CPU overheating with age?

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hucker

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Odd, my CPU was getting to 100C, so I bought a big CPU cooler (twice the normal size). That took it down to 80C, but it's gradually worked it's way back up to 100C again. Now I've slowed the CPU down to 85% of normal speed in the BIOS, and it's back to running at a more comfortable 70C. Something funny's going on here.

Yes, the heatsink is hot, heat is transferring correctly. The fan is working fine, hot air is blowing off it. The problem is the CPU is creating way too much heat. Faulty CPU? Faulty motherboard? Anything I can do apart from just replacing one or the other? The CPU is an i5 3570K and has been run flat out for years (BOINC).

The BIOS won't let me lower the speed any more. I've reduced the base clock from 100 to 95, it won't go lower than that. It ignores me when I lower the multiplier (which is odd as it's a K CPU which should be unlocked?) But I have managed to disable the turbo function, so it doesn't jump up to 38 multiplier. So I've ended up with a 3.2GHz CPU instead of 3.8GHz.
 
Solution
CompuTronix
This is a Windows setting in Control Panel.

Click on Control Panel, Power Options, then to the right of the selected plan, click on Change plan setting. Next, click on Change advanced power settings, then drag the scroll bar down. Click on + next to Processor power management, then click on + next to Maximum processor state. This Setting can be changed, similar to Minimum power state as shown below. Set it to 75% and click Apply.

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H

hucker

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Just a generic thing from Ebay for £11. But it looks twice the size of the stock Intel one I replaced:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/142515092820

Yes I applied thermal paste (that came with it). The heatsink gets hot itself and hot air blows off it, so I'm not blaming the heatsink.

It's under full load (BOINC). Idle temperature drops very quickly to about 45C.
 
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Dunlop0078

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I would pull off the cooler, clean it of dust , and replace the thermal paste. The paste that came pre applied on some 11 pound ebay cooler is probably awful.

There is no reason a CPU would increase heat output due to degradation as far as I am aware, I cant think of any reason why that would make sense.
 
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Satan-IR

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Yeah apparently it's not doing a very good job that cooler as it is something generic. The thermal paste that came with is also probably not good quality.

I'd apply a well-known paste and reseat the cooler. Idle temps above 40 are not that bad but means the cooler is not very efficient.

Not familiar with BOINC's mechanics as it were, maybe you can lower the demand on system, to keep temps 75ish under load. Higher temps in long run will shorten CPU's life.
 
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hucker

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I was thinking the CPU could have been damaged a while ago, as it was running for an indefinite amount of time bouncing off it's thermal limiter when my watercooler's pump failed (which I didn't know about). I just stuck the stock cooler on, which kept it at 70C, so I was happy, but it's been gradually getting hotter, even though I've checked the cooler isn't dusted up etc. The new cooler made a lot of difference, but again it's gradually getting hotter.

It's at 70C now with 85% clock speed, if it gets worse I can lower the CPU usage in BOINC.

Even if the cooler is rubbish, surely it can't gradually get even worse?
 
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Satan-IR

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Cooler is what it is, tubes and sink too, metal with fixed thermal conductivity. What actually can and does degrade and lose efficiency is the paste.

Poor quality paste loses conductivity sooner under constant excessive load/heat.

It's a kind of a vicious circle, poor paste can't keep CPU/sink as cool as it should and excessive heat makes it worse by the day, especially in your case as the system is under constant stress.
 
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Dunlop0078

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I would say the thermal paste degrading could certainly cause higher temps. That is more likely than the CPU just magically producing more heat.

The only way the CPU could be producing more heat than it was when it was new is if it's pulling more power. Assuming you don't have core voltage cranked up it should not be pulling anymore power than it was when it was new.

When CPU's start to degrade they normally just become unstable at stock clocks and voltages either requiring the voltage be increased or the clocks lowered to maintain stability. Or die outright.
 
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hucker

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Not noticed any instability. Voltage reading is correct, so I assume the motherboard's VRM isn't broken. The heatsink feels nice and cosy, so I think it's pulling heat off it ok. I'll take it apart now and stick new thermal paste on it. I've only had the new cooler for a few weeks, so the paste can't have degraded, unless it's really rubbish and has oozed out?
 
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hucker

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I would have thought £11 was enough for what's essentially just a block of metal and a fan. The part of it in contact with the CPU is about 50C when the CPU is 65C, so it seems to be taking the heat off it ok. This is then fed to the fins with two copper pipes, and the fins are about 40C. Sounds like everything is working ok, so who knows!

Just done some tests:
CPU core was 70C.
Thorough dust clean (of case intake vents - only 2 weeks of parrot dust!): 65C
Clean off paste and replace with a heatsink PAD (cut to size): 105C!
No paste at all, bare metal onto bare metal: 80C
New paste (not for CPUs, just generic electronics stuff (silicone) I happened to have (made by electrolube (sounds kinky!)): 65C again, same as paste from the cooler.
I'll look up some reviews and see if expensive paste is actually any better, as it does seem like it can make some difference, and pads are clearly utterly pointless, you're better with nothing at all!
.....According to reviews, expensive pastes like Arctic Silver only give you 2C difference, and the really good ones are electrically conductive! Not something you want oozing out onto the motherboard! I'll stick to the standard silicone paste.
 
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hucker

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To hell with it, I'm running at 85% clock speed (slowest the motherboard will go). If it gets worse I can turn down the processing % in BOINC (which is actually quite good - if I set 75% max, it'll throttle to keep OVERALL % at 75, even if another program is using a lot). If it gets bad enough to be too slow to use, or crashes a lot, I'll get another motherboard and CPU, then experiment with these in another machine and find what's broken. Something is definitely wrong as the heatsink is twice as good as the standard Intel one (it got 20C cooler when I swapped them over a month ago), and the Intel one used to be good enough. I've never known a CPU to break, but then it was overheating for who knows how long when the watercooler pump failed a year ago and I didn't know about it.
 
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The Original Ralph

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just as an fyi, i doubt the cpu "bouncing off the thermal limits" damaged the cpu if it's an intel cpu - my first pc build, i was using the Asus performance monitor utility that came with the mother board. It never showed a temp higher than 67C, and in fact after a few minutes of video rendering, with cpu at 98-100% load, it just seemed to hit that ceiling of 67C and stay there. For the helluva it i downloaded RealTempGT, and it was showing 99-100C, so i downloaded a few other monitoring utilities and they showed the same high temps.

I did a little research and found a number of posts on the internet complaining about the ASUS monitoring utility creating conflicts in the BIOS of their own f***ing mobo. I'd been rendering 5-8 videos a week, 1.5-3.0 hour jobs, for 3 months with my cpu bouncing off 100C.

One of the other utilities i downloaded was Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility (ETU) and one nice thing about it, it had a benchmark app in it, that whenever you ran a benchmark test, it would offer to upload your results to their web server and compare your results to others, and allow you to only compare to similiar chipsets (Z97) and the same CPU. What confirmed to me i hadn't damaged my CPU was that every benchmark comparison, my score was always in the top 5%. A second benefit to that ETU, it allows you to download the settings other users were running, and ETU would change the BIOS settings for me, within windows to see if i could improve my score.

1st point - if your CPU is an Intel, it's doubtful you damaged it
2nd point - confirm those temps you're seeing with another utility like HWMonitor or RealTempGT

fwiw
 
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hucker

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I agree, I've never ever known a CPU break (apart form an AMD before they invented thermal limiters). Perhaps my motherboard is buggered - but it claims the voltage to the CPU is correct. I've just checked and both Speedfan and MSI Afterburner show exactly the same CPU temps.

So I guess if things get worse (crashes or even more overheating), I could buy another motherboard to take the same CPU, but if I'm going to change the board, I might aswell go up a revision or two and get something better. I have 4 computers altogether, so unused parts from this one can be put to use elsewhere.
 
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The Original Ralph

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you've never listed your components, but i assume you're running an MSI mobo

the obvious question, have you done a CMOS rest and reflashed the BIOS?
and have you visited the MSI forum to see if any users with that mobo are reporting similiar issues? That was when i learned about the ASUS utility being screwed up
 
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hucker

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No, it's a Gigabyte Z77-DS3H, why did you think it was an MSI? If it's the Afterburner software, I downloaded that to monitor my graphics card, then noticed it also does CPU temperatures etc.

I'm reluctant to mess about with the BIOS. Had too many problems with this board in the past refusing to work with Windows 10 under certain configurations. I've got RAID sets attached to it aswell, so I'm leaving well alone!
 
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hucker

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Replying to Satan-IR here, although I cannot see the post any more. But it's in my emails. Got deleted somehow?

"Yes the most expensive thermal paste on the same setup might just reduce heat by 2-3 degrees C in comparison with a mid-tier one but that doesn't mean no good, cheap coolers with their crappy pastes are the same as better coolers and better pastes.

You're not willing to try a different paste for like $5 and instead thinking about "buying another motherboard to take the same CPU".

No offense but looks like you're not looking for a solution."

Of course I'm looking for a solution, I simply want my PC to continue running. But I see no point in messing around with something that removes 2C of heat when I have a problem twenty times higher than that. I know the cooler is good, as it reduced 20C off what the stock one was removing. Clearly there is a fault with the CPU or motherboard.
 
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The Original Ralph

The Original Ralph

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there should be the ability in your BIOS to save the settings including RAID, and then try to reflash the BIOS - they do corrupt, that and the CMOS - the procedure should be in your mobo user's manual

if you go with a new mobo, you're going to have to do that anyway

fwiw
 
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hucker

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ARGH!!! I wish I hadn't listened to you. I just spent 2 hours when I should have been having a quiet evening flashing, reflashing, changing settings, panicking Windows would never boot again, and wondering if'd killed my computer entirely. At one point I couldn't even get a BIOS display on the screen! Do not ever flash a BIOS if you don't need to. Hasn't helped anyway.
 
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hucker

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I've never had a problem with flashing BIOSes before. But there are always certain settings that make the thing unbootable, then panic ensues. What really upset it was when I lowered the base frequency from 100MHz to 80MHz, and changed the multiplier from 34 to 30. Why on earth would that prevent it booting? And why didn't it restore defaults after three failed boots like normal? It took about ten!
 
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M

mdd1963

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Let's start with an adequate fan, vice a generic 'it looks bigger' $11 variant, so that we might actually have good chance of dissipating the heat. At least Intel's fan is designed around a specific TDP rating, even if only capable of keeping the CPU at 70-75C or so....

Clearly the one being used is woefully inadequate, it's fan is inadequate, or we have little to no air into/out of the case...or all of the above...
 
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CompuTronix

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hucker,

There's a few other variables that haven't yet been mentioned, which may be at the root of the problem you've described. It's possible there may be a single problem, or a compound problem. Allow me to explain:

• BOINC projects such as the very popular SETI, can be extremely taxing and can cause CPUs to run at very high temperatures due to the use of AVX code. As you've discovered, Throttle temperature for your i5 3570K is 105°C.

• (1) Heat pipes can and do fail. Leaks occur which can drastically reduce heat pipe thermal conductivity, yet remain undetected.

By installing a used cooler, it's possible that an unwanted variable was unknowingly introduced.

• (2) The i5 3570K is a 3rd Generation processor. These were the first to use TIM instead of Indium solder between the Die and the Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS).

3rd Generation TIM'd processors have been in use longer than any others, so the long term effectiveness of TIM has not yet been realized.

There are 2 known problem with Thermal Interface Material (TIM); "dry-out" where thermal conductivity decreases due to inherent aging, and "pump-out" where the TIM "oozes" out from between the Die and IHS surfaces, thereby rendering the TIM less effective. In my opinion, this seems to be the most plausible explanation for the thermal problem with your 3570K.

The more frequent and extreme the thermal cycling over time, the less effective the TIM becomes with conducting heat away from the Die, which in turn causes your Core temperatures to slowly increase. Conversely, Indium solder, which was used on 2nd Generation and earlier processors, is invulnerable to either of these problems.

Unfortunately, your BOINC project may have contributed to TIM degradation. It's also possible that you may be experiencing temperature problems simply because the TIM is failing due to age and wear. However, coolers with bad heat pipes can be replaced, and TIM'd processors can be delidded.

At this point, there appears to be 2 alternatives; replace the cooler with a new or known-good cooler, or delid your 3570K and replace the TIM with liquid metal, which is extremely effective.

CT :sol:
 
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H

hucker

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The one I added has more metal than the Intel stock cooler, and immediately showed better cooling. You'd think the stock cooler would have been enough (or why would Intel supply it?) Do Intel assume most users won't tax the CPU, so rely on their thermal limiter to stop the CPU melting on the rare occasion people actually use it to the limit? If Intel were being honest, their stock cooler would cool the CPU enough and there would be no need for anyone to ever buy another cooler (apart from silence).
 
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hucker

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It's not a used cooler, it's brand new. As was the stock cooler I placed on it when the water pump failed on my Corsair H80 unreliable rubbish.

I have read about the TIM they're putting into newer CPUs (just to save a bit of money?!), and I agree that may be the problem. That would explain the gradual higher temperature. I can easily try a better cooler, but how do I take the CPU apart to change the internal compound? I didn't even think that was possible! Since I can by a used i5 3570K for £40, it's not worth spending much trying to repair it.
 
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