9700X Thermals

MattoC3 · June 18

I've been playing with my new pc in the past 48 hours, and have been keeping an eye on temps, clocks and whatnot. Was noticing that my Ryzen 7 9700X has a weirdly erratic temperature pattern.
A practical example i can give happened an hour or so ago, was playing Path Of Exile, while loading the map and game the CPU Package got close to 80c according to HWInfo, but the core themselves never ever went over 62c at maximum. I assume it spiked to load up the shaders and then settled back, but this happens with almost every other game.

It's cooled by a Phanteks Glacier One 360M25G2, idles at 38-40c but these random heat outburst are making me wonder, should i reseat the cooler? Or is this normal Ryzen behaviour? It's my first time with an AMD build so i'm unfamiliar with their quirks

YoungBlade · June 18

I don't have an AM5 system, but I can say that the behavior you described isn't unusual. Loading up a game or level is usually the most demanding task for a CPU when gaming. My own 5900X will usually only be at around 30-40% utilization when actually gaming, but can go to 100% during loading.

With a game like POE, you're likely to only see a high load across all 8 cores when the game starts up, and then only a few cores will be heavily utilized after that.

Also note that AM5 CPUs are designed to be thermal limited, rather than power or frequency limited. At full load, it's normal to go to 95C and stay there until the load ends.

MattoC3 · June 18

3 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

I don't have an AM5 system, but I can say that the behavior you described isn't unusual. Loading up a game or level is usually the most demanding task for a CPU when gaming. My own 5900X will usually only be at around 30-40% utilization when actually gaming, but can go to 100% during loading.

With a game like POE, you're likely to only see a high load across all 8 cores when the game starts up, and then only a few cores will be heavily utilized after that.

Also note that AM5 CPUs are designed to be thermal limited, rather than power or frequency limited. At full load, it's normal to go to 95C and stay there until the load ends.

My concern wasn't solely addresed to PoE, just to games in general. Thinking of something that heavy on the CPU like Monster Hunter Wilds made me second guess if my installation was correct or there was something wrong with my cooler. But as you said, AM5 CPUs are designed to be thermally limited, which is something i wasn't aware of, and after researching the topic more during the day I'd dare say that it's acting the way it should and I'm just overthinking it lol