Hello,
Apologies for the length of this post.
My PC was bought "custom" made from cyberpowerpc in 2013.
Cyberpowerpc offered a service to overclock the pc by 20% or something stupid. In hindsight, I would never do this again as it seems they just increased the multiplier and did not mess around with voltage - that is, everything in the bios was essentially set to "Auto".
The PC ran fine for years and I even was able to run it at 4.2 ghz by increasing the multiplier. I felt confident in overclocking because I had a liquid cooling unit equivalent to today's Corsair H100i.
About 1 year ago, my liquid cooling unit's pump decided to stop working and I was able to replace it with a Corsair H100i.
Over the past year, my temps have been pretty good averaging 35 - 45 C idle and under stress it would go up to 80ish C.
I am not really sure what happened yesterday, but the ONLY thing I changed was upgrading a program called Equalizer APO. Upon restarting the PC, the computer showed similar signs of overheating as it did when the pump failed the year prior.
I know that some software may not report accurate temperatures, but all of a sudden my computer was idling at 80C with the program that would report 35 to 45 C just a few days prior. I'm not one that pushes the limits of my PC too often, so I don't know if the temps had increased prior to installation of Equalizer APO or not.
I checked that the pump is working, the fans are at max speed, and yet it was still at a ridiculous idle temp of 80+ C. I had no idea what to make of it at the time (still don't, but have a few ideas).
I suspected maybe the Corsair Link software was not communicating with the unit because every time I would restart and open the program, there would be a button that says "Restore Normal Operation". I would literally click it and few seconds later it would reappear - somehow the settings must have worked because my idle temps went down to mid 50's to mid 60's C at idle. While not great, it is better than 80 idling!
I should also mention that after doing some reading tonight, I lowered my cpu speed and turned off the "auto overclock" settings and applied a steady voltage of 1.1 (after some trial and error). This seems to have helped a little as it is now idling at upper 40's to low 50's, but I feel that it still should be a bit lower considering I am not even overclocking at all right now.
I have a new Corsair unit coming tomorrow with a few tubes of thermal paste. The first thing I am going to try tomorrow is to take off the corsair unit, clean the chip, etc, reapply paste, and reseat it. I can only hope its something as simple as that.
Here are my specs:
i7 3770k 3.5 ghz @ 3.5 ghz - 1.1 v
Gigabyte z77x up4 th - flashed with f11c modded bios (This has worked flawlessly for years, but I decided to revert to an official gigabyte bios to rule that out).
4 x 4gb gskill ddr3 ram
Thermaltake Level 10 GT case with fans in every location possible.
Would anyone have any suggestions on things I can do to try to fix this situation? Is it advisable to buy a normal heatsink / fan to give that a try?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Apologies for the length of this post.
My PC was bought "custom" made from cyberpowerpc in 2013.
Cyberpowerpc offered a service to overclock the pc by 20% or something stupid. In hindsight, I would never do this again as it seems they just increased the multiplier and did not mess around with voltage - that is, everything in the bios was essentially set to "Auto".
The PC ran fine for years and I even was able to run it at 4.2 ghz by increasing the multiplier. I felt confident in overclocking because I had a liquid cooling unit equivalent to today's Corsair H100i.
About 1 year ago, my liquid cooling unit's pump decided to stop working and I was able to replace it with a Corsair H100i.
Over the past year, my temps have been pretty good averaging 35 - 45 C idle and under stress it would go up to 80ish C.
I am not really sure what happened yesterday, but the ONLY thing I changed was upgrading a program called Equalizer APO. Upon restarting the PC, the computer showed similar signs of overheating as it did when the pump failed the year prior.
I know that some software may not report accurate temperatures, but all of a sudden my computer was idling at 80C with the program that would report 35 to 45 C just a few days prior. I'm not one that pushes the limits of my PC too often, so I don't know if the temps had increased prior to installation of Equalizer APO or not.
I checked that the pump is working, the fans are at max speed, and yet it was still at a ridiculous idle temp of 80+ C. I had no idea what to make of it at the time (still don't, but have a few ideas).
I suspected maybe the Corsair Link software was not communicating with the unit because every time I would restart and open the program, there would be a button that says "Restore Normal Operation". I would literally click it and few seconds later it would reappear - somehow the settings must have worked because my idle temps went down to mid 50's to mid 60's C at idle. While not great, it is better than 80 idling!
I should also mention that after doing some reading tonight, I lowered my cpu speed and turned off the "auto overclock" settings and applied a steady voltage of 1.1 (after some trial and error). This seems to have helped a little as it is now idling at upper 40's to low 50's, but I feel that it still should be a bit lower considering I am not even overclocking at all right now.
I have a new Corsair unit coming tomorrow with a few tubes of thermal paste. The first thing I am going to try tomorrow is to take off the corsair unit, clean the chip, etc, reapply paste, and reseat it. I can only hope its something as simple as that.
Here are my specs:
i7 3770k 3.5 ghz @ 3.5 ghz - 1.1 v
Gigabyte z77x up4 th - flashed with f11c modded bios (This has worked flawlessly for years, but I decided to revert to an official gigabyte bios to rule that out).
4 x 4gb gskill ddr3 ram
Thermaltake Level 10 GT case with fans in every location possible.
Would anyone have any suggestions on things I can do to try to fix this situation? Is it advisable to buy a normal heatsink / fan to give that a try?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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