Issues with my Sons PC

[Glen M]

Firstly let me say hello as is post no1 for me and hopefully I can find a home here for discussing PC stuff.  I'm a big fan of the YouTube channel and used to be big into my PC modding back in my college days (1999 - 2001) but its all moved a long long way since then.  Its time for me to get back into it though and I have a few projects lined up shortly which I'd like share but a house move is coming first.  

 

So onto my current problem.....

 

My sons (10 years old) PC that I build June 2016 is giving problems.  Its built around the A10-7890K with an ASUS A88XM-Plus motherboard, 8gb of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 2133 ram, 120gb SSD for the OS and a 1TB HDD for his games etc.  So yeah it was built on a budget and before you say anything I quickly came to realise the 7890K is a bit of a let down in terms of gaming performance.  At the time he was just into Minecraft, Roblox, TF2, Portal etc and it eats these up fine but games like Subnautica are at times a slide show.  Doesn't help that last year for his Birthday he wanted a 25" ultra wide monitor so its native 2550x1080 resolution seriously puts the setup under stress which I think has maybe contributed to the problem.  

 

Over the last few weeks its been randomly resetting as in a hard reset, all lights off, fans off, reset (personally I haven't seen this happen but thats how he explained it).  It also occasionally suffers a crash in games which can be recovered ok but this might be a driver thing as its only some games.   His PC gets some serious use (what can I say he takes after his Dad) so my first thought was maybe high temperatures.  I check the temps of the APU and she was sitting 60-65 idle hitting over 80-90 on load so maybe shes overheating?  I gave everything a really good clean last night, turned off  the overclock (was at 4.3GHZ from 4.1GHZ stock) and forced the CPU fan to 100% which helped a bit but I still think temps are high.  Shes on the stock cooler BTW but it is a beefy thing.  I've ordered a new cooler anyway Cooler Master 212, seems to get good reviews and was cheap enough.  

 

So first query is what temps should the APU be running at?  

 

I'm also wondering if the power supply could potentially be the problem.  Its a 500w PSU by CIT so isn't exactly "good" but for all is in the system I thought it'd be fine.  Maybe its just got old and that's the issue?

 

Sorry for the long winded post....  I do tend to ramble on a bit

[Thermosman]

Sounds like its hitting thermal max and auto-shutting down

Temps <= 85c are ideal

PSU is not a great brand but has enough wattage and is not likely to be the problem

[Minorika]

Are you using  onboard graphics?

Getting a dedicated graphics card might help.

[Glen M]

Yes its using the APU.  My intentions at the time were spend £100 on the top of the range APU and that'll be as fast as a mid CPU and graphics card.  Looking back now I should of spent a few more £ and went with CPU and GPU rather than the combo but in hindsight is wonderful isn't it......  

 

In the next few months my main rig will be upgraded so he's getting my GTX680 which will help no end.  In the mean time I'll sort the temps check the drivers are up to date and go from there.  If the PSU is causing problems I have an older, better, PSU in one of my spare rigs that will do him for now.  The spare rigs GPU is a 6870 and no more powerful than the APU at present, yes we tried it and it comes out about the same performance.  

[Glen M]

New heatsink arrived today but upon removing the old one I suddenly wondered were the chip went.  Oh crap it's stuck to the bottom of the old cooler.  Any ideas to remove it?

[ElSeniorTaco]

Can you a little isopory alcohol, something that is like 99%, anything with a very high content. 

Mostly I do not like doing that, as I always feel like I'm gonna leave some residue behind on something that will not like it very much.

On a heatsink like this, I will try and slide the cpu to the side or twist it, instead of pulling straight up.

This usually goes fine and does cause any trouble with ripping the lid off the top of the cpu.

Afterwards you are going to want to make sure there are no bent pins anywhere

[Glen M]

Got it off.  Had to twist and use a fair bit of force but it's off now.  One slightly bend pin but easily fixed.

[Glen M]

So jobs done and I'm impressed.  Big cooler bit big savings in temperatures.  Idle hangs around 50 - 60 and full load sits at 80 oh and this is overcooked too so win win.  Edit: I should note that at stock speeds she settled around 70 on full load.

 

Got her to 4400mhz on the cpu and 1114mhz on the gpu, I've since turned this down to 1040mhz as she's not locking up but rather dumping out of 3d applications.  Maybe I need to up the voltages a bit from the stock 1.5v?

 

I was also thinking is there any point in overclocking the cpu?  Afterall when she goes into gpu mode the cpu is throttled back anyway and for this machines use the stock 4.1ghz is more than enough for youtube.  It's the 3d bit that needs improving so I'll perhaps I'd be better concentrating on that.  

 

Few pics of the completed upgrade.  Excuse the cheesy windows background.  It is a 10 year olds pc afterall.

 

 

[ElSeniorTaco]

I think if I read correctly, the TJ max for this cpu is 72.4 C, that means that after 72.4C it starts to throttle back the cpu, eventually itl shut it down if it goes to high.

I think you resolved the shutting down issue however, but I believe under max load its still going to throttle back the cpu's speed, to stop it from self destructing.

Over all I guess this is ok and wont hurt anything, but its a good thing to know.

 

Also the brand of thermal paste you use can make a difference, and burning it in is not a bad idea.

You can burn in the thermal paste (consider it like breaking in brand new brakes on your car, once it burns in, it works much better) by running some cpu testing program over night, at max load. 

something like prime95 for example.

 

Burning in the new thermal paste can make a difference, or at least it used to back in the day.

If you want to get the temps a little lower, you can scrape the paste that came with the cooler, and get some really good stuff and apply that instead.

 

[Glen M]

Thanks I'll keep that in mind.  Is there any software that can show when the chip is thermal throttling?

[ElSeniorTaco]

you know, I am not sure, I would think hwinfo might be able to

But truthfully, I've never thought to look for a stat on it or by how much is it throttled 

I think it would be useful, I am hoping someone else might respond with something they know of

[Glen M]

So I've been doing a lot of reading today.

 

From what I can tell hw monitor seems to be flawed at reading amd chip temps and especially their apu series.

 

Using the Asus utility that came with the board shows temps under full load while being clocked to 4.5ghz (105x43) of maximum 46°C   by contrast hw monitor reads 82°C.  At idle the Asus utility reads temps of 34°C and hw monitor reads 55°C.

 

I'm leaning toward believing the Asus utility.  Monitoring the cpu frequency while running a stress test in cpu-z shows the clock speed hovering at 4500mhz (+/- 10mhz) so she's not throttling.    BTW from what I have learnt the best method of looking for throttling is to monitor the clock speed while putting the cpu under load.  If it's throttle the cpu clock will start to drop.