PC Processors

[mediashock]

Hi, I just built my first PC in a long time after I switched to mac, and I chose the 7900x with the Noctua NH-U12S redux with 2 Fans. 

The first day it ran at around 50C but when booted to bios. 

When I run windows and look at the temp it always at 72-75 at idle, and when I open visual studio or even Spotify it goes up to 80 -82. I'm getting so confused because everywhere I read people say these processors run hot but at full load its normal for it to operate at 95.. (in cinebench while rendering with all cores it goes up to 92-95)

I keep reading a lot of people are getting 45-50 at idle so makes me thing I have a bad chip or something. 

I thought maybe I mounted the cooler wrong but I replaced the thermal paste twice and nothing changed.

I played around with the fans, and if I set them at full 100 speeds, it goes down to 65-70 at idle...

I'm not sure what to do next any ideas appriciated.

[misterj]

mediashock, I doubt you have a bad chip, probably a measurement problem. Please post screenshots of Ryzen Master (RM) both Basic and Advanced views while running Cinebench R23. Please post only images of RM. I always run all my fans and pump at 100%. Make sure you have the latest drivers (AMD get here) and the latest BIOS which you get from your MB vendor but nothing else. Also post all your system components and OS. Thanks and enjoy, John.

[elstaci · Accepted solution]

Your idle temps are very high and it shouldn't overheat with the CPU Cooler you have installed.

Download and run Ryzen Master and see what it reports in temperature and what frequency the cores are running at idle.

Also at the top of Ryzen Master with the various ICONs if any are showing in the RED that means the CPU is being throttled or slowed down either by the Motherboard itself or by the CPU due to overheating.

First according to Noctua your CPU Cooler has a Noctua NSPR rating of 129 which for your processor it should be strong enough, especially with 2 fans installed,  to prevent such high temperature from occurring from Noctua Compatibility Chart for CPUs:

To eliminate poor air circulation inside your PC case remove the PC side panel and see if the CPU temperatures are slightly cooler with it off than on.

If cooler that will indicate poor air circulation inside your PC case.

Check to make sure you have installed the Noctua correctly and it is making good even pressure on the CPU.

Here is a YouTube Tutorial video showing how to correctly install your Noctua NH-U12S redux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4LLAWYQonU

Your CPU has a very high TDP Rating of 170 Watts so you will need a CPU Cooler with a TDP Rating of at least over 200 Watts.

The Maximum Operating Temperature of your CPU is 95c. Once it reaches 95c it will automatically start to throttle and slow down and if it can't it will shut down your computer to prevent damage.

Other have complained about high idle temps on the 7000 series processors.

Try changing your Windows Power Plan to "Balanced" and then make sure the following Settings are configured:

Processor State Minimum: 5%

Processor State Maximum: 100%

Also update your motherboard's Chip set from here: https://www.amd.com/en/support

Also do a CMOS CLEAR of your BIOS to set it back to factory Defaults. You can set the proper RAM in BIOS after doing the CMOS CLEAR but leave everything else in default to see if the temps are lower.

You also might want to open a Noctual Support ticket and asked them their opinion and see what they say.

Personally for such a high wattage processor I would have used a Liquid AIO CPU Cooler if your PC case has the room to install one and you can afford a strong one.

But Noctua does say that CPU Cooler is compatible with Ryzen 7900X APU Processor.

EDIT: if you have the 2 fans installed in correctly it will cause your CPU to run hotter. It needs to be in a PUSH-PULL configuration.

One fan pushing in air through the heat sink and the second fan pushing out air from the heat sink.

[elstaci]

This Noctua explanation on CPU TDP Ratings is quite illuminating concerning both Intel and AMD Processors.

From Noctua concerning TDP ratings:

The problems with TDP (Thermal Design Power) ratings

TDP (Thermal Design Power) ratings have been introduced by CPU manufacturers in order to specify how much heat a particular processor will emit, so that customers can select an appropriate heatsink. In response, heatsink manufacturers have started to specify how much TDP their coolers support. As simple and fool-proof as this may sound, there are several severe problems that have made this seemingly straightforward process of selecting a cooler with a TDP rating that matches the TDP rating of your CPU more and more confusing.

First of all, the TDP ratings published by Intel and AMD have become increasingly misleading over the years. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to see so called “95W” or “105W” CPUs producing a heat-output of 150W or more. In the past, pushing CPUs beyond their specified TDP often required manual tuning by the user (overclocking), but nowadays, many CPUs go way beyond their specified TDP ratings automatically, using their turbo modes. These turbo settings are often enhanced even further by many enthusiast motherboards, which do not enforce the recommended power limits from Intel and AMD by default, unless they are manually limited by the user. Considering all this, selecting a heatsink that only supports the specified TDP of the CPU can be problematic and result in lower-than-expected system performance. As a result, the TDP specifications given by CPU manufacturers can no longer serve as a simple guideline in cooler selection.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though. The second key problem is that the amount of heat that a cooler can dissipate can vary greatly from CPU to CPU. For example, the same cooler may be able to dissipate 250W on CPU A but only 150W on CPU B. In particular, CPUs with smaller chips (DIEs) and smaller integrated heat-spreaders (IHS) are much more difficult to cool than larger ones that emit the same amount of heat. In addition to these differences that are due to different heat flux densities, other aspects such as internal DIE configuration and placement on the processor package, as well as the maximum allowed temperature of the processors, also lead to significant variations from model to model. Assigning a general TDP rating to a CPU cooler can therefore end up being misleading as well.

Thirdly, maximum heat dissipation capacity is by no means the only aspect of a heatsink’s thermal performance and perhaps not even the most important one: The thermal performance of heatpipe-based CPU coolers doesn’t scale linearly, so even if cooler A might be able to dissipate up to 350W and cooler B only 300W, it could still be the case that they perform the same at lower heat levels such as 150W, which may be much more relevant for the customer. Max. TDP ratings therefore cannot tell the full story about heatsink performance. This is particularly important for CPUs with high heat flux densities or other internal limitations that cannot be pushed beyond relatively low power levels no matter how much heat the cooler would be able to dissipate. For example, if a CPU cannot go beyond 120W due to internal limitations, cooling performance at 120W will be much more important for the customer than if the cooler could theoretically dissipate 300 or 350W.

Last but not least, it is often unclear how the TDP ratings some cooler manufacturers advertise are actually derived. This is highly problematic because the maximum amount of heat a cooler can dissipate will vary greatly depending on the testing environment and parameters. The results will not only differ from CPU to CPU or if a custom heating element is used instead of a real CPU, they also depend on ambient temperature and the maximum temperature that the CPU or heating element is allowed to reach. For example, the maximum amount of heat a cooler can dissipate will be completely different when the test is conducted at 15°C ambient and the heating element is allowed to reach 90°C than if the test is done at 25°C ambient and the heating element is allowed to reach 50°C. Since most cooler manufacturers don’t specify how their TDP ratings are obtained, it is highly problematic to use these ratings to compare products from different manufacturers. With no parameters specified and therefore no way to control the values, some brands have started to advertise TDP ratings that appear simply unrealistic with regards to real world applications. Taking part in a game of exaggerated specifications is no option for us and this is another reason why Noctua doesn’t publish TDP ratings. Instead, we avoid the various shortcomings of the common TDP ratings by offering a combination of our Noctua Standardised Performance Rating (NSPR) and CPU-specific classifications.

[mediashock]

Hey, thanks for the suggestions. I spent a few hours on it following some of the suggestions and it seems to help with the idling. I reinstalled the CPU, new thermal paste, and made sure the Cooler has the Push - pull configuration. It lowered it to 65 from 72-80 so that was a great start.. Then i started looking at my task manager and noticed iCloud for windows was taking around 5% of my resources, which dosent seem that bad in the grand scheme of things but when I closed it down it dropped my Idle temps to 50ish.. I was shocked.!!

Now when i have a multiple programs open like cosair Icue it seems to run at 72 ish but for some reason my fans arent kicking in constantly anymore, so I think I fixed most of my worries.

Thanks!!

[elstaci]

Running maximum temps in the 70ish is fine for your Air CPU Cooler. It is 15c-25c below it Maximum Operating Temperature.

you can set up a aggressive Fan Curve in Radeon Settings - Tuning to have the fans run at 100% speed at a lower CPU temperature. That should keep you temps even lower afterwards.

NOTE: If the CPU temps start going reaching 90c I suggest you start troubleshooting again.

Also in BIOS Settings you can lower the Maximum Operating Temperature of your CPU from 95c to like 85c or 90c before it starts to throttle if interested.

[Angeluk]

5% usage for a single app supposed to be running on the background is quite high, i suggest you abandon this app and disable it on the startup.

[ubronan]

I like to add that push pull should be out of the case in general i use a large fan on the back of the case to make sure the air goes out as fast as possible and i kinda always use a faster fan for that.

Most fans i use are capable of run the speed i want it to run, so make sure the fans on the cooler put the flow out of the back of the case and hopefully you can mount a large fan on the back of the case as well.

The rest has been explained very well by elstaci