13900KF temperature reporting/cooling issues

Boubouille · February 13, 2023

I bought a prebuilt PC last week from Materiel.net in France (link to setup). They have a reasonably good reputation and have been around for a long time. The performance is as expected (both on the CPU and GPU) on 3DMark, CPU-Z, Furmark.

The problem: every time the CPU is fully used the fans will instantly jump to 100% speed and the temperature is detected as ~95°C after less than 2 seconds. I thought it was just a benchmarking issue because of the peak load on the system but it happens all the time for random reasons. Extracting files, encoding something for 10 seconds, launching a game for more than 2 seconds, fans just go crazy. They quiet down as fast as they started as soon as the load stops.

I tried to do a longer burn on CPU-Z and the proper temperature seems to be reported before/after, just not during the actual load. Basically:

- Idle CPU is around 35-40°C before test

- Instantly goes up to 90-95°C as soon as the stress test starts

- Instantly drop to 55°C or so after I stop the test two or three minutes later (which I assume is the real temperature)

I'm running the CPU on an Asus ROG STRIX Z790-E Gaming WIFI and cooling with Asus ROG Strix LC II 360 RGB. The GPU is a Gigabyte RTX 4090, and it is cooling properly under load with the ramp up I'd expect over time.

I have no idea why the CPU temperatures would behave this way. It feels like a software issue but considering how expensive the setup was, I don't really want to take a chance and have to consider sending it back within the next week. The builder customer support's basically came back with "oh yeah it's normal, benchmarking isn't representative, and CPUs get hot when you work with them".

The only other example of the problem I could find is a fairly recent thread on Intel's forums, but it looks like the solution was to basically hardcode a few limitations in the BIOS. I was hoping to figure out what is actually happening in the first place.

I also attached quick video example of the behavior I'm dealing with.

jaslion · February 13, 2023

6 minutes ago, Boubouille said:

benchmarking isn't representative,

I already hate this it is representative if you use a system for those purposes

7 minutes ago, Boubouille said:

Extracting files, encoding something for 10 seconds, launching a game for more than 2 seconds, fans just go crazy. They quiet down as fast as they started as soon as the load stops.

Which this is normal use.

Also oof 5500 for that is a lot

Its simple really they didnt use a contact frame, the rog isnt a superb aio not bad just not the best whilst costing way more than better ones, the case has poor airflow and the fans are using the hot air from inside to cool whilst needing to fight the case for getting air and the 13900k is an INSANELY hot running cpu

Basically you got a pc that wasnt made to handle the parts in it but try a more reasonable load too like cinebench as prime 95 is a power virus but with eveb normal use causing it this is just showing it wasnt made properly

Boubouille · February 13, 2023

I'll try a Cinebench run when I'm back at the computer, sadly I'm traveling for work atm so it will probably be a few days.

But I feel like if the problem was actual temperature/cooling, I wouldn't be seeing normal/expected temperatures post-load? I don't think it's physically possible for the reported temperatures to be correct, that's what is confusing me. I had a 5960x before that so I'm used to CPUs with a somewhat stupid amount of power usage, and it just never behaved like this, I just had a good old Noctua air cooling it.