3770K running hot

KT888

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May 5, 2012
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I have a 3770K running (stock speed) with a stock cooler. The CPU is running at 60 degrees Celcius at idle. Part of the problem may be that idle for this system seems to be 25% CPU usage which is ridiculous but I don't know why it is using this much CPU resources. I have a 4770K system that is configured identically that uses maybe 2 or 3 % at idle. The processor usage is related to 2 windows processes svchost.exe which is using around 13% (constantly) and the other is WmiPrvSE.exe which is using 10-12% CPU resources (nonstop) WmiPrvSE.exe is also doing A LOT or i/o reading on this system it starts reading on system boot up and doesn't stop. For some reason. I have no idea what it's doing but my other system doesn't do that and like I said they are essentially mirror images in terms of software setup.
I have no idea what WmiprvSE.exe is reading so besides my initial question about why this system is running so hot I would also like to know what the heck is WmiPrvSE.exe reading it's at about 80GB right now (i/o Read Bytes), my system's been running for an hour and it's been reading something the whole time since boot up? and also why are these 2 processes using so many cpu cycles for such an extended period of time. I've run Malwarebytes and it didn't find anything and I have Norton 360 running on the system which should be keeping me pretty safe in terms of any malware being the culpret of this weird issue. Thanks to all.
 

Dark Falz

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If your idle CPU is at 25% something is using up 1 core constantly (or 2 cores since he has HT? Not sure how this appears in Windows as I have an i5). And even with one core loaded rather than 4, you're going to see a big increase over idle heat.

Find out what process is doing this (it's most likely a bug) and either uninstall/update or search for fixes on it.
 

KT888

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I already listed the 2 processes that were making taking 25% of cpu cycles I guess you didn't read my post before jumping in. Again they are svchost.exe and WmiPrvSE.exe. The temps on Speccy indicate the first 3 cores are being used and are hot.
Some new information I've found out is that my 4770K machine also runs at 25% CPU usage and 60 degrees Celsius at boot and it has a Corsair H80i water cooler. It runs at this temp until svchost is finished whatever it does at boot and WmiPrvSE also stops soon after boot. At this point the CPU utilization drops to 2-3% and the temp drops to 40 Degrees C. However on my 3770K WmiPrvSE does not stop utilizing 10-12 % CPU utilization. What it appears to be doing is READING. I have no idea what it is reading and I don't know how to figure out what is being read. There are 18 Hard Drives available to both of these systems so I have no idea what is being accessed or even which drive is being read from (I would REALLY like to know this). Before I rebooted the 3770K last WmiPrvSE had read 130GB of data from somewhere in the hour and a half it was running. It never stopped reading. It was reading something from the time the system came online till it was rebooted. This is where the behavior of my 2 systems diverges. On the 4770K WmiPrvSE does not engage in this constant reading behavior. It reads maybe 4GB and then stops this reading behavior. Does anyone know of an app that will let me find out what WmiPrvSE is reading. It seems like a virus like behavior because SOMETHING is reading all this information and I'm pretty sure it's not windows since the 4770K is not doing that and like I said the software configuration of the machines is very close to identical. I don't know how it could be a virus though since Norton 360 and malwarebytes find nothing so I have no idea how to explain the behavior of WmiPrvSE.exe. Anyone ever seen anything like this?

It does appear though that the temperature is not unusual since my 4770K also runs at 60 degrees when 25% CPU utilization is being used. It drops to 50 degrees Celsius when svchost.exe finishes it's bootup tasks and the 3770K does the same thing. It's the last 10 degrees and 10 % cpu utilization attributable to the WmiPrvSE.exe process under question now along with all the reading activity it is doing.
 

KT888

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So you're never going to believe what the issue was. It was Speccy itself. The very tool I was using to try to get to the bottom of the issue I was dealing with which initially was the fact that my 3770K CPU was overheating which turned out to be a dead pump on a Corsair H80 water cooler and then I just started to notice the temps of my CPU which I never really paid any attention to. It turned out that the temps I thought were excessively high are the same temps my 4770K exhibits on bootup with the same CPU load. 60 degrees Celsius at 25% CPU load. Which seems high to me but I guess not.

Anyway I killed Speccy and restarted it a bunch of times just to make sure and it's definately Speccy. When I saw this morning that WmnPrvSE.exe had read over 550GB overnight I thought something is majorly wrong here and now I find out it was nothing. But what I don't understand is that Speccy does not do that on my 4770K machine at all. There's no special settings in Speccy that could cause this and I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate on both machines and as I mentioned they are essentially mirror images of each other software wise. So I have no idea what the difference is but it's definitely a load off my mind to know the cause of the weird behavior.
 

Dark Falz

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I'm sure there's a good explanation of why one loaded core can generate a significant amount of heat when compared to all four cores, but it has been my experience as well (on standard configuration, one active core will make that one core reach a higher turbo speed than 2 or more cores loaded).