PSA: Sometimes, it's the simple things.

[NoMooreMercy]

Okay so just a bit of backstory, I own a 4790k @ stock and cool it with an h100i from Corsair.  I run the pump @ 100%, the two included fans are set to balanced in Corsair Link and both of these fans are in push at the top of my case.  I was wondering why my temperatures were so awful compared to everybody else @ idle, I thought either I had a bad chip or a bad unit from Corsair at first.  My temperatures were in the lower-to-mid 40s @ idle, depending on the temperature of my room.  I had no idea what this could've been, my guess was a possible auto voltage setting in my BIOS I didn't notice.  So I messed around a bit with settings with no luck whatsoever, but I noticed that in my BIOS that my CPU was idling around 29-32c so I continued to look around in my BIOS until I noticed that turbo-boost was disabled in the bios, as it should be, but I suddenly thought that my processor could've been turbo-boosted non-stop in Windows.  So I booted up HWMonitor and sure enough, It was reading 4400MHz across all cores even when idle.  I instantly checked my Windows Power Plan options and welp, sure enough my system was set to 'Performance' instead of 'Balanced.'  Shortly afterwards, my processor dropped to an idle frequency of ~900MHz and my idle temperatures were exactly where they should've been.

 

[Tedster]

Yup, these things happen.

[ProKoN]

turbo boost has nothing to do with the issue

 

intel turbo boost is responsible for the Maximum frequency and voltage the cpu will boost to under load. in your case with it disabled your cpu would only boost to 4.0ghz under load

 

 

enhanced intel speedstep tecnology (eist) is responsible for downclocking the frequency and voltage at an idle state or light loads

 

 

the solution to your problem was the windows power option settings you changed. eist was most likely enabled the whole time.

[NoMooreMercy]

turbo boost has nothing to do with the issue

 

intel turbo boost is responsible for the Maximum frequency and voltage the cpu will boost to under load. in your case with it disabled your cpu would only boost to 4.0ghz under load

 

 

enhanced intel speedstep tecnology (eist) is responsible for downclocking the frequency and voltage at an idle state or light loads

 

 

the solution to your problem was the windows power option settings you changed. eist was most likely enabled the whole time.

Except, I never said it was the cause of the problem lol.  I just noticed that in the bios, turbo-boost is disabled by default and that my temperatures as a result were lower.  That led me to believe that Windows was the culprit, and it was.