70°C at idle on Ryzen 5 3600 with Corsair H100i v2

[seth10]

Hello! For as long as I can remember with this build my CPU has been at 70°C idle, and it doesn’t get much hotter when I game.

 

I thought maybe I didn’t use enough thermal paste, so I took it apart now to check. Pictures attached, I think I used enough because I can see where the thermal paste spread to the edges of the chip. Could it be that I didn’t tighten down the thumbscrews enough? I used a Z pattern, tightening over a few passes, until I was afraid to tighten any more or my screwdriver would slip.

 

[glenalz81]

Those mounts screw down until they stop turning. Possibly has been a pressure issue.

[3D Printed Save Button]

Hello.

Looks like a pressure issue to me. They usually make this stuff foolproof (usually) and they make the thumb-nuts to be twisted until they stop turning and that's the suggested mounting pressure.

You also can clean the radiator and fans; every system will enjoy a healthy cleaning .

Have a happy computing and don't forget to save your files and games.

[Mark Kaine]

almost no thermal paste = issue solved!

 

 

5 hours ago, seth10 said:

tightening over a few passes, until I was afraid to tighten any more or my screwdriver would slip.

just to be clear the moment the screws stop turning is when you're supposed to stop.

 

 

5 hours ago, seth10 said:

I think I used enough because I can see where the thermal paste spread to the edges of the chip.

nope, its clearly visible that there are huge parts of the cpu without any thermal paste at all , so either if that was a mountain pressure issue or not, its clearly not enough...

 

 

the chip is supposed to be *fully* covered, no wonder you saw high temps.

 

 

[glenalz81]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

its clearly visible that there are huge parts of the cpu without any thermal paste at all

The missing paste is on the cooler cold plate, i reckon there's enough paste and has just been a low/uneven pressure.

 

The paste wouldn't squeeze out round the edges if there wasn't enough.

[Mark Kaine]

38 minutes ago, glenalz81 said:

The missing paste is on the cooler cold plate, i reckon there's enough paste and has just been a low/uneven pressure.

honestly even on the cooler isnt enough,  at least not where it should be, huge parts uncovered there as well...

 

i think, from OPs description its more likely heavily overtightend and indeed uneven... fact is there is almost no thermal paste (where it should be) 

 

As i said they need to screw until the screws stop moving and not overtighten them. Its still way too little paste.

[seth10]

Thank you all for the consensus on the mounting pressure issue! I added some more thermal paste after reading @Mark Kaine's comments.

 

 

Then I bolted it back on, really screwing them as tight as I could due to @glenalz81 and @3D Printed Save Button’s suggestion of a possible mounting pressure issue. I couldn’t get much more when I switched from fingers to screwdriver. Even with pressing down with the screwdriver hard enough to make the motherboard flex, I couldn’t get it to screw anymore, the screwdriver slips out of the groove even with all that pressure.

 

Here's some graphs of before and after I added more thermal paste and re-mounted:

 

I think HWiNFO didn't correctly record the Total CPU Usage in the "before" graph (there's no way it was that consistant at 3.1%) but I can't go back in time to re-log data. Before was from 12/28/21, after was 1/19/22.

 

To address @Mark Kaine's "heavily overtightend and indeed uneven" suggestion I'm going to wipe everything off with isopropyl alcohol, apply a thin spread and just thumb-tighten the screws. Failing that I'll switch back to the AMD Wraith Prism.

 

Thank you everyone for the advice! And @3D Printed Save Button I did use a cloth to wipe the small amount of dust that was on each of my fan blades

 

Edit: the most important thing was the AIO pump speed! I set it to high. It's quiet enough that I don't notice it, but makes sense that it's important to quickly move the hot water away from the CPU block and towards the radiator to cool down. Increasing the AIO pump speed made the biggest difference.