i7-4790K at 40° when idle, but goes up to 105° in games?

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FemCrusader

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I recently upgraded my PC, and one of the upgrades was the Intel i7-4790K. I went with the stock cooler because I didn't plan on any overclocking at the start, and was pretty sure that it will do the job.

However, what I noticed, is that when I play even the very low performance demanding videogames (such as Dragon Age: Origins or Diablo III), they start lagging after long periods of play. This was suspicious, so I tried looking for the issue, and found that the CPU temperatures get up to 100-105° (measured with HWmonitor). To be honest I was surprised it didn't shut down on me.

When idle, my processor is on average at about 35-40°, with jumps to about 50-60° now and then... this is very strange. Surely any game shouldn't be able to cause a jump of 60° in CPU temperature?

I'm wondering whether this is an issue with the cooler, but if it is supplied by the manufacturer, surely it needs to be able to do the job?
When I play games it doesn't even go above 30% CPU load. I don't even want to imagine what would happen at 70-90 - it will probably just fry. Does anyone have a clue what the issue could be?
 
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Have you checked to see what your voltages are running at? Even if your CPU is at stock settings, the motherboard's adaptive application of voltage at stock settings could still be going haywire. It's pretty hard to mess up the seating of a heatsink that has thermal tape attached to it, or even just mess up the application of thermal paste itself using the small drop and evenly applied pressure heatsink mounting method, so I doubt that compound is your issue. Other than that, you might need to RMA it. The 4790k and by extension Haswell i7's run a lot hotter at load than my past experiences with previous generations, but you really shouldn't be getting those kind of temps at stock at that type of usage with or without the stock heatsink...
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FemCrusader

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I have the Cooler Master K350 case. I don't have any additional fans apart from the CPU fan, and the built-in GPU and PSU fans. A friend of mine who has been building computers for many years said that it should be just fine like this, although I had my doubts.
 
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drkatz42

drkatz42

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Your friend in this case is superbly incorrect. You definitely need to add both intake and exhaust fans to your configuration.
 
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Icaraeus

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^ This, at the very least you should have 1 extra fan blowing across your CPU. Something like this (example is my own build):

WblDNPV.png
 
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FemCrusader

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Thank you for advice!

I have actually ordered an H80i cooler for my CPU before posting this. Would it be OK to keep it as a CPU cooler with the radiator at the back of the case, and then add one intake fan at the bottom of the case and one at the top? Or is there a better way to set it up? I have almost no knowledge whatsoever on how to set up a good cooling/airflow system.

You said one fan needs to be blowing across the CPU, however since I'm getting an H80i that means I can't set one up. Is that okay? I know that the H80i comes with 2 fans that are meant to be set up on the radiator, but I have no idea how they are meant to work and where they are meant to blow air. :(
 
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FemCrusader

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Tried installing the fan that was in my old case to intake air and blow it over the CPU. That only reduced temperatures by about 5-10 degrees... I am seriously thinking now that I may have a defective CPU. The older Intel that I had (a dual core 3.2GHz i3 series) never gave me issues like these, and the amount of fans installed in the case was exactly the same as now. The kind of tasks that I'm performing on the computer didn't change either, so the new i7 really shouldn't need any more cooling than the old i3...
 
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clueless77

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Have you checked to see what your voltages are running at? Even if your CPU is at stock settings, the motherboard's adaptive application of voltage at stock settings could still be going haywire. It's pretty hard to mess up the seating of a heatsink that has thermal tape attached to it, or even just mess up the application of thermal paste itself using the small drop and evenly applied pressure heatsink mounting method, so I doubt that compound is your issue. Other than that, you might need to RMA it. The 4790k and by extension Haswell i7's run a lot hotter at load than my past experiences with previous generations, but you really shouldn't be getting those kind of temps at stock at that type of usage with or without the stock heatsink.

Seems like there's always threads popping up about the 4790k and heat issues, lol.
 
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FemCrusader

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I checked the CPU voltage from the motherboard... seems to be completely fine
Well, I guess, RMA is my only option.
And here I hoped Intel were far better than AMD... seems like I'll have to change that opinion now.

 
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clueless77

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I'm not really sure that that these types of things should always be thought of in terms of what's better than the other (other than extremely low quality products) but what most suits your purposes, preferences and what you're willing to pay for them. It does seem like there's always issues with the 4790k and heat though, and why I find this funny is because of the refreshes being touted by Intel as cooler chips with a better TIM, but I can still keep mine pretty cool during gaming with a watercooler after having put a different type of thermal interface material on the die. Your adaptive voltage shouldn't be exceeding 1.20 v at Turbo Boost with stock settings, so if it wasn't then yeah, it was fine. When you get your new CPU, maybe update this thread as I'd be interested if that was indeed the issue. If you can getting it running without hitting the heat wall again, it should last you for quite some time.
 
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ad0

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That is because they made a cpu directly 4ghz inof something like 3.6ghz as clock speed

I7 4770k is 3.5ghz
i7 4790k is 4ghz
that's is 500mhz higher directly

while
4670k is 3.4
4690k is 3.5
Here you can see only 100mhz faster

Solution is Try to down clock your cpu to 3.6ghz to 3.7ghz and you will be fine or Use a cooler
 
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FemCrusader

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You will laugh...
As a last attempt, I decided to change the thermal compound between my H80i and the CPU, and reinstall it all again. It came with pre-installed thermal paste so at first I decided I do not need to change it to my own.
However once I lifted the pump, this is what I saw:
MVixzkEcHoc.jpg

rYbZtDQsmc0.jpg


So I got rid of that crap and put MX-4 on it. Now it doesn't get higher than 70 degrees at 100% load, which is satisfactory for me. I will see how I can make it better in the future, but for now this is a great relief for me. I couldn't believe the problem will be that simple, yet it was.

Thank you all for help!
 
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clueless77

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Oh wow, the thermal paste didn't adhere and what did make it on there looks like it got baked onto the heat spreader from poor contact. I have that same cooler by the way, it works pretty well.

Yeah, the 4790k has higher stock clocks but downclocking and/or undervolting a cpu that should be able to have its temps kept in check even with a stock heatsink isn't really a solution to the problem.

 
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