CPU Overheating while idle and while gaming

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DavidFrost

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Aug 2, 2013
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I've had this PC for just under 1 year. A month ago or so I received the "CPU Temperature error" message upon booting up the PC. I attempted to get rid of any dust in the PC as best I could, the message went away. Same thing happened two weeks later, got rid of the dust, message went away again.

I didn't start monitoring my core temp's until these problems arose. I discovered that my CPU hovered around 40C-45C whilst not gaming, and reached 80C-95C while gaming. I was told this was overheating a fair amount. I replaced the white thermal paste on the heatsink with some Tuniq a few days ago... now the CPU hovers around 50C-60C while not gaming and after 3 minutes of Battlefield 3 I saw cores hit 100C.

Is it safe to run the CPU at these temperatures for extended periods of time (40 minutes - an hour)? I would guess not. But I'm not really sure how to navigate this problem. Although I have no core temp data from before 1 month ago, I'd have to guess it has been running at these temperatures since I got the PC, and I've done a fair amount of gaming on it with no noticeable overheating problems.

Relevant specs are as follows:

Operating System: Windows 7, 64 bit

CPU: INTEL, Core i7-3820 Quad-Core, 3.6ghz (I think the manufacturer overclocked it by roughly 25%)

Cooler: INTEL, RTS2011LC CPU Liquid Cooling System

Hard Drive: SEAGATE, 1TB Barracuda, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7200 RPM

Graphics Card: XFX, Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition

If anyone has any further inquiries regarding specifications I can provide them.
 
Solution
kittle
What kind of CPU cooler and case do you have?
How hot is it in the room with your PC?
is the case sitting inside any kind of cabinet or desk enclosure? (if so move it elsewhere)

Check that your case has enough room around it to let the air flow in and out of the vents. 12 inches is a good place to start.

Also check that the fans on your case are spinning. Next make sure they are pointed the right direction. Traditional cases have air flowing in the front, and out the back. you may also have a side vent / fan or a top vent/fan.

If all of those are ok - then the issue is probably with your CPU heat sink / cooler.
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kittle

kittle

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Dec 8, 2005
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What kind of CPU cooler and case do you have?
How hot is it in the room with your PC?
is the case sitting inside any kind of cabinet or desk enclosure? (if so move it elsewhere)

Check that your case has enough room around it to let the air flow in and out of the vents. 12 inches is a good place to start.

Also check that the fans on your case are spinning. Next make sure they are pointed the right direction. Traditional cases have air flowing in the front, and out the back. you may also have a side vent / fan or a top vent/fan.

If all of those are ok - then the issue is probably with your CPU heat sink / cooler.
 
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Solution
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DavidFrost

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Aug 2, 2013
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10,510


Cooler: INTEL, RTS2011LC CPU Liquid Cooling System
Case: FRACTAL DESIGN, Core 1000 Black Mini-Tower Case, mATX, No PSU, Plastic/Steel

Case is not enclosed in any way, in fact the right panel isn't even on. Aircon is working fairly well, it has to be somewhere around 70F in the room. All fans are spinning and appear to pointing in the correct direction.

Is there a way do diagnose whether it is the cooler or the heatsink causing the overheating and what the issue is?
 
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kittle

kittle

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Dec 8, 2005
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hrm... I dunno much about water cooling, so somebody with experience will need to jump in and tell you how to debug whats going wrong. Unless the fan on your water unit is not moving, chances are that something isnt right with your heat sink.

However if the side panel is off - then that means the airflow cant go where its supposed to -- namely out the back of your case.
 
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randomizer

randomizer

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Jul 24, 2006
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When you replaced the thermal paste, did the original application appear to have been well spread? Such rapid temperature increases are often caused by poor contact with the CPU heatspreader. The fact that it only got worse when you replaced the paste is a strong indicator of this as well. Being watercooling there could be other things that cause temperature spikes but I'm only familiar with air cooling. There's also the remote possibility that the manufacturer is pushing too high a voltage through it to maintain that overclock, but this is probably unlikely, and certainly doesn't account for the large change in temperatures from changing the thermal paste.

Fortunately it's pretty hard to kill a CPU with heat alone. You'll just kill performance when it begins to throttle to keep temperatures down.
 
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