CPU/GPU heating and other problems

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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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How's it going, everyone. I hope your all well. Now all the pleasantries are out the way, let's begin.

So, I've had my own custom rig for a few years now and ever since I've gotten it, it's been nothing but a problem. Almost every day my computer will hang which forces me to hard reset the computer. When it happens, I can't move the mouse cursor on the screen or turn on caps lock on the keyboard. I'm inexperienced with computer, but my theory is that it could be a heat problem or an issue with the Overclock.

When I boot the computer up of a morning, the temperature will be around 24-25c on start up (according to SpeedFan) but after about an hour or two of running, in idle, it'll be verging 30-35c. At the minute, I have 6 tabs up and watching a livestream on separate monitors and the temperatures are as follow (again, according to SpeedFan);

CPU; 39c
MB; 30-31c
CPU; 38c
Core; 21c

Fan speeds;

Fan 1; 2402 RPM
Fan 2; 1197 RPM
CPU; 2402 RPM
Chassis; 1196 RPM
GPU; 814 RPM

The frequency according to SpeedFan is running at; 4018 MHz and the Uptime is; 09:30:00 as of right this second. It hasn't hanged at all today.

Another thing I've noticed is on occasion, my rig will power itself down and won't boot unless I turn off the power supply and hold the power button for 30 seconds. Another issue I've noticed is when I try and drag tabs from one screen to the other (one screen connected to the GFX card, the other connected via HDMI), it will hang and lastly, another few instances the computer has powered down, I've booted it back up and its said something along the lines of "Computer had to power due to avoid damage".

System Specs are;

OS Name and Version: Windows 7 Home Premium, Service Pack 1
System Type: x64-based PC
Processor: AMD FX(tm)-8350 Eight-Core Processor, 4000 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
SMBIOS Version: 2.5
Installed Physical Memory: 8.00 GB
Total Physical Memory: 7.98 GB
Available Physical Memory: 4.14 GB
Total Virtual Memory: 16.0 GB
Available Virtual Memory: 10.9 GB

Settings under AMD Catalyst Control Center:

Activity: Anywhere between 0% and 68%
GPU Clock: Anywhere between 390 MHz and 430 MHz at the moment
Memory Clock: 1500 MHz
Temperature: 38c
Fan Speed: 20%
AMD OverDrive: Enabled
Graphics OverDrive: Disabled
CPU Processor Speeds: 1400MHz (Had it running at 4000 MHz, same problem)

Side Note: While typing up this thread, my computer locked up. On boot up, the temperature was 45c and all I was doing was watching a livestream and typing up the problems for this thread. After closing the livestream, the temperature is now 35c

The tower itself is clean for the most part. I went out and invested in some compressed air and went through it meticulously to make sure there wasn't any dust on the fans, casing etc etc. From what my stepdad was saying, the CPU cooler isn't the stock cooler. Could dust have managed to get under the cooler?

Any help, theories and so on are welcomed. I can't work it out for the life of me. I can also provide further information if necessary. I just provided the stuff I thought was relevant.
 
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Ryan Wee

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Jul 15, 2014
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Hi Echo41,

The 8350 has a very high TDP, so 30 to 40 -ish when idle is actually pretty okay for the CPU and shouldn't do any harm to it since these modern chips are capable of hitting 105 degrees celcius. However though, overclocking on this chip requires a lot of power and can really stress on the motherboard VRM and Mosfets, so make sure your motherboard has good enough heatsinks and there is enough airflow to make sure that these components are well cooled.

Also, back down the overclocks and only overclock in the motherboard bios. Catalyst is a very good program but when it comes to overclocking, it really just isn't as stable as overclocking straight from the bios itself. Make sure all settings are set to default, then try running Prime95 (a stress test program that's free to download) for an hour to start off with. If it shuts down, try to look for the reason why that happens and repeat the test again to see how long your computer would last.

Finally, can you provide us with more details about your build? Especially the motherboard, CPU cooler, case and maybe bios settings.

Thanks and I hope I managed to help,
Ryan :)
 
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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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Hi Ryan,

Thank you for the swift reply.

I believe the motherboard is an ASUS M4A78LT-M LE. The CPU cooler, I'm not entirely sure about. It has Cool Master etched into the plastic around the blades and a sticky in the centre with "ADMi Component Bundle" on it. The rig, at the minute has 2 fans in it not including the CPU cooler.

One at the back and one at the top of the case, just above the cooler. All seem clean inside the case, apart from the bundle of wires connecting everything. What I have notice is that there does seem to be a distinctly audible humming noise coming from the graphics card when I move the tower. It could be something or nothing but I figured I'd bring it up anyway.

Side note:

I believe the motherboard came pre-assembled. Would it be best taking off the cooler and re-applying thermal compound or purchasing a new cooler? I'd imagine a cooler that came pre-assembled would be relatively low quality.
 
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Ryan Wee

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Jul 15, 2014
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Hi Echo41,

Sorry that I didn't see your reply yesterday.

I am pretty confident that the CPU cooler is doing fine since even the stock AMD cooler would do (it's super noisy though) if you're not doing any insane overclocks or CPU intensive workload (eg. rendering or encoding) so we can keep that out of the way since temperatures monitored seems pretty good with the CPU.

Have you tried my suggestion about reverting all of the settings changed in Catalyst and then finally resetting all overclocks (if any) back to the defaults (you can set a profile for these current settings in the bios if you would like to return to these settings in the future) in the bios.

Also, try monitoring the CPU usage and services through task manager while using your PC, since there might be one particular program messing up everything. Try an antivirus scan too, just to make sure it isn't a software related issue.

Have you tried stress-testing your system before with a program like prime95? Try doing that and monitor temperatures a reliable program (speedfan will allow you to control PWM fans but it doesn't provide as much monitoring tools as something else like HWmonitor, which I suggest downloading) and also the processes and CPU clock speed (to check if throttling is present) through task manager.

If throttling exists, it's probably either the CPU cooler giving way (you should see insanely high temperatures on the CPU) or the chipset heatsinks (NB, VRM, MosFET, etc.) not cooling well enough since they are cooled passively (unlike the active CPU cooler even though they don't produce as much heat). I personally own an 8350 paired with a M5A97 and I'm facing throttling issues when encoding video footage from Premiere Pro or rendering from After Effects and my CPU always stay below 40 degrees. The only issue is the heatsinks on the motherboard (I'm suspecting it's the NB more than the VRM) that in this case, should cool better than the ones on yours since mine is a full sized ATX board compared to a uATX (yours) form factor. Also, there isn't a heatsink situated above the VRMs so that might also be an issue.

Anyways, hope I managed to help, good luck!
Ryan ;)

 
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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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Hi Ryan,

Sorry about the delay.

From what I've done with my computer today, I'm quite confident that it isn't a cooler issue either. I stressed the CPU with Prime95 for 2 and a half hours and the temperature peaked at 49c. Then I stressed the graphics card with FurMark and shot up to 76c after 6 minutes of running but seemed to have peaked at 76c. Naturally, I'll have to dedicate more hours to stressing these components, people seem to think that 5 or 6 hours is an adequate enough amount of time.

I did monitor the temperatures with SpeedFan but Prime95 and FurMark had the temperature in their programs which aligned correctly with SpeedFan. I may run the stress tests again using the program suggested, just to make sure the temperature are what I think they are.

From what I've looked into based on other people's inquiries about adequate temperatures, my temperatures seem well below that others consider dangerous.

I haven't look into the overclock yet though, purely because I really don't know much of anything about overclocks and with it being in the BIOS, I get a bit uneasy about messing around in there.
 
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Ryan Wee

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Jul 15, 2014
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Hi Echo41,

I'm not sure about the BIOS of your motherboard and how it works since I've never used that board before, but according to what I've seen on Google, it seems to be the 'old style' BIOS, which is not user friendly and complicated to navigate around.

This might be pretty helpful for you: http://www.overclock.net/t/1348623/amd-bulldozer-and-piledriver-overclocking-guide-asus-motherboard

Read through the entire article, you will notice that the BIOS of modern boards is basically similar, just with fancier, more modern looking graphics. Try to hit F5 when you're in the 'advanced' tab. For the M5A97 (and also for M5A99X and most ASUS boards), hitting F5 will bring you back to 'optimized defaults', basically the default settings of the board itself (depending on what mode you choose but it doesn't matter).

If F5 doesn't help, leave everything on auto, since normally the board wouldn't achieve insanely high overclocks when left on auto (max for the 8350 is only 4.2 if it's left on auto with turbo boost).

If you need any help, the F1 key should show some general help and a description on what the setting means. Remember there's always a manual with you and it WILL be your best friend in a situation like this.

Try to send screenshots of the BIOS (F12 or if it doesn't work try to just take a picture) over so I can help make sure everything looks good and we'll see what the next step will be :)

Good luck,
Ryan
 
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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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Hi Ryan,

Sorry about the delay, again. I don't appear to be receiving notifications when a new message is posted anymore.

Is there anything particular you'd like to see in the BIOS or all of it? I'll more than likely take pictures with my phone and upload them on here.
 
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Ryan Wee

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Jul 15, 2014
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Hi Echo,

I replied to you quite awhile ago but I didn't know it didn't go through (I was outside and replying through my phone) so I am so sorry about this. Has the problem been solved yet? How is it progressing?

I am seriously sorry that I didn't check if the reply actually went through or not but I hope that you would forgive me for the delay.

Ryan

 
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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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No problem at all, man.

I'll take some photos of the BIOS and post them on here. That's really the only thing I haven't done yet and you'll have a better understanding of that stuff than I do. Is there anything in particular you need to see in the BIOS? I can photograph it all if necessary.
 
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Ryan Wee

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Jul 15, 2014
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Echo41,

Apparently I have no idea why but posts I made on the TH forum never gets posted properly and I did make a reply on (I think) the 19th but basically since I'm replying off my phone, again, I'm sincerely very sorry that I didn't see that the post didn't get posted.

Basically you might wanna go to ASUS's website, look up the motherboard you have and basically you'll find that it's an AM3 board and if you went into the supported CPU list, you'll see that your CPU is not supported.

My best suggestion here: send an email over to ASUS support and confirm if this is actually the issue. You can link the thread here if you want to.

I'm very sorry for the late reply,
Ryan.
 
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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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It's okay, man. I've been dealing with this issue for about 3-4 years now so a little longer isn't going to hurt.

I took a look at the ASUS website and the supported CPU's and mine wasn't on there. What I did do as well was look for an alternative CPU. What I found was an AMD FX6300 Black Edition. It says it's an AM3+, whether or not the + is going to be a problem, I don't know. But I distinctly remember seeing a Youtube video of an unboxing of my motherboard and this particular CPU coming along with it. I'll leave the Amazon link here;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-FX6300-Edition-4-1GHz-Socket/dp/B009O7YORK/ref=pd_cp_computers_0

If you think it's best to email ASUS as well, then it shouldn't be an issue.
 
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Ryan Wee

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Hi Echo,

I've been pretty inactive on the forums now so sorry for my late replies. AM3 and AM3+ are two different sockets. They are the same physically, but AM3+ motherboards are required for AMD's FX processors based on Piledriver or Bulldozer.

Have you contacted ASUS yet? I'm worried that using the wrong motherboard would actually damage your chip since unstable or basically 'through the roof' voltage issues might occur.

Update: stick with your 8350. The 6300 runs on the same socket (since it's a Bulldozer) as well. So I'm guessing it wouldn't work as well.

Good luck mate,
Ryan
 
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Echo41

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Sep 6, 2013
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Sorry about the late reply, I'm not getting e-mails again.

Just a little performance update that I think is relevant; my computer as hung anywhere between 8-9 times today, roughly once an hour. It's been quite warm today and my room was warm. I'd guess a little above room temperature. At the minute, the temperature is dropping so I'm taking advantage of the cold air as somewhat of a rudimentary cooling system. I've noticed a substantial drop in temperature from 43-ish to 35

I haven't contacted ASUS yet. I found the customer support page but I've mislaid the boxes for my motherboard and such which have the barcodes on them and the web page is asking for product bar codes if I want to e-mail. But once I find them I'll get in contact. There isn't much that can be done, I'd imagine until I get in contact with ASUS.

The help is appreciated as always though. It feels like we're making headway.
 
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Ryan Wee

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