i7-4790k Serious heat problems

gtaivplayer · Jul 17, 2014

Hi, I have a stock i7-4790k, with stock heatsink/fan I bought just two days ago. With Prime-95, my temperatures reach 99c on full stress. About 80c with only two threads.
Here's a (bad) picture about how it was after 2 seconds of full stress.

After about two seconds, its back at 50c and after a few more seconds back to the usual 33c. I set fan to full speed ~2000rpm. I tried removing the heatsink and cleaning both surfaces and applying thermal paste and this is still continuing. Someone told me I might have permanently damaged the CPU but I have no idea.
Here's a bad phone quality photo about how the CPU looked like when I took the heatsink off for the first time (stock thermal paste).

The temperature sits at under 36c on no stress.
Also in case it matters, using Fractal Design Define R4 with the basic fans in front and back.

What should I do next?

volcanoscout · Jul 17, 2014

If you're going to stress that chip, you need to upgrade to an aftermarket CPU cooler. The stock cooler is only barely adequate for normal use. I doubt you've damaged the chip, but I wouldn't recommend running Prime until you've replaced the cooler, especially if you apply ANY overclock.

Also, make sure you max your case fans out when testing or benchmarking. The stock R4 fans are reasonably quiet, but don't push a very impressive amount of air.

gtaivplayer · Jul 17, 2014

volcanoscout :

Hi, I haven't overclocked at all. I first noticed this problem when I tried to run Skyrim with a bunch of high detail mods and that ended up crashing Nvidia a few times, along with some weird color boxes and incredible lag. After a few minutes a friend told me to use Hwmonitor and Prime-95 and look at the results. But in any case, from 30c-90c in just a few seconds, isn't that a bit too much? And yes I've been thinking of buying a Hyper 212. And indeed, other games that I play aren't even nearly as much CPU intensive. Such as League of Legends. But the problem was in Skyrim so it is kind of in the way for me. What do you recommend? Don't play Skyrim with all the mods until I get a Hyper 212 or something? Tested with all fans maxed out on two threads ~25% cpu usage, 5 seconds hit 70c and then it was quite stable but I stopped it.

Edit: Yeah, seems good for normal use. Diablo 3 ~13% cpu usage, it's around 45c. Do you have any other idea for a heatsink than a Hyper 212? Everyone seems to recommend that and it would surely be an improvement to the stock heatsink, at least in size which should be better for heat dissipation. So is this kind of heating normal for a Haswell? Googled around and most of the results were about synthetic stress etc.

volcanoscout · Jul 17, 2014

Prime doesn't ramp up the CPU usage gradually, it takes it straight to max at 4.4GHz on turbo with predictable consequences for temps. 95C with the stock cooler isn't unusual. Temps in the 70s aren't great, but aren't dangerous.
You might want to try tightening the stock cooler down a few more turns - that might account for a few degrees. Definitely recommend getting the 212 or other cooler soon whether you OC or not, but if you're not OCing, you'll be okay with the stock in the meantime.

As far as Skyrim, it can be brutal on CPUs but your i7 DC shouldn't have issues with it. It sounds more like an issue with your GPU - what are you using?

gtaivplayer · Jul 17, 2014

volcanoscout :

DCUII GTX 780 Ti, it didn't go above 60c on Heaven benchmark though, the first thing that came in my mind after I started noticing Nvidia crashing / those boxes was the GPU.

volcanoscout · Jul 17, 2014

Between the DC and the 780 Ti, you shouldn't be having any issues (temps aside). If your drivers are up to date and it's still doing it once the heat is under control, I'd guess it's a setting issue. I'm no Skyrim guru, so I can't offer much help there. I'm just going off the specs.

As far as cooling goes, you can probably find some numbers in the niche forums online, but the synthetic benchmarks are really the only way to get apples-to-apples comparisons, and even then they're not always exact direct comparisons. I pasted a good article below on an OC comparison between the 4770K and 4790K - the graphs on the temp curves are particularly interesting:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/185512-overclocking-intels-core-i7-4970k-can-devils-canyon-fix-haswells-low-clock-speeds/4

For air cooling, the Hyper 212 always gets recommended because of it's price-to-performance ratio, which is about as good as it gets. It's absolute performance though is a different animal. I've got the same case as you and am running 770 OC SLI (non-reference), so I've got a lot of heat being generated inside the case, so my i5-4670K rides a pretty steep ambient temp curve. I've got four Noctua NF-A14 case fans (two in front, one rear, one top/rear) and an NH-D14 on the CPU. Benchmarking with Prime and Heaven at the same time, with case and CPU fans maxed and GPUs' fans at @ 60% (lots of air noise, but no fan motor noise, whine, clicks, etc), my top (hotter) card tops out at 68C (bottom card usually around 62-63C) and my CPU rarely goes over 62C unless the room is particularly hot. I'm waiting on delivery of my new board, ram and CPU (4790K), but don't intend to change out the cooler.

Whenever I recommend the D14 or D15, the usual response is "OMG, those are expensive!" My usual inside-voice response is, "So effing what? It's cheaper than replacing a fried chip!" My outside-voice response is "So go get a 212."

The D14 (and 15) have comparable performance to the H100i. To get better cooling, you'll have to go to liquid cooling at the level of the H110 or better.

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i7-4790k Serious heat problems

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