techsupport @lemmy.world baconsanga @lemmy.world 2mo ago

CPU hitting 100c and cannot figure out why

Hi everyone, appreciate some assistance here. My CPU has hit 100 degrees celcius and shut down. This was happening when the CPU load was 1% with nothing running. I have ran a virus scan (both Defender and Malwarebytes) and nothing there. I have also changed the thermal paste, cleaned the fans and made sure the CPU cooler was secured properly.

This has happened randomly before, then all of a sudden it's running fine again and sits between 40c - 60c for months. It seems to be a completely random event then goes back to normal. It occurs maybe twice a year.

This is what I have:

Gigabyte B650 Gamxing X MSI GeForce RTX 3060 AMD Ryzen 7 7700X EK AIO 240 D-RGB be quiet! Pure Power 11 Gold Modular 750W Power Supply

Anything else I can look for? Appreciate it.

Update: I've ended up applying for warranty for the cooler. I have tried all that has been suggested. For now, I've bought a Noctua NH-U9S cpu fan. If that works, I'll probably just leave it in there.

Thanks again for helping a confused noob girl out. Love this community!

Update 2: I've taken out the AIO cooler and replaced with a fan (Noctua NH-U95). The temperatures are fine now. I was a little worried at first as the temperatures were better but high (70-80c under 10% load). Switched off the PC, now it's back on and it's staying around 43c. It's seems some fresh thermal pastes might take a while to settle in. Thanks again everyone. Never buying water-cooling again.

43 comments

Sounds like an air gap in your AIO.
No idea how to resolve it though.
- Is the highest point of the aio loop higher than the cooling block on your cpu? This highest point should be where air in the system collects
  
  The radiator is mounted to the front (no room up top). The hoses fed from the top of the radiator (slightly higher than the block). Should I rotate this around so the hoses come out the bottom?
- All water cooling circuits should have an air bleed off valve in one way or another available, usually most simplistically through a reservoir. Perhaps due to orientation it doesn't happen. Make sure air bubbles can flow up to the reservoir by default and since running the AIO is safe after all, rotate the cooler in all directions to make sure all air can escape.
  
  As a side note, air coolers can also be broken by faulty heatpipes internally, when condensation and heat transport don't happen.
  
  I've changed the orientation so that the radiator hoses are at the bottom (front mounted) and the block has the hoses on the side, with the hoses slightly pointing down. It's still heating up.
There's not a plastic peel on the copper part is there?
- Good question, nah there isn't.
What's your cooling paste situation like? Too much? Too little? Bubbles? I'm sure a picture would reveal an issue.
- This is what when cooling paste looks like after I've taken it off. This first PC I've built, so still learning.
  
  Amount looks fine. Maybe a bit in the "much" side, but not to the point where it'd cause this issue.
  
  After the PC shuts off due to temp, does the cooling block feel hot to touch? If so, that means that the heat is transferred away from the CPU (good), but not away from the cooler (not good).
  
  I'm not very good at liquid cooling systems, so I'll defer to others for help with troubleshooting that.
  
  Did you remove the heatsink and replace it again without changing the paste? I don’t think its a good idea - try reapplying thermal paste whenever you remove the heatsink. Clean the old paste off first
  
  What's going on here:
  
  If your CPU isn't under load and it's heating up I'm guessing something may be shorted out. Maybe remove the CPU and carefully inspect the socket and chip??? Be extra careful with the CPU socket I think it's one that is really easy to damage.
- The other side
How quickly after boot up does it happen? I'd almost suspect that the pump isn't running in your AIO.
- Less than a minute. I've just read somewhere that I should be able to feel a small hum in the block, I'm going to check for that next.
  
  That's definitely a sign that your CPU isn't cooling. Either your cooling block doesn't have a solid enough thermal connection to your CPU (improper paste, insufficient pressure, etc), or the fan for the block isn't coming on. Does the CPU fan spin up? Does the fan speed recover after the fan is physically stopped?
I see a lot of talk about the AIO: Try ditching it in favor of a decent air cooler and see if the problem goes away.
Check your bios for inadvertent weird cooling settings Check if theres some random gamer software suite (asus has a suite, corsair has a suite, im sure every other stupid gamer targeted company has a suite of bloatware that fucks with fan settings) that is somehow controlling your fan behavior. Check and see if the CPU fan is properly connected and powered to the motherboard header Swap out the fans to see if they are just flat out broken.

Finally, is your case properly ventilated?

I see you’re running an AIO cpu for your heatsink (if I read your parts correctly) I would suggest swapping that out for a simple air cooled metal heatsink because they are cheaper and more efficient. At the end of the day the thermal transfer point is metal and air so adding fluid to the mix doesn’t do anything. Also it might be the pump in it is broken (if those things have a pump) or it’s not getting enough power for whatever reason. Just slap some metal fins and fans the cpu to cool the fucker.

Literally could be any mix of software / hardware issues but hope some of those help.
Sincerely sounds like your cpu fan doesn't have a good connection with the cpu.

Shut it down, unplug, remove the heatsink fan (hsf), clean top of cpu and bottom of hsf and apply new thermal compound as 5 dots (center and edges) to the cpu.

Then remount the hsf and let sit for 15 minutes before powering on again and monitor temps.
- Don't do 5 dots, do one big dot in the center. About the size of a pea.
  
  The pressure of the heatsink will spread it out.
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7x2sUt0mqo
  
  I always just smooth it out evenly with my finger, a pea would be way too much paste.
I’m inclined to suspect your AIO’s pump is intermittently not working.

Consider a high end air cooler to get comparable performance with less complexity, at the expense of cosmetics (depending on personal preference)

43 comments