CPU at 87° but heat pipes are cold - Noctua NH-D15

[LeDoox]

Hello,

 

I installed my Noctua NH-D15 the Tuesday 30th May on my Ryzen 7 7800X3D and i was checking all the temperatures yesterday with different stress tests that push my CPU at 100%.

 

When the OC of my motherboard is activated (ASUS B650 PLUS + AMD Expo), my CPU is near from 85° and when the OC is desactivated, he's like near from 65°.

 

The temperatures don't look bad but not perfect. So i decided to check the airflow when he's pushed at 87°. And the airflow was litteraly cold. So i touched the heat pipes and they was cold too, not even lukewarm. Is it normal ? They are supposed to dissipate the heat no ?

 

I thought that the thermal paste had not beind applied correctly so i re-installed it with new thermal paste, checking all is done correctly but exactly the same results. I read on forums that sometimes there's a little plastic film so i re-installed it on other time, checking there's no plastic film anywhere, put some thermal paste again correctly, reassembling the all thing carefully. And again, exactly same results.

 

I tried to desactivate the fan, just to check if something will be different and i have a variation of 2° :

- With fans at 100% and CPU at 100% -> 85° with OC / 63° with stock parameters
- Without fans and CPU at 100% -> 87° (And i stop the stress test to be safe) with OC / 65° with stock parameters

 

I have a good airflow with 1x120mm at back, 2x140 at the top, 2*140 on the front and 1*140 on the bottom. All the tests was done with the case open.

 

There may be a defect on the model I received?

 

Thank you in advance for your help and have a good day!

[Bombastinator]

This says bad mount to me.  Did you remove the plastic?  That’s a classic one.

[Shimejii]

CCD is on the bottom on ryzen 7000, so you are going to have to touch the bottom heatpipes rather then the top ones. Its a known issue on Air coolers, thats why there are a few offset mounts to fix it so that the main heat pipes are on the CCD.

 

Other then that, generally these cpus are going to be about 120W at most, so its not going to get scorching hot super fast on the NH-D15. It can take a bit before that heat transfers, once it does though i would highly suggest NOT touching the pipes. 87c is no joke to human skin.

[SorryBella]

1 minute ago, Shimejii said:

CCD is on the bottom on ryzen 7000, so you are going to have to touch the bottom heatpipes rather then the top ones. Its a known issue on Air coolers, thats why there are a few offset mounts to fix it so that the main heat pipes are on the CCD.

Speak of the devil.

[LeDoox]

Thanks your responses and your reactivity!

@Bombastinator I was checking on the third mounting that there's no plastic part on each part. Nothing on CPU and nothing on the Noctua NH-D15.

@Shimeji I maybe have to test it on a long period ? The various tests lasted a maximum of 5 minutes, is this perhaps not enough?

[Ferth]

And if it is mounted correctly maybe check the spread of the thermal paste, i know i had this issue once dropped it by about 7c But as Shimejii said its a 120w processor shouldnt get too hot to fast, so if your temps are spiking at the start maybe its a paste/mounting issue

[Bombastinator]

You screwing it up is vastly more statistically likely than noctua screwing it up.  It’s not impossible of course.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Bombastinator

[LeDoox]

I don't know if it will be useful but i took some photos for the thermal spread each time i disassembly the Noctua

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, LeDoox said:

I don't know if it will be useful but i took some photos for the thermal spread each time i disassembly the Noctua

 

7 minutes ago, LeDoox said:

I don't know if it will be useful but i took some photos for the thermal spread each time i disassembly the Noctua

What’s up with the color change? You need to clean thoroughly between attempts.  If the thing doesn’t look like there was never paste on it it’s not clean enough.

 

also that seems to be am5.  There was an LTT video about how am5 isn’t set up like previous chips.  It could be while you have most of the paste in the right place in general it might not work in specific.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Bombastinator

[LeDoox]

@Bombastinator I cleaned with a dried towel, next time time i'll do it correctly! Thanks for that!

For the thermal paste, i put a point in the center just like this
 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, LeDoox said:

@Bombastinator I cleaned with a dried towel, next time time i'll do it correctly! Thanks for that!

For the thermal paste, i put a point in the center just like this
 

Maybe about 1.5 times that.  Too much isn’t great but too little is bad.  When the pea thing came out the conventional wisdom was “as little as you could get away with” which strictly speaking isn’t false, but the wages of too little are much greater than the wages of too much.  It never drops below “meh” no matter how much paste you use so all that is wasted is paste.

[LeDoox]

40 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Maybe about 1.5 times that.  Too much isn’t great but too little is bad.  When the pea thing came out the conventional wisdom was “as little as you could get away with” which strictly speaking isn’t false, but the wages of too little are much greater than the wages of too much.  It never drops below “meh” no matter how much paste you use so all that is wasted is paste.

I put more paste than what we can see on this picture.
I will try later in the day to install my Be Quiet! to see if the problem come from the CPU himself.

I'm very confused about this issue, it's not the first time i install a CPU Cooler and i can't see a missed step in the installation

[Stahlmann]

50 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Maybe about 1.5 times that.  Too much isn’t great but too little is bad. 

Too much doesn't matter in terms of performance. Worst case it's a bit messy. Too little however will lead to problems. When in doubt it's better to apply too much.

[PDifolco]

3 hours ago, LeDoox said:

Hello,

 

I installed my Noctua NH-D15 the Tuesday 30th May on my Ryzen 7 7800X3D and i was checking all the temperatures yesterday with different stress tests that push my CPU at 100%.

 

When the OC of my motherboard is activated (ASUS B650 PLUS + AMD Expo), my CPU is near from 85° and when the OC is desactivated, he's like near from 65°.

 

The temperatures don't look bad but not perfect. So i decided to check the airflow when he's pushed at 87°. And the airflow was litteraly cold. So i touched the heat pipes and they was cold too, not even lukewarm. Is it normal ? They are supposed to dissipate the heat no ?

 

I thought that the thermal paste had not beind applied correctly so i re-installed it with new thermal paste, checking all is done correctly but exactly the same results. I read on forums that sometimes there's a little plastic film so i re-installed it on other time, checking there's no plastic film anywhere, put some thermal paste again correctly, reassembling the all thing carefully. And again, exactly same results.

 

I tried to desactivate the fan, just to check if something will be different and i have a variation of 2° :

- With fans at 100% and CPU at 100% -> 85° with OC / 63° with stock parameters
- Without fans and CPU at 100% -> 87° (And i stop the stress test to be safe) with OC / 65° with stock parameters

 

I have a good airflow with 1x120mm at back, 2x140 at the top, 2*140 on the front and 1*140 on the bottom. All the tests was done with the case open.

 

There may be a defect on the model I received?

 

Thank you in advance for your help and have a good day!

I fail to see the problem.. I mean a 7800X3D at full load 65C or 85C PBO under 20-25C ambient is just normal imo, my 5900X has samey temps on a 280mm AIO (max 170W PPT atm)

Ryzen 8cores chips (on one die) have concentrated heat generation on the chip that any cooler struggle to reduce fast, but it's not due to cooler being too weak (as when you send 250W on a mid range cooler that can't keep up)

[wildgg]

if the clockspeeds are good than i dont see how these temps are bad.

[Bombastinator]

5 hours ago, PDifolco said:

I fail to see the problem.. I mean a 7800X3D at full load 65C or 85C PBO under 20-25C ambient is just normal imo, my 5900X has samey temps on a 280mm AIO (max 170W PPT atm)

Ryzen 8cores chips (on one die) have concentrated heat generation on the chip that any cooler struggle to reduce fast, but it's not due to cooler being too weak (as when you send 250W on a mid range cooler that can't keep up)

Should be lower so there’s some problem somewhere.  Still works of course 

[PDifolco]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Should be lower so there’s some problem somewhere.  Still works of course 

Could be high ambient, poor airflow... Methinks cooling is good enough to not worry about

[WoodenMarker]

10 hours ago, Shimejii said:

87c is no joke to human skin.

The heatpipes are going to be far cooler than the cpu.

 

Temps seem normal. 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, WoodenMarker said:

The heatpipes are going to be far cooler than the cpu.

 

Temps seem normal. 

It’s definitely within the usable range.  That’s a big ass cooler though.  

[LeDoox]

I tried to install my Be Quiet! Pure Rock 2 yesterday and I can tell you that I get almost the same results (2-3° hotter on the Be Quiet!)

So ... I can resume that it's just normal to obtain these temps with this CPU!
The sad part is that unfortunately it cannot be cooled more than that with a very good CPU cooler like the Noctua NH-D15

[Bombastinator]

43 minutes ago, LeDoox said:

I tried to install my Be Quiet! Pure Rock 2 yesterday and I can tell you that I get almost the same results (2-3° hotter on the Be Quiet!)

So ... I can resume that it's just normal to obtain these temps with this CPU!
The sad part is that unfortunately it cannot be cooled more than that with a very good CPU cooler like the Noctua NH-D15

?!  How many watts does that thing throw out?  I should still be a pile less than an i7.  There’s a video that talks about how am5 has the processor in a weird place under the IHS that could be the problem.

Edited June 2, 2023 by Bombastinator

[LeDoox]

13 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

?!  How many watts does that thing throw out?  I should still be a pile less than an i7.  There’s a video that talks about how am5 has the processor in a weird place under the IHS that could be the problem.

That's what i conclude too!
If you find back this video, i'm curious to see it

[LeDoox]

And to conclude this topic, this is the answer from Noctua : 
 

Hope it will help peoples with the same question!

Thank you everyone !

[Bombastinator]

4 hours ago, LeDoox said:

That's what i conclude too!
If you find back this video, i'm curious to see it

It was a recent LTT video.  There was a noctua bracket that moved the center a bit south that was good for 3c and then there was another that was a plastic block that was good for multiple times that but killed your warranty. Total was up to 20°c or something.  All I remember.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, LeDoox said:

And to conclude this topic, this is the answer from Noctua : 
 

Hope it will help peoples with the same question!

Thank you everyone !

Ok. So it really does run that hot.  That’s kinda nuts!  And really really hot.