AMD FX Outrageous Temp issue

[suzerain_00]

How's it going everyone, I'm at a loss with this one. I'm trying to sell an old FX system I recently replaced, but I didn't want to sell it in the state that I was using it in, so I performed a few upgrades. Namely, I replaced the dinky AMD stock cooler for an Arctic Freezer 13. The AMD heatsink doesn't even have heat pipes, so I thought naturally that the Freezer 13 would be leagues better in cooling the FX 6300 this system has. I'm finalizing a few things before I close the side panel and boot up the system. I'm about to open up Prime95 for a stress test but before I do, I'm seeing 65°C idle (through HWMonitor). I do the stress test anyway, and strangely the cpu barely increases in temperature, something like +4°C. So I leave the system sitting for a while and come back to it today. I took the cooler off and damn, there was barely and contact between the cooler and heat spreader via the thermal compound. So I a clean it off, reapply some MX4, and I tighten the cooler down real fkn tight. But here I am, I'm still seeing idle temps in the mid 60°C range. What is going on here? Any thoughts?

 

System Buildout: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/b73fYr

[Guest]

From the link you sent, it clearly says that some parts are incompatible.

Maybe that's why.

[suzerain_00]

4 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

From the link you sent, it clearly says that some parts are incompatible.

Maybe that's why.

Alright it's fair to say that PCPartPicker presents potential incompatibility, But I have the ACTUAL SYSTEM RIGHT HERE NEXT TO ME. I used this PC for like 3 years prior so I can vouch for it's functionality. 

[Jurrunio]

10 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

From the link you sent, it clearly says that some parts are incompatible.

Maybe that's why.

You dont read English? None of that is related to cooling performance

 

13 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

How's it going everyone, I'm at a loss with this one. I'm trying to sell an old FX system I recently replaced, but I didn't want to sell it in the state that I was using it in, so I performed a few upgrades. Namely, I replaced the dinky AMD stock cooler for an Arctic Freezer 13. The AMD heatsink doesn't even have heat pipes, so I thought naturally that the Freezer 13 would be leagues better in cooling the FX 6300 this system has. I'm finalizing a few things before I close the side panel and boot up the system. I'm about to open up Prime95 for a stress test but before I do, I'm seeing 65°C idle (through HWMonitor). I do the stress test anyway, and strangely the cpu barely increases in temperature, something like +4°C. So I leave the system sitting for a while and come back to it today. I took the cooler off and damn, there was barely and contact between the cooler and heat spreader via the thermal compound. So I a clean it off, reapply some MX4, and I tighten the cooler down real fkn tight. But here I am, I'm still seeing idle temps in the mid 60°C range. What is going on here? Any thoughts?

 

System Buildout: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/b73fYr

Thermal paste reapplied?

[suzerain_00]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

You dont read English? None of that is related to cooling performance

 

Thermal paste reapplied?

Yes, and I've checked the coverage. Thermal past covers the whole of the IHS and the cooler itself.

[Guest]

Just now, ExodusR said:

Alright it's fair to say that PCPartPicker presents potential incompatibility, But I have the ACTUAL SYSTEM RIGHT HERE NEXT TO ME. I used this PC for like 3 years prior so I can vouch for it's functionality.

In that case, how is the fan on the CPU cooler configured, push/pull?

How old is the thermal paste? (If that would make a difference)

 

 

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

You dont read English? None of that is related to cooling performance

I clearly said "maybe that's why" I wasn't implying that it WAS the problem, just suggesting that the culprit might be found in that/near that region.

[Jurrunio]

4 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

Yes, and I've checked the coverage. Thermal past covers the whole of the IHS and the cooler itself.

Does the fan spin normally?

[suzerain_00]

22 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

In that case, how is the fan on the CPU cooler configured, push/pull?

How old is the thermal paste? (If that would make a difference)

 

 

I clearly said "maybe that's why" I wasn't implying that it WAS the problem, just suggesting that the culprit might be found in that/near that region.

Didn't mean to crucify for that, sorry Anyways the fan is facing the graphics card, not optimal obviously. That being said I have two fans on the side of the case at full speed, and still high temps. Thermal paste is brand new, just applied.

 

21 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Does the fan spin normally?

Yep, it responds to PWM fan speed appropriately as well.

[Guest]

Just now, ExodusR said:

Didn't mean to crucify for that, sorry

It's fine, just clearing things up.

1 minute ago, ExodusR said:

Anyways the fan is facing the graphics card, not optimal obviously.

Do you have room to relocate the fan?

2 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

That being said I have two fans on the side of the case at full speed, and still high temps.

Can we see the inside of your PC?

Is it crowded or does the air have room to circulate?

3 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

Thermal paste is brand new, just applied.

Did you clean all the residue on the CPU before reapplying the paste?

[m0k]

can you cross reference your temps with a different app like HWinfo64 - thats what i use for my AMD cpu

often these programs spit out a temp value thats not actually for the cpu (its a common old amd issue)

 

in hwinfo64 > sensors> under your motherboard group of sensors, the "CPU" temp is the correct one to check

 

also i noticed youre cpu is running at a very high voltage

my phenom 1090t is also a similar 6core like yours. by default it ships with 1.4v

but i was able to manually and very simply undervolt it down to 1.264 (under load)

yours seems to go up to 1.35, it should be able to comfortably boost with just 1.264 or 1.3 at most

 

 

in conclusion- please take a new screenshot with hwinfo64, thanks

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, lewdicrous said:

I clearly said "maybe that's why" I wasn't implying that it WAS the problem, just suggesting that the culprit might be found in that/near that region.

My apologies on being rude. What I thought is that none of these affect cooling performance so saying those are possible causes is false.

 

5 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

Yep, it responds to PWM fan speed appropriately as well.

Then my guess is that the fans on the old AMD cooler push a lot more air than the new fans do. Does it get more quiet?

[suzerain_00]

3 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

It's fine, just clearing things up.

Do you have room to relocate the fan?

Can we see the inside of your PC?

Is it crowded or does the air have room to circulate?

Did you clean all the residue on the CPU before reapplying the paste?

Unfortunately due to the bracket that Arctic provides for the AM3 socket, I have only have the option to face the fan straight up or down I assure you that I took care in removing and reapplying thermal paste, I cleaned all the old stuff off, and put a sizeable dot of MX4 in the middle of the heat spreader when I put the cooler back on. Here's some more photos:

[Guest]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

My apologies on being rude. What I thought is that none of these affect cooling performance so saying those are possible causes is false.

Don't worry about it.

 

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Then my guess is that the fans on the old AMD cooler push a lot more air than the new fans do. Does it get more quiet?

Do you still have the old cooler?

Maybe you can try comparing the two fans in terms of airflow and whatnot.

 

 

 

Maybe, just maybe, the new cooler has a fault in it where one of the heat-pipes has a hole in it that caused whatever was inside of it to evaporate out.. In other words, inspect your new cooler, see it there's anything out of the norm.

[suzerain_00]

8 minutes ago, mok said:

can you cross reference your temps with a different app like HWinfo64 - thats what i use for my AMD cpu

often these programs spit out a temp value thats not actually for the cpu (its a common old amd issue)

 

in hwinfo64 > sensors> under your motherboard group of sensors, the "CPU" temp is the correct one to check

 

also i noticed youre cpu is running at a very high voltage

my phenom 1090t is also a similar 6core like yours. by default it ships with 1.4v

but i was able to manually and very simply undervolt it down to 1.264 (under load)

yours seems to go up to 1.35, it should be able to comfortably boost with just 1.264 or 1.3 at most

 

 

in conclusion- please take a new screenshot with hwinfo64, thanks

Here you are:

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ExodusR said:

Unfortunately due to the bracket that Arctic provides for the AM3 socket, I have only have the option to face the fan straight up or down

I see, that shouldn't make a huge difference i think.

3 minutes ago, ExodusR said:

I assure you that I took care in removing and reapplying thermal paste, I cleaned all the old stuff off, and put a sizeable dot of MX4 in the middle of the heat spreader when I put the cooler back on.

Then we can rule that out.

 

The only thing I can think off right now is if you ran those tests while the side panel was on or if you're still keeping the side panel off for the tests and idle (that might affect airflow inside the case, but I'm just scrapping the bottom of the barrel right now)

[suzerain_00]

21 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

My apologies on being rude. What I thought is that none of these affect cooling performance so saying those are possible causes is false.

 

Then my guess is that the fans on the old AMD cooler push a lot more air than the new fans do. Does it get more quiet?

When the system boots, it's much quieter than the old AMD stock cooler, however I have the fans set up such that once the cpu temps get past 55°C, the fans start to spin faster, and then eventually things get pretty loud.

 

21 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

Don't worry about it.

 

Do you still have the old cooler?

Maybe you can try comparing the two fans in terms of airflow and whatnot.

 

Maybe, just maybe, the new cooler has a fault in it where one of the heat-pipes has a hole in it that caused whatever was inside of it to evaporate out.. In other words, inspect your new cooler, see it there's anything out of the norm.

I'm pretty sure I have the old stock cooler somewhere, but I don't think I can get to disassembling everything and putting it back together tonight. I'll definitely give everything a closer look when I get the chance. New cooler and old.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ExodusR said:

When the system boots, it's much quieter than the old AMD stock cooler, however I have the fans set up such that once the cpu temps get past 55°C, the fans start to spin faster, and then eventually things get pretty loud.

One thing i forgot to ask, are the fans on the side panel pulling air from inside the case or are they pushing air into it?

[suzerain_00]

21 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

I see, that shouldn't make a huge difference i think.

Then we can rule that out.

 

The only thing I can think off right now is if you ran those tests while the side panel was on or if you're still keeping the side panel off for the tests and idle (that might affect airflow inside the case, but I'm just scrapping the bottom of the barrel right now)

All my temps are with the side panel on, and I can sympathize with your confusion, I'm just as lost as you

 

21 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

One thing i forgot to ask, are the fans on the side panel pulling air from inside the case or are they pushing air into it?

They're setup as intake, so pulling air in.

[mariushm]

Place the cpu cooler so that the fan on the case can pull the air through the fins of the cpu cooler and help out.

 

Note that the cpu socket has an edge that is higher than the cpu. Some coolers if they're placed incorrectly (at the wrong angle) will sit slightly raised due to touching/sitting on that socket edge, so you would barely make contact between the cpu and the cooler.

There are some basic things you can do to check if the cooler actually does its job or maybe the sensors are just wrong. 

For example place a finger on the metal under the cpu cooler, that sits on the cpu... is it actually hot?  Is it 70c hot? (a wet finger would be dried out almost instantly at that temperature)  If it's hot, then it makes good contact. If it's just warm-ish, then maybe there's poor heat transfer between the cpu and the heatsink which could point up to not enough pressure or maybe the heatsink doesn't sit right on the cpu (see that raised edge thing)

 

Thermal paste isn't that critical - it only changes temperatures by 1-3 degrees normally, you're supposed to apply a thin film so that it covers micro holes in the metal surface of the heatsink and cpu lid, it's not supposed to be a blanket, a layer of thick paste. More paste doesn't help.  If you put too much paste, it may cover up the fact that for some reason there's not enough contact between the heatsink and the cpu.

 

Make sure you have the latest bios for the motherboard as well. The bios may not properly recognize the cpu and just use the highest safe voltage, making the cpu make more heat unnecessarily. Newer bioses may have better voltage tables and may run your cpu at lower stock voltage.

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, ExodusR said:

All my temps are with the side panel on, and I can sympathize with your confusion, I'm just as lost as you

We're all in this together!

1 minute ago, ExodusR said:

They're setup as intake, so pulling air in.

Maybe if you switch things around; make the fan on the back panel push air into the cooler and check the idle temps

[suzerain_00]

21 hours ago, mariushm said:

Place the cpu cooler so that the fan on the case can pull the air through the fins of the cpu cooler and help out.

 

Note that the cpu socket has an edge that is higher than the cpu. Some coolers if they're placed incorrectly (at the wrong angle) will sit slightly raised due to touching/sitting on that socket edge, so you would barely make contact between the cpu and the cooler.

There are some basic things you can do to check if the cooler actually does its job or maybe the sensors are just wrong. 

For example place a finger on the metal under the cpu cooler, that sits on the cpu... is it actually hot?  Is it 70c hot? (a wet finger would be dried out almost instantly at that temperature)  If it's hot, then it makes good contact. If it's just warm-ish, then maybe there's poor heat transfer between the cpu and the heatsink which could point up to not enough pressure or maybe the heatsink doesn't sit right on the cpu (see that raised edge thing)

 

Thermal paste isn't that critical - it only changes temperatures by 1-3 degrees normally, you're supposed to apply a thin film so that it covers micro holes in the metal surface of the heatsink and cpu lid, it's not supposed to be a blanket, a layer of thick paste. More paste doesn't help.  If you put too much paste, it may cover up the fact that for some reason there's not enough contact between the heatsink and the cpu.

 

Make sure you have the latest bios for the motherboard as well. The bios may not properly recognize the cpu and just use the highest safe voltage, making the cpu make more heat unnecessarily. Newer bioses may have better voltage tables and may run your cpu at lower stock voltage.

 

I guess this is a good a time as any to mention, I'm running this cpu at stock! No overclock, no additional voltage, so thanks for bringing up voltage as I guess 1.5v could have probably led to this issue. As I mentioned earlier I only have two positions to mount the cooler, fan up or fan down. In terms of the actual mounting, you bring up an interesting point. The AM3 mounting hardware is sort of funky in the way it works, so maybe I'll try something with zipties? Running my fingers across the fins on the heatsink, that thing is ice cold, so it's either (like you mentioned) poor contact or something else. I'm fairly certain the BIOS is up to date as the last update ASRock sent out for the board was a while ago, but I'll check it again when I have the chance.

 

21 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

We're all in this together!

Maybe if you switch things around; make the fan on the back panel push air into the cooler and check the idle temps

Thanks <3 I feel a little less alone with this now lol. I think switching the direction of the rear fan is worth a shot, I'll try it out when I get to testing the old stock cooler.

[Guest]

Just now, ExodusR said:

Thanks <3 I feel a little less alone with this now lol.

All for a better cause lol

1 minute ago, ExodusR said:

I think switching the direction of the rear fan is worth a shot, I'll try it out when I get to testing the old stock cooler.

Try it out with the new cooler first (if it's still installed) so that you don't waste thermal paste.

 

[suzerain_00]

18 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

All for a better cause lol

Try it out with the new cooler first (if it's still installed) so that you don't waste thermal paste.

 

UPDATE: I decided to circumvent the whole rigmarole of taking off coolers and putting new ones on and a - b testing etc. I decided to take the bracket of the Arctic Cooler and just hold the cooler in place and see what idle temps I got. 25°C! It would appear that the bracket is holding the cooler up off the heat spreader a little bit, enough to have it run at 65°C idle! So note, for those buying an Arctic Freezee 13 for an AM3 socket, you may experience high idle temps due to the funky bracket. I have yet to find a solution, but this is progress. Thanks everyone for the assistance!

[mariushm]

It's not 25c, you can't have temperatures lower than ambient temperatures.

It's just that the thermal sensors on the FX series are designed in such a way that under some threshold (~40c..45c) the sensors no longer report accurate values, they're "optimized" to be more accurate in the range that matters (~ 50c...80c) in the detriment of the outer ranges.

If I remember correctly, the FX series will start to throttle their frequencies (or not go turbo on a core) at above 62c and at a socket temperature of 72c (but some FX series cpus have different thresholds, it depends on TDP value and number of cores)

 

AMD Overdrive used to report correctly the temperature but in a different way, for each core it would say how many C degrees the core would have to still go up to hit the thermal limit (and not go into turbo or throttle itself). Basically, the software reports thermal margin for each core.

 

From AMD guy : http://www.overclock.net/t/931241/interesting-information-from-amd-about-1090t

 

Quote

The core temperatures have an equational offset to determine temperature which equalizes at about 45 Celsius thus giving you more accurate readings at peak temperatures. The hindrance in this is the sub ambient idle temperature readings you speak of.

The silicon and adhesives used in manufacturing these processors has a peak temperature rating of 97+ Celsius before any form of degradation will take place. The processor also has a thermal shut off safe guard in place that shuts the processor down at 90 Celsius.

The Cpu temperature is read form a sensor embedded within the socket of your motherboard causing about a 7-10 Celsius variance form the actual Cpu temperature, which may be what you are reading about on the net.

You can use an application called AMD overdrive, that will allow you to monitor your temperatures accurately.

As long as your core temperature has not exceeded the high side of the 60 degree mark for extended periods of time you should be ok. 62 degrees holds a generous safety net to begin with.

I hope I was able to answer your questions, If you have any more inquiries don't hesitate to contact us.


Thank You

Alex Cromwell
Senior Technology Director
Advanced Micro Devices

 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, ExodusR said:

UPDATE: I decided to circumvent the whole rigmarole of taking off coolers and putting new ones on and a - b testing etc. I decided to take the bracket of the Arctic Cooler and just hold the cooler in place and see what idle temps I got. 25°C! It would appear that the bracket is holding the cooler up off the heat spreader a little bit, enough to have it run at 65°C idle! So note, for those buying an Arctic Freezee 13 for an AM3 socket, you may experience high idle temps due to the funky bracket. I have yet to find a solution, but this is progress. Thanks everyone for the assistance!

Happy to hear that!!

Good luck with any future builds!

 

As for the solution, is it possible to bend the brackets or maybe use them in a different position as to lower the cooler?

Just try not to go all out and break the brackets

_{You might be able to use zip-ties to hold the cooler in place but that's a very short term solution + JDM points on your PC lol}