CPU not registering 100% usage in any scenario, caused by throttling?

[notdominic]

I have a ryzen 7 3700X with stock wraith prism rgb cooler. Recently, the temps have been soaring to up to 95 Celsius (203F). At the same time, in benchmarks or standard usage the CPU hasn't exceeded ~60% usage, according to task manager. I assume this is because of throttling, in which case I'll upgrade the cooler, but I just wanted to be a bit more certain. I'm probably way overthinking this lol, but figured it was worth checking before spending anything more.

[Tan3l6]

Some synthetic benchmarks surely do?

Like OCCT, or Prime 95 Small FFTs?

 

But yeah, 95C is high.

[Kid.Lazer]

The wraith prism is far from the best cooler you can get, but it certainly isn't the worst either. It should be plenty of cooler for a stock 3700x. Upgrading it will help, but you need to investigate your case's overall cooling setup first. I'm guessing you have very poor fan placement.

[notdominic]

2 minutes ago, Kid.Lazer said:

The wraith prism is far from the best cooler you can get, but it certainly isn't the worst either. It should be plenty of cooler for a stock 3700x. Upgrading it will help, but you need to investigate your case's overall cooling setup first. I'm guessing you have very poor fan placement.

Got 5 140mm fans, 2 in at the front and 3 out (2 on the top, 1 at the back). I wouldn't have thought that was a poor setup

[Kid.Lazer]

What case are you using?

 

Also I find it odd that you say "Recently, the temps have been soaring to up to 95 Celsius" Are you saying it didn't used to behave this way?

[notdominic]

Just now, Kid.Lazer said:

What case are you using?

 

Also I find it odd that you say "Recently, the temps have been soaring to up to 95 Celsius" Are you saying it didn't used to behave this way?

Cooler Master MC500M - it's a relatively large mid tower.

And yeah, I've had an unchanged setup since march 2020, excluding SSD and monitor but this kind of temp has only been appearing for a month or two. The weather here in the UK has been hotter than normal, and I initially thought it could have been higher ambient temps causing the issue. But I used to reach no further than high 70s before then and now it seems really unlikely that hot weather alone could cause this, or the cooler had suddenly deteriorated or something.

[notdominic]

11 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Some synthetic benchmarks surely do?

Like OCCT, or Prime 95 Small FFTs?

 

But yeah, 95C is high.

Prime 95 registers only around 35% usage, clock speeds are super low.

[Tan3l6]

Then obviously something is wrong with the cooling.

 

I'd buy from higher end Scythe Fuma 2 or Deepcool AK620.

Though ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports (Duo) shoud suffice too.