Yet another pitiful Hyper 212 Evo Cooling Post

[PenguinActually]

Right off the bat:

MOBO: AsRock 970 Pro 3 R2.0

CPU - AMD FX-8350 (fully stock settings in bios, runs around 4.09ghz according to the AsRock Extreme Tuning Utility- Target Fan Speed 4/10, Target Temp 58C)

COOLER - Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo - Stock fan, pulling up out the top of the case, thermal paste reapplied yesterday to see if that fixed the issue, 120mm fan mounted up top as well

CASE - Raidmax Viper GX (Terrible case for airflow, so no side panel is ever installed, hacked the vents out of the top cover to let heat float up and out)

AGE - 2 years

 

Over the last 5-6 months I've noticed that my fan on my 212 Evo seems to ramp up under low-moderate usage, some times even just from watching a video in Chrome with the 1 tab open can send temps to the mid to high 50's Celsius. Before this started it's run fine with 1 fan blowing out the back of the case and the CPU cooler blowing up with fan speed on 1/10 without the need to ramp the fans up much, if at all, even with an R9 280X sitting under it for it's first year

Specifically over the last week it's been a proper issue with virtually idle usage temps from 50/52C to 55-57C. Only running Chrome with 1-5 tabs open, VLC Media Player and Steam running as well as the usual AntiVirus, Nvidia GeForce Experience and windows services during these times. Under any load, such as Photoshop, playing a game through steam, even just running excel pushes temperatures up to 58-60C

 

My PC sits up on my desk and I run with the side panel off because of a poor decision of what was "cool" to me when I put it together VS something practical with actual air flow. Because of this I did some simple testing of touching the CPU cooler while it was running the fans fast to try pull some heat away from it. Top of the cooler, to my fingers was cool-to-barely-warm to the touch and the actual block on top of the CPU hot to the touch, the heat pipe the side of my finger accidentally touched felt like a burn.

 

Reapplied some thermal paste yesterday and it was better...ish, idle 40-43C. Today idle was back up around 50-55 and moderate load spiked temperatures to 60-65C with the fan sounding like the stock, original cooler that shipped with the FX-8350.

 

No obvious signs of damage to cooler when it was removed, the 4 spring screws are tightened right down, cooler isn't sitting up on anything.

 

Any ideas on anything else to look at or check for? It's bordering on unusable now, and I'd really prefer not to have to replace it if possible.

[LogicalDrm]

Is fan running as its supposed to? And is that 2 years age for all of components?

[WoodenMarker]

Have you tried reverting the motherboard settings to default?

[PenguinActually]

Should also add that the entire system gets dust blown out ever month or so, can build up quick with no side panel. Room temp roughly 18-24C.

 

The fan runs normally. Same speeds as it's always had and you can hear the difference manually setting the levels through the Asrock Tuning Utility.

 

CPU and Motherboard were purchased same day and the cooler was a couple of weeks after as the stock cooler bordered on thermal shutdown at idle after it was all put together.

 

I removed the battery to reset the bios 2-3 months back to try sort a USB issue (USB 3 ports have power but no data), then I flashed the newest bios about 2-3 weeks back, Now running V2.8 (Release: 06/29/2016). Had never been updated since I bought it. AsRock 970 Pro3 R2.0 A cheaper board but I've never messed with CPU clocks so it's been fine.

--Added Motherboard to post 1--

[LogicalDrm]

10 hours ago, PenguinActually said:

Should also add that the entire system gets dust blown out ever month or so, can build up quick with no side panel. Room temp roughly 18-24C.

 

The fan runs normally. Same speeds as it's always had and you can hear the difference manually setting the levels through the Asrock Tuning Utility.

 

CPU and Motherboard were purchased same day and the cooler was a couple of weeks after as the stock cooler bordered on thermal shutdown at idle after it was all put together.

Sounds bit like CPU is running with too high voltages by default. So might be factory-made issue on CPU or mobo or both. With those room temps even stock cooler would have been enough for stock clocks.

[PenguinActually]

Fired it up and had a look with their tuning utility and for simplicity sake Screenshot of AXTU right after booting

 

I sat and watched the numbers for a couple of minutes and the only changes were

CPU Temp: 40 - 43C Lower than recent temps but it's night time, so the room was noticeably cooler too, house central heater display reading 14-15C

CPU Speed: 4068 - 4186mhz

CPU Frequency: 20.5 - 21.0

VCore Voltage: 1.296 - 1.319V

Other than that the 3.3 Voltage would rise and fall 0.010V every 20odd seconds.

 

Like I say, I've never ever bothered with an OC, other than the auto OC mode that's been auto enabled since day one, and that's not making great changes to anything.

 

From looking at various forum posts 1.325 - 1.350 - 1.375 seem to be reported stock voltages.

[chilicheeseburger]

I don't think the issue is with the cooler if there's no dust in the heatsink and the fan is functioning normally. What you can do however is just add a second fan to it. There's a second bracket included with the Hyper 212 Evo and it should improve your temps. Install the fans in a way that air is pushed into the heatsink and pulled out on the other end in the direction of airflow in your case.

[rheyL]

if your cpu is on default settings then turbo mode is on. Injecting high voltage to reach its desired turbo mode. Try to turn it off and see the result. 

[PenguinActually]

Apparently this didn't submit way back on the 15th but it was saved as a draft.

 

----

 

If I can track down the box and bracket for it I'll stick another one on in the mean time. (Couldn't find it, but laying a fan on top of the cooler has helped a small but noticeable amount.)

 

For the sake of some testing I started rFactor2 to kill some down time and check temps.

Seemed to run unusually cool today for no reason I could tell. Same 20-25C room temps, same speeds and voltages but it just sat around 50C with the fans sitting around 1300rpm. Still well over what it used to, and should be, but a tiny bit better. 

 

Loading into a solo practice with no AI or anything sent temps flying and after about 1 minute temps shot up still with no changes in clocks or voltages from idle, at a couple of points sent fan speeds to 2200rpm and later 2500 rpm.

Pretty sure max RPM for the stock 212 Evo fans it around 1800-1900rpm

 

Setting all OC settings to manual to hold clock speeds and voltages instead of the defaults/auto had no change. Being set to auto since it was built this wasn't a surprise to me but it was worth testing.

 

Been looking for some reasonably priced and quality thermal paste, but $30 for a 5 gram syringe makes no sense.  Not Arctic Silver either, just "cheap" low end deep cool / cooler master pastes.

 

At the moment there is some of the old Cooler Master paste on the CPU that came with the 212 Evo 2 years ago, was a bit dry looking after sitting. Even if its "bad", I'd expect it to drop temps a fair bit on the same day as it's applied.

 

Irrelevant to all this now as I've decided to sell the CPU/Motherboard/probably 212 and replace with a i7 8700. The AM3+ motherboard needs replaced because of total USB 3 data transfer failure and it makes more sense to hop off an old chip to something new, efficient and a boat load more powerful.

 

Thanks to all that replied, if I find some thermal paste for a realistic price before sold I'll see if that is the issue after all and post a last time on this thread. Feel a bit scumbag for asking help, then listing what I've got but it's a primo time for it.

 

[markr54632]

So I may be way off on my guess, but I'm guessing you are running windows 10. When testing temperatures I find it necessary to change to a metered connection. Windows likes to sneak updates in and that usually spikes cpu usage to 15-20 percent. If you start running high again pop into task manager and see if you are downloading an update.

[PenguinActually]

I did have 10 before, but the OS install I mentioned was actually jumping from 10 back to 7. Not too sure why, or what exactly happened but it self destructed and took over itself changing settings etc, and deleting programs / files / folders to the point that I just backed up what was left and bailed out. (Most of which were missing chunks of files and folders or were corrupt which I found out when I got 7 up and running). On top of that the OS was just a miserable experience to use being extremely slow and laggy for general use.

 

My old laptop runs 10 and I discovered that the creators update completely ignored the metered connection trick. Atleast you can just Alt+F4 the "review your security settings before installing the update" window.

 

Anyhow, it's now running my old 7 64 bit Home Edition with as up to date drivers that are available. Seems 7 is just starting to get to end of life for that.

 

--Edit - 4 Days Later--

Ended up picking some DeepCool Z3 Thermal Paste, 2 windows in Chrome - 1 tab each, Steam idle in the background, and the Asrock Extreme Tuning utility open, temps are going from 46C - 54C, Still manually set to 4.0ghz / 1.29V.