CPU temperature randomly spiking.

[BiggeRilo]

So i'm experiencing some weird behavior with my CPU the temps will all of a sudden raise 5 - 10 degrees upward, instantaneously. It drops back down normally, one degree at a time, to about 34-35. It'll stay there for a bit and then jump back up again. It seems to do this endlessly. It only seems to do this while relatively idle, not while under load from games. I watched my task manager at the same time and the CPU usage isn't going any higher during these spikes, and staying at about 3-4%. I'm not really having any problem, but it's bugging me. Is this something I should be concerned about? I'm not sure how long it's been doing this for.

My setup is: 

Motherboard: Gigabyte B360 AORUS GAMING 3 DDR4 LGA 1151

CPU: Core I7-8700 (With the stock coller)

GPU:  Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1080 Windforce OC 8G

RAM: 16GB DDR4 Crucial Ballistix Sport LT Grey 

HD:  Seagate Barracuda ST1000DM010 1TB 7200RPM 64MB Sata III

PSU: Thermaltake Smart Series 700W

[TheNaitsyrk]

Close explorer.exe in task manager but keep temp monitoring software up. Explorer.exe could be causing this.

[DarkWanderer]

Hi BiggeRilo,

I had the same problem like you, but using Ryzen 5 2600x. While idling, CPU Package (Node 0) temp is 27*C jumping to 42*-46*C for less than a second and then go back one by one degree to 27*C (just like in your case), then stay like this for like 40-50 seconds and the same routine again. Under load there was no indication of these spikes, temps were good. After reading many topics about this, most of the people had an opinion that this is normal so I decided not to dig in this anymore. But 2 hours ago I did something that changed my CPU temp graph to perfectly horizontal line. My setup is:

 

Mobo: ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming K4

CPU: Ryzen 5 2600x (3,6Ghz; boost up to 4.25Ghz) (Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S)

RAM: 2x8 Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000Mhz (using 2933Mhz)

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 Gaming OC Pro (6GB)

PSU: Corsair RM650x

SSD: 500GB WD Blue 3D NAND SATA M.2 2280

 

!!! Running Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (SP1) !!!

 

Since the build is 2 weeks old I am still optimizing things...

 

What happened...

I installed the latest Nvidia driver - 430.86

After installation there was a new process in the task manager - rundll32. Also Nvidia's GeForce Experience is running a ton of other "update" and "report data" tasks and processes on the background and decided that I'm sick of their sh*t and need to get rid of the annoying program.

Uninstalled as follows:

1. Nvidia Audio Driver

2. Nvidia Geforce Experience

3. Nvidia PhysX System

4. Nvidia Driver

 

Then out of nowhere decided to install my motherboard's latest chipset drivers - AMD Chipset Drivers. I am 99% that this has nothing to do with the solution, but it happened during the time of "spikes" and "no-spikes" graph observations so I must mention it. Who knows, might be this one, this 1%.

 

Then downloaded and installed the latest driver from here    https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

Unchecked the GeForce Experience box and installed only the driver, also something related to the RTX series (it was in grey checked box, so I couldn't uncheck it) and the PhysX driver.

 

And now without the GeForce Experience Program there are no more tons of additional tasks,services and processes, everything is much smoother and lighter, did some benchmarks on cpu and videocard, all good. I believe that all background things related to the program, no matter how negligible, provoke the cpu to "work", but this load is so small that has no impact on the load measure, but only on the core temperature. Also the socket temperature sensor on the mobo is not detecting anything as you can see on the pic below, but the package (core) temp is.

 

So in conclusion I think that GeForce Experience was the root of this temperature fluctuation and since I dont use the features like "optimizing games", Shadow Play, FPS counter and so on, I don't need it. I prefer to download the drivers manually than having temperature issues and questions.

 

Now this is my case. Your problem might be this, might be other program or totally different thing!

 

HOPE THIS HELPS YOU!

 

Here are some pics: 20 mins of idle state on MSI Afterburner graph (if you move the cursor over the graph, then you will see spikes, which is normal)

CPU Temperature on the graph is the Package (Node 0) = Core temp. If I'm not wrong on Intel CPUs there is a core temp for every core.