i7 7700k - thermal throttle disabled in bios

[panzer2181]

Hi everyone,

 

Guessed I finally caved in the pressure from the LTT videos in joining the forums .

 

I had a bizarre issue today with my CPU, which I managed to fix by disabling the thermal throttling of the CPU in the bios.  I was wondering if anyone had thoughts about the issue I was facing and the solution I used.

 

For a reason that is beyond me, when I booted my PC this morning, my CPU frequency was at 800 mhz.  Yes... Pentium III speeds here... 

 

I ran the XTU program from Intel, and it was confirming that the CPU was thermal throttling... even at temps of 28 degrees Celsius.  Did a stress test, and the clocks would stay a firm 800mhz and temps at 25 to 28 degrees.

 

I cleared the CMOS, and reflashed the bios.  No dice.  Still thermal throttling.

 

Prior to all this mess, I was running a very stable overclock of 4.9ghz at a voltage of about 1.4volts.  Yes, it is a bit high, but my temps were stable at around 85 degrees under max load.  I was thinking of eventually delidding the CPU or at least changing the thermal paste to something maybe a bit more performing, but overall, my AIO at quiet settings was still keeping things under control - especially considering the i7 7700 series was notorious for bad temps.

 

So what gives?  Faulty mobo (MSI Z170a M7)?  Faulty CPU?

 

Before throwing the towel and just getting a new mobo and CPU, I decided to disable the thermal throttling directly in the CPU (via the bios).... and voila!  Problem solved.  Back to regular speeds on CPU, with totally normal temps.

 

Has anyone ever experienced this?  What are you thoughts on what happened and the solution deployed?

[AMD A10-9600P]

I had a similar issue on my AMD laptop where it was pinned at 0.79GHz for a month or so, this wouldn't work for a full fat Intel desktop CPU but I eventually solved the issue by using DDU to completely remove all AMD drivers on the system then reinstall the correct ones provided by HP. It's an interesting issue that I ended up reading up a lot about, and just like you I tried everything until I stumbled upon my golden goose, DDU

[Tan3l6]

Power options is Windows? - Balanced, Power Saver?

[panzer2181]

1 minute ago, Tan3l6 said:

Power options is Windows? - Balanced, Power Saver?

Full blown max... Actually that was the first thing I checked..

[panzer2181]

4 minutes ago, bengeoghegan11 said:

I had a similar issue on my AMD laptop where it was pinned at 0.79GHz for a month or so, this wouldn't work for a full fat Intel desktop CPU but I eventually solved the issue by using DDU to completely remove all AMD drivers on the system then reinstall the correct ones provided by HP. It's an interesting issue that I ended up reading up a lot about, and just like you I tried everything until I stumbled upon my golden goose, DDU

DDU?  Display driver uninstaller?

 

[Tan3l6]

Just now, panzer2181 said:

Full blown max... Actually that was the first thing I checked..

Tried a new installation of windows on some other drive just for kicks?

[panzer2181]

1 minute ago, Tan3l6 said:

Tried a new installation of windows on some other drive just for kicks?

Yeah I guess I could try that.  But the problem seems fixed... for now.

[AMD A10-9600P]

25 minutes ago, panzer2181 said:

DDU?  Display driver uninstaller?

 

Yeah. A quirk of older AMD A series laptops, GPU drivers that also contained chipset or CPU drivers, I forget which one

[unclewebb]

BD PROCHOT is a signal path to your CPU. It allows other sensors on your motherboard, power or thermal, to send a throttling signal directly to your CPU. This forces your CPU to use the minimum 8 multiplier. It uses the same throttling mechanism internally as the CPU uses for thermal throttling. That is why Intel XTU reports this as thermal throttling. ThrottleStop reports this correctly.

 

 

If you use ThrottleStop to disable the BD PROCHOT signal path, your CPU will still be able to thermal throttle if it ever gets too hot. Disabling BD PROCHOT only blocks throttling signals that are happening outside of your CPU.

 

This is a big problem for many MSI desktop motherboards. Look for a slow mode LN2 swtich. If there is a physical switch, cycle it on and off 101 times to try to knock the dirt out of it. The purpose of this switch was so extreme overclockers could boot up at 800 MHz and then flick the switch for a quick CPU-Z screenshot or what have you. Nice in theory but these switches fail all the time. 

 

Edit - The manual for your motherboard shows this switch.

 

[panzer2181]

On 5/29/2020 at 1:29 PM, unclewebb said:

BD PROCHOT is a signal path to your CPU. It allows other sensors on your motherboard, power or thermal, to send a throttling signal directly to your CPU. This forces your CPU to use the minimum 8 multiplier. It uses the same throttling mechanism internally as the CPU uses for thermal throttling. That is why Intel XTU reports this as thermal throttling. ThrottleStop reports this correctly.

 

 

If you use ThrottleStop to disable the BD PROCHOT signal path, your CPU will still be able to thermal throttle if it ever gets too hot. Disabling BD PROCHOT only blocks throttling signals that are happening outside of your CPU.

 

This is a big problem for many MSI desktop motherboards. Look for a slow mode LN2 swtich. If there is a physical switch, cycle it on and off 101 times to try to knock the dirt out of it. The purpose of this switch was so extreme overclockers could boot up at 800 MHz and then flick the switch for a quick CPU-Z screenshot or what have you. Nice in theory but these switches fail all the time. 

 

Edit - The manual for your motherboard shows this switch.

 

I had no idea about the issue with MSI motherboards...  I did see that switch and it was on the check list I read on the MSI forums to verify if it was turned on (it wasn't)

 

I'll definitely check it out later this week. I'll post my findings.

[unclewebb]

These switches either get dirty or simply fail over time. If you have some electrical contact cleaner, try spraying that into the switch and then cycle the switch rapidly to get the dust bunnies out of it. This is a big problem for older MSI motherboards.