Some issues (DRAM, CPU temps, clocks)

Xairoh · August 15, 2020

Alright, here we go (typing this on my iPad so please bear with me here)

So, I am a Computer Science and VFX-Design student and I recently noticed that my 10 year old PC doesn‘t quite suffice any more (bc of Corona I can‘t be on campus but I still have to render gigantic files and animations/models). So I decided to build a PC, and I wanted it do be a beast. I never spend a lot of money, but in this case I wanted to treat myself.

Through a vendor in my country I bought all the parts and with an extra 150$ they built it, tested it and installed windows. I did‘t want to build it myself because I don‘t have any experience and this rig cost me about 2.700$. I wanted to play it safe.

My „smallest“ problem is the temps my CPU hits while idling. It idles around 52°C but only hits 75°C when under load (Houdini/Blender/Maya rendering sequences). I think it‘s weird that it is that hot idling around but doesn‘t get that hot when completely utilized.

I checked my airflow and the fans are in the correct configuration, and the tower cooler blows air correctly too. I checked the CPU fan curve too and it‘s pretty aggressive (idc about noise), so this confuses me a bit. Is that something I have to investigate or are the idle temps just sucky because it‘s summer and hot here in germany?

Onto my second issue I just got today: My CPU suddenly clocked at about .6 GHz per core and it only went up to about 1 GHz once. Weird.

Now my third and absolutely most annoying issue: About 60% of the times I want to boot my PC, the DRAM LED on my motherboard lights up and it doesn‘t post. I reseated my RAM, turned off DOCP to test and stuff, but it randomly just decides not to work without any clear cause. I turn off my PC turn it back on and just hope the error doesn‘t come up again, and it mostly doesn‘t a second time in a row. It drives me nuts and I don‘t know what to do about that issue.

Maybe it‘s important to add: Now after that weird CPU clock issue and me restarting my PC, the DRAM issue appears far more often. (Currently tried to restart it for the 10th time, got it to post once)

I hope someone can help me here, because I am lost, and sorry if my english isn‘t the best.

My specifications (just listing the things that are important here):

CPU: Ryzen 9 3900XT with a DarkRock 4 Pro tower cooler

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 3200 32 GB (dual channel with 2 sticks)

MOBO: Asus Prime x570 Pro

PSU: Corsair HX850

Case: Corsair Carbide 678C (curently only installed the case fans, I wanted to buy better ones and put them in myslef)

Kilrah · August 15, 2020

Idle temps are fine, the shop likely put a fan curved tuned for max silence at low load.

Rest seems like hardware issues, would go back to the store and have them fix it under warranty.

Xairoh · August 15, 2020

6 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Idle temps are fine, the shop likely put a fan curved tuned for max silence at low load.

Rest seems like hardware issues, would go back to the store and have them fix it under warranty.

Thanks for your answer!

Regarding the shop: It's an online vendor, and I would like to fix that issue myself and have a working PC instead of sending the whole tower to them and waiting for 2 weeks without a PC (I need to finish two projects in the next weeks so yeah).
But I will eventually do it if no other solution arises.