

* the liquid on your finger sizzles or you can't hold finger for more than a few seconds ... you're near 100c or over ... time to worry.

 

the cpu vrm can work at up to 100c for long periods of time, and should throttle (slow down cpu) when you go over 105-110c. The chips under the heatsink are rated for at least 125c but most motherboards will make an effort to not go above 100c for significant periods of time because over time (thousands of hours of working at high temperature) the actual circuit board can degrade to the point where it can become brittle or conductive and then it's game over.

[Mister Woof]

My son's ASRock Z370 Extreme 4 reports AUXTIN1 at 100-106c all the time, no matter what. Broken sensors.

 

ASRock has a history of broken shit sensors.

[ValkyrieStar]

2 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

I was inside my case just yesterday finger-banging my VRMs and Im not having this issue.

 

Looks like 1.4v may be just to much for those VRMs which doesn't make sense, I pump the same through my ASRock B450 no problem for almost a year now.  I just looked at a pic of your board though, is that a heat sink or just shroud flair?  I would assume heat sink.

 

What is your ambient temp?  Mine is 20c.

 

Also, someone else with more Intel experience can chime in - that seems like way to much voltage based on what Ive read on those chips (272w to the CPU before throttle)

 

At idle it sits around 1.3v, under load, usually between 1.2 and 1.25v. The Package Power reading is incorrect as that uses the VID, which as i'm undervolted, it's actually running less, about 221w from the VR-Vout (the VR readings are much more accurate for voltage and power readings)

 

1 minute ago, mariushm said:

127c is a false measurement, it's like a default number that's never updated, the software is reading the incorrect sensor or the motherboard never updates that.

It's the maximum value that can be stored in a byte, if you ignore the sign 0b01111111  or 0x7F

 

Basic measurements

 

1. Lick your finger

2. Place your wet finger on a heatsink

* Can hold it indefinitely : under around 50-60c 

* can hold it for at least 3-5 seconds until it gets too hot ... you're under 80c - ish

* the liquid on your finger sizzles or you can't hold finger for more than a few seconds ... you're near 100c or over ... time to worry.

 

the cpu vrm can work at up to 100c for long periods of time, and should throttle (slow down cpu) when you go over 105-110c. The chips under the heatsink are rated for at least 125c but most motherboards will make an effort to not go above 100c for significant periods of time because over time (thousands of hours of working at high temperature) the actual circuit board can degrade to the point where it can become brittle or conductive and then it's game over.

 

Literally half a second before it hurts like hell and continues to do so for some hours afterwards. I don't want to try that again. It runs about 50-60c at idle, 75 ish on lighter games, sometimes over 85 with games like CoD MW, and anything which uses full cpu (ffmpeg encoding) just rams it straight over 100 to the moon.

[Jurrunio]

I have heard that \loop 1 and loop 2 refers to the two banks of VRM next to the socket, so try move the fan around. Also heard of one being placed on the back of the board, which is much harder to verify.

 

but if you take VR Loop 2 as the proper measurement, then it's just hot but not desperate.

[ValkyrieStar]

4 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

My son's ASRock Z370 Extreme 4 reports AUXTIN1 at 100-106c all the time, no matter what. Broken sensors.

 

ASRock has a history of broken shit sensors.

There are a couple AUXTIN sensors which i disabled reading because they were broken, this is reading info from the actual VRM itself. As i speak, it's hit 134c.

 

 

My ambient is about 24c. Cooler than usual today.

[Mister Woof]

6 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

There are a couple AUXTIN sensors which i disabled reading because they were broken, this is reading info from the actual VRM itself. As i speak, it's hit 134c.

 

 

My ambient is about 24c. Cooler than usual today.

minimum of 67c seems weird. at startup it should be cold af

 

average of 132c would be shutdown range. it's broken imo

 

What load are you applying when you see 132c

[ValkyrieStar]

Just now, Mister Woof said:

minimum of 67c seems weird. at startup it should be cold af

 

average of 132c would be shutdown range. it's broken imo

 

I launched it after finishing a game of Valorant, then started up my ffmpeg encode to run while i went for lunch, i came back to these temperatures  

 

Is there even a shutdown point?

 

Honestly i'm going to have to quit this encode it's only encoded 5 minutes out of a 17 minute clip and i'm starting to smell burning stuff.

[Mister Woof]

Just now, ValkyrieStar said:

 

I launched it after finishing a game of Valorant, then started up my ffmpeg encode to run while i went for lunch, i came back to these temperatures  

 

Is there even a shutdown point?

 

Honestly i'm going to have to quit this encode it's only encoded 5 minutes out of a 17 minute clip and i'm starting to smell burning stuff.

After reading through this whole thing, with the throttling and the burning smells...something ain't right with your system.

 

are you using an AIO in a weird way blocking case flow?

maybe inspect the VRM heatsinks to see if they are actually installed correctly

[Haro]

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

maybe inspect the VRM heatsinks to see if they are actually installed correctly

Haven't thought about that 

But it is completely possible

[Mister Woof]

1 minute ago, TofuHaroto said:

Haven't thought about that 

But it is completely possible

given the way asus installs heatsinks onto GPUs, it's more than possible lol

 

 

[ValkyrieStar]

Just now, Mister Woof said:

After reading through this whole thing, with the throttling and the burning smells...something ain't right with your system.

 

are you using an AIO in a weird way blocking case flow?

maybe inspect the VRM heatsinks to see if they are actually installed correctly

 

My 360mm AIO is installed in the front, with 6x NF-F12PWM, at 80c on the CPU, the fans are all spinning away at 100%, there's three additional 140mm fans as exhaust, 1 on the back, two on the top, all are those ML140 fans (no LEDs) and are controlled by CPU temp too (ramping up to 100% at 80c), i recently cleaned out the AIO so that's all nice and clean. When the whole system is idle for some time, the CPU idles around 33c, vrm 50-60 ish.

 

I've already checked the heatsinks (i removed them and inspected the pads to ensure they contacted the powerstages - they do and quite well too) when i removed the plastic shield (which did help by making it take longer to reach the same temps).

 

For the time being i turned ffmpeg down to only use 8 threads, its slowed the encoding down by a pretty big lump, but it's now sat at 110-111c where it's constantly bouncing between 4.0-5.0ghz and making voltages go wierd, which seems to have an additional side effect of making doing anything feel incredibly sluggish for some reason. The burning smell has gone for now, but putting my nose near the back fan it still smells kinda not great.

 

I've been eyeing up the MSI X570 Unify for some time now, while initially i can't afford anything more than a R5 3600, it's got just about the best built VRM there is beside the ultra high end ones, more than adequate for a 3950X, so i may go down that route, RMA and sell off my 9900KS and replacement motherboard, and get saving for a 4950X when that arrives one day.

[Haro]

8 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

 

My 360mm AIO is installed in the front, with 6x NF-F12PWM, at 80c on the CPU, the fans are all spinning away at 100%, there's three additional 140mm fans as exhaust, 1 on the back, two on the top, all are those ML140 fans (no LEDs) and are controlled by CPU temp too (ramping up to 100% at 80c), i recently cleaned out the AIO so that's all nice and clean. When the whole system is idle for some time, the CPU idles around 33c, vrm 50-60 ish.

 

I've already checked the heatsinks (i removed them and inspected the pads to ensure they contacted the powerstages - they do and quite well too) when i removed the plastic shield (which did help by making it take longer to reach the same temps).

 

For the time being i turned ffmpeg down to only use 8 threads, its slowed the encoding down by a pretty big lump, but it's now sat at 110-111c where it's constantly bouncing between 4.0-5.0ghz and making voltages go wierd, which seems to have an additional side effect of making doing anything feel incredibly sluggish for some reason. The burning smell has gone for now, but putting my nose near the back fan it still smells kinda not great.

 

I've been eyeing up the MSI X570 Unify for some time now, while initially i can't afford anything more than a R5 3600, it's got just about the best built VRM there is beside the ultra high end ones, more than adequate for a 3950X, so i may go down that route, RMA and sell off my 9900KS and replacement motherboard, and get saving for a 4950X when that arrives one day.

I don't recommend switching to AMD as the 9900ks is still stupid expensive and pretty good 

Have you tried your cpu in another LGA 1151 socket mobo ? 

Did the vrms heat up that much ? 

I mean z390 is still a decent platform and I think downgrading to a 3600 is just not worth it 

I would say rma this board and get a new one and you should be fine for the most part and then when your ready you can switch to AMD but for the time being I would say this rig will serve you for a couple of years 

[ValkyrieStar]

Just now, TofuHaroto said:

I don't recommend switching to and as the 9900ks is still stupid expensive and pretty good 

Have you tried your cpu in another LGA 1151 socket mobo ? 

Did the vrms heat up that much ? 

I mean z390 is still a decent platform and I think downgrading to a 3600 is just not worth it 

I would say rma this board and get a new one and you should be fine for the most part and then when your ready you can switch to AMD but for the time being I would say this rig will serve you for a couple of years 

I used to have a cheaper MSI board, which used to sit at throttle point with a stock 9900K (non-S), eventually that board killed itself when thermal throttling didn't kick in one time, it climbed up to 150c where the readings stopped and assumably the board died (i found that out from HWinfo64 logs after i got the replacement which thankfully the RMA was successful). I then upgraded to this asrock board as i finally got my 3rd ssd as an M.2 drive rather than a USB one, and that board (MSI Z390 Gaming Edge AC) only had 2 M.2 slots. I ended up swapping to a 9900KS as i got a fairly decent ish deal on one and gave the 9900K and MSI board to a friend with a nice discount and enabled a current limit so it never lets the VRM over 100c, he just games so he has no problem with that.

 

For whatever reason, ASRock screwed up the BIOS implementation of C-States, which meant any disk IO ran incredibly poorly. I fixed it myself by modifying the BIOS and told ASRock who fixed it too and sent me a beta bios, oddly for whatever reason, they didn't implement this fix into their next release. So i'm now running a modified version of their latest release BIOS where c-states work properly and offer full drive IO speeds.

 

I'm thinking I might actually be able to get the 3950X fairly soon if i can get a decent amount for the Z390 board and 9900KS. Then it'd be an upgrade rather than a downgrade. I'd still have to stick with a 3600 until i can get the Intel parts RMAd and gone though. I don't game too often, but when i do it's at 4K (i'm a software engineer, dual 4K monitors are a blessing for that kinda stuff), so my GPU is the bottleneck here (GTX 1080 lol - needs upgrading), I won't lose any FPS by going Ryzen.

 

I did have the ThreadRipper 1950X for about 9 months, but ultimately the platform was such a buggy unstable mess with gigabyte not helping one bit with their absymal BIOS support - shoulda got the MSI board lol, i ended up going back to Intel when the 9900K came out. I'd like to hope that a couple years down the line since then, X570 is much more stable by now.

 

AHHHHHHHHH i don't know what to do with this thing  if only companies didn't scimp out so badly on VRMs for Z390 boards. Seems like only the boards that cost more than the CPU had good vrms. Z490 is tempting because it's intel and i know it'll be a nice solid platform with likely no bugs or wierd quirks, the Z490 unify is specced out similarly to the X570 unify, which itself is tempting because of the PCIe bandwidth for storage, I regularly run into limits with the DMI link and 3 nvme drives, i had issues before even with just two drives. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

[Mister Woof]

4 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

I used to have a cheaper MSI board, which used to sit at throttle point with a stock 9900K (non-S), eventually that board killed itself when thermal throttling didn't kick in one time, it climbed up to 150c where the readings stopped and assumably the board died (i found that out from HWinfo64 logs after i got the replacement which thankfully the RMA was successful). I then upgraded to this asrock board as i finally got my 3rd ssd as an M.2 drive rather than a USB one, and that board (MSI Z390 Gaming Edge AC) only had 2 M.2 slots. I ended up swapping to a 9900KS as i got a fairly decent ish deal on one and gave the 9900K and MSI board to a friend with a nice discount and enabled a current limit so it never lets the VRM over 100c, he just games so he has no problem with that.

 

For whatever reason, ASRock screwed up the BIOS implementation of C-States, which meant any disk IO ran incredibly poorly. I fixed it myself by modifying the BIOS and told ASRock who fixed it too and sent me a beta bios, oddly for whatever reason, they didn't implement this fix into their next release. So i'm now running a modified version of their latest release BIOS where c-states work properly and offer full drive IO speeds.

 

I'm thinking I might actually be able to get the 3950X fairly soon if i can get a decent amount for the Z390 board and 9900KS. Then it'd be an upgrade rather than a downgrade. I'd still have to stick with a 3600 until i can get the Intel parts RMAd and gone though. I don't game too often, but when i do it's at 4K (i'm a software engineer, dual 4K monitors are a blessing for that kinda stuff), so my GPU is the bottleneck here (GTX 1080 lol - needs upgrading), I won't lose any FPS by going Ryzen.

 

I did have the ThreadRipper 1950X for about 9 months, but ultimately the platform was such a buggy unstable mess with gigabyte not helping one bit with their absymal BIOS support - shoulda got the MSI board lol, i ended up going back to Intel when the 9900K came out. I'd like to hope that a couple years down the line since then, X570 is much more stable by now.

 

AHHHHHHHHH i don't know what to do with this thing  if only companies didn't scimp out so badly on VRMs for Z390 boards. Seems like only the boards that cost more than the CPU had good vrms. Z490 is tempting because it's intel and i know it'll be a nice solid platform with likely no bugs or wierd quirks, the Z490 unify is specced out similarly to the X570 unify, which itself is tempting because of the PCIe bandwidth for storage, I regularly run into limits with the DMI link and 3 nvme drives, i had issues before even with just two drives. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

damn dude you have spent a lot of money on computer parts

 

 

[Haro]

7 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

AHHHHHHHHH i don't know what to do with this thing  if only companies didn't scimp out so badly on VRMs for Z390 boards. Seems like only the boards that cost more than the CPU had good vrms. Z490 is tempting because it's intel and i know it'll be a nice solid platform with likely no bugs or wierd quirks, the Z490 unify is specced out similarly to the X570 unify, which itself is tempting because of the PCIe bandwidth for storage, I regularly run into limits with the DMI link and 3 nvme drives, i had issues before even with just two drives. HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

I guess am4 is kind of the way to go 

Dmi 4.0 I would assume would make a difference to your work load and it's a way more scalable platform

But the fact that you got unlucky with two boards suckkkks

[ValkyrieStar]

4 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

damn dude you have spent a lot of money on computer parts

 

 

For the most part i've managed to spend minimal amounts on upgrades by selling the old kit. The 1950X was a significant investment though, and also a very frustrating and dissapointing one. The arrangement of the cores meant my asetek cooler wasn't up for it, the enermax liqtech was brilliant, for 3 weeks till it broke, the replacement lasted a further 3 weeks till that too, broke. I looked around and it turns out they were designed poorly and corroded and blocked up quickly. Ended up being unable to run my 4.0/4.2 all core OC because the Asetek couldn't handle it, even stock was pushing it, that's how much the die layout mattered on those things. Stock clocks were buggy, often 1 or 2 cores would get stuck at max turbo and the rest stuck at 2.2ghz idle speeds, gaming was not the best due to the NUMA design to begin with, but it was far worse with clocks being bugged.

 

Just now, TofuHaroto said:

I guess am4 is kind of the way to go 

Dmi 4.0 I would assume would make a difference to your work load and it's a way more scalable platform

But the fact that you got unlucky with two boards suckkkks

Call that 3 haha, DMI 4 though isn't out yet (that'll be 11th gen can hope), and even when it does arrive, it'll still limit with the third drive, to be completely unlimited, i'd need at least one of the nvme drives on cpu lanes, which is what the X570 offers, without the limitation of it taking up one of the gpu slots (when 30 series comes out i'm aiming for dual-gpu, which isn't possible if an ssd is taking up the second slot).

 

My only main worry is that X670 is probably due to arrive later this year. I suppose, if it does, and there's a better looking and featured board than the X570 Unify (i much prefer a clean monotone build than rainbow rgb unicorn puke builds), i could always just get that and it'd drop right in. If the X570 and 3600 turn out not great, i'd at least have some time to return them for Z490 if need be. Like when i went from Threadripper to 9900K, i'd rather have a slightly slower but rock solid stable system, than a buggy system which can be really fast when the bios decides to work but can also be absolute trash at other times.

[Haro]

2 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

If the X570 and 3600 turn out not great,

For the most part 

As a comob that is just a replacement 

It should be nice 

The only thing you'll lose coming from intel to AMD is the imc 

It's just not as good 

3 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

Call that 3 haha, DMI 4 though isn't out yet (that'll be 11th gen can hope

Oh I was talking about x570 lmao 

[-rascal-]

It frustrates me why motherboard manufacturers are taking looks / aesthetics as priority #1, and functionality as priority #2...or #4.

Literally going backwards on the cooling department.

1. The plastic I/O cover just blocks airflow
2. A block of metal with minimal fins over the VRMs...doesn't do much...

One of the reasons why I went with the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master.

Because they used an actual aluminum fin stack over the VRMs...

 

I'd rather have a functional VRM heatsink over a VRM "heatsink" with RGB lighting or small LCD screen readout...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ValkyrieStar]

20 minutes ago, TofuHaroto said:

For the most part 

As a comob that is just a replacement 

It should be nice 

The only thing you'll lose coming from intel to AMD is the imc 

It's just not as good 

Oh I was talking about x570 lmao 

Well DMI 4 (or PCIe 4.0 x4 as in Ryzen 3000/X570), is enough for two 3.0 x4 drives without any kind of limitations. The third M.2 on an X570 board is direct from the CPU, but on Z490, it's all from the chipset.

 

As for the IMC, i have 32gb of 3200mhz C16 ram, it's tried and tested on the 1950X (worked flawlessly but only after manually entering every single damn fricken timing - enabling xmp soft-bricked the board till i used bios flashback lmao).

 

I'd not be getting any more ram for the time being, maybe 64GB if prices are suitable, but probably not.

 

1 minute ago, -rascal- said:

It frustrates me why motherboard manufacturers are taking looks / aesthetics as priority #1, and functionality as priority #2...or #4.

Literally going backwards on the cooling department.

1. The plastic I/O cover just blocks airflow
2. A block of metal with minimal fins over the VRMs...doesn't do much...

One of the reasons why I went with the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master.

Because they used an actual aluminum fin stack over the VRMs...

 

Or the fact they just completely skimping out on VRMs on Z390, my experience with Gigabyte bioses in the past has scared me away for the time being (X399 Gaming 7 was an absolute steaming pile of poop of bios problems). Had other manufacturers built proper vrms, I wouldn't be having the issues i am having now, and I would probably be completely happy with my 9900KS system.

 

With the X570 Unify, the entire "shroud" is actually part of the heatsink, it reduces VRM temperatures a further 5c vs the X570 ACE which this board has the same VRMs as, it's also a good £50 cheaper for me too, since i won't be using any RGB and i actually prefer the design of the Unify. The VRMs are also more than adequate even for the 3950X so i'm sure it'll be perfect for the 4950X too, unless the X670 Unify (if such a board comes to exist) tickles my fancy at that point too.

 

I probably could have waited for intel 10th gen, but considering what extent i had to go to to keep the 9900KS cool at stock with an undervolt, the 10900K can't be much better. That and the 3950X(and future 4950X) have a lot more cores, which i will benefit significantly from.

 

I suppose, if somehow, the sh1t hits the fan, i'll have a month to return the X570 Unify and 3600 for the Z490 Unify and an accompanying CPU - though it'd probably just be a pentium knowing intels pricing.

 

On a side note, this turned into a complaint about VRMs, into a "today i joined the red team", due to arrive this friday! I'm quite busy with work at the moment, and with my board constantly trying to self combust, i just can't risk downtime if it dies randomly.

 

[Haro]

1 minute ago, ValkyrieStar said:

The third M.2 on an X570 board is direct from the CPU, but on Z490, it's all from the chipset.

i did not know that lol

 

2 minutes ago, ValkyrieStar said:

As for the IMC, i have 32gb of 3200mhz C16 ram, it's tried and tested on the 1950X (worked flawlessly but only after manually entering every single damn fricken timing - enabling xmp soft-bricked the board till i used bios flashback lmao).

 

if you had this good of an experience with zen 1 then zen 2 will be a day and night better 

their imc is still a bit meh but it is certainly miles better than zen 1