CPU oddity

Eastman51 · November 28, 2018

So a few months ago my old i5-4670k started to perform significantly worse than it should have. For example, some games would run at 20 fps even on the lowest settings (was paired with a 1070). I upgraded to Ryzen because of this.

Background out of the way, I got out that CPU and the motherboard I was using before to build a PC out of some extra hardware I had lying around. I did some testing in the games that ran poorly before and they ran exceptionally well. I was very confused, so I opened up Task Manager and HWmonitor to see if there was any black magic going on. Lo and behold, the CPU was turbo-ing up to its rated frequency (never put an OC on it, the board in question doesn't support it) and thermals were lower than when I had been using it.

Original config:

i5-4670k

Corsair H55 120mm AIO

Asus Q87M/e

32 GB DDR3 (kingston hyperx)

1070 STRIX

860 EVO boot drive

EVGA 700b PSU

New config:

i5-4670k

Stock cooler (not intel branded, but looks similar and has same mounting mechanism)

Asus Q87M/e

16GB DDR3 (2 DIMMS from the 32GB kit)

Asus 960 TURBO 4GB

some random 2.5" Hitachi HDD I salvaged from a dead laptop a long while ago for the boot drive

350W unknown brand PSU

The case has also changed, going from a mid tower case with 4 chassis fans (not including the AIO rad fan) to an Asus pre-built box (long story short, it was my original PC and is where the "stock" cooler came from. The pre-built did not come with this board or CPU, fyi) with a single 80mm exhaust in the back. Also, the motherboard I/O shield isn't installed because it doesn't fit properly. The currently used PSU is also from the pre-built box, which only has a single 4-pin EPS (the EVGA had 2 4-pin) connector and the GPU is powered by a molex to PCIe adapter.

When I was actively using the CPU for my main rig it would only turbo to 3.6 GHz (4670k is supposed to turbo to 3.8 GHz), and temps would reach 69C maximum. In this "new" build, the CPU turbos to a hair over 3.8 GHz and reaches 66C max. I'm very confused as to why this is happening. Running only 4-pin CPU power, a lower quality PSU, and a supposedly worse CPU cooler yields better results? I doubt its because of the fresh Windows 10 install, because I'm fairly certain I never really got the full 3.8GHz even when I first used that CPU in the original board from the pre-built.

As a side note, the 960 thermal throttles even worse than when I upgraded to the 1070.

Jurrunio · November 28, 2018

Maybe the old cooler isnt mounted or working properly, or the old case is suffocating

RAM555789 · November 28, 2018

4 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Maybe the old cooler isnt mounted or working properly, or the old case is suffocating

Yeah this nails the head in the coffin, bad mount, thermal application, or something else going on to throw it off that much.

Eastman51 · November 29, 2018

15 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Maybe the old cooler isnt mounted or working properly, or the old case is suffocating

The old AIO was fine, I used it for some time with my Ryzen CPU. The mount for the CPU could have been bad, since I did swap the original CPU in the pre-built and swapped motherboards. I think I did take it out when I upgraded to clean it, so maybe I just remounted it better.

I do think this pre-built case is far worse for airflow though, it only has 2 80mm fan slots, but it does have a big vent on the side panel.