When it comes to computing, I like to live the simple life; come to someone (or several people) and ask their opinions of what hardware I should get (and in turn, accept their recommendations), buy the parts, take the parts up to a 3rd party, take my newly upgraded computer home, plug it in.. and reap the benefits. 🙂
I’ve done it for years, with no problem.
So…why do I feel I just shot myself in the foot (and bleeding out)? Getting that new CPU Cooler wasn’t just to get a better, quieter fan.. but it would had made the CPU a lot cooler.
Now this didn’t bug me until I had gotten Speccy installed, and saw my CPU was idling at around 8-9*C. I’m thinking “..wow! That’s some DAMN good Thermal Paste!” At this time, it never occurred to me (until being told much later), that no CPU can get this cool. So obviously the temp sensor is bugged.
Going back to the point I made this post, at times I saw it spike to 20-30*C on idle. I started to get worried (especially for later today) of when I play something like E:D.
Frantically looked for anything showing the critical heat limit of my new CPU. All I got was this forum post which is half about temps and half about questioning others about overclocking. One response, scared the fuck out of me. Something about the CPU will actually..shut down at 70*C. Another saying the CPU will cause BSODs at 60*C.
Since then, I felt like I seriously fucked up by getting this CPU.
So I’m speaking to Tulsi about it, and he says that it should just throttle down to protect the CPU if it gets too hot. If ‘throttling down’ means a sudden drop in FPS, that just makes me more sick. But.. I reluctantly tried running Modded Minecraft as a test (after getting the 64 bit version of Java installed of course).
Loading seemed the same as it was before, but at least it wasn’t like all of my resources were being sucked out with a straw (with the old CPU). Getting ingame, the speed wasn’t really any different (of course because the drive FTB is on is an HDD), but I noticed non-smooth FPS (around 35-50).
Monitoring the CPU temp (at this time I’m using HWMonitor instead of Speccy), I freaked out when I saw it hitting a maximum temp of 80*C. Told Tulsi and he claims that’s the same he gets (also states his CPU doesn’t even have thermal paste. IMO, not a good idea). The temp was averaging around 60-70*C (with a few times going up to 77-78*C).
A strange thing happened with Minecraft after I switched screens and got back in. The FPS was actually capping itself at 70 (though that’s what I set it to), then as the CPU heat increased..it didn’t really drop until a bit later (and went back down to 35-50).
I’m wondering if this is “some throttling” I’m seeing and ask Tulsi about it. He was going to give me a link to a program, but had to go to bed.
I was forced to go on Discord, to ask “uhhh.. are these temps OK?! Please say yes!” Asked the Off Topic section of the FTB Discord (while also telling one of the two of the EDEX Discord about how the CPU Cooler wouldn’t fit(and what would be my options for that)).
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For the CPU, I’m being questioned of the legitimacy of HWMonitor saying the CPU is 9*C on idle, asking “do you have your PC outside? :D” All I could think of was “um..it has good thermal paste?” Was told it’s impossible for the CPU to be cooler than the current room temperature (for fan-based, yeah. But what about water-cooled?).
Overall, I’m basically told what Tulsi told me, that the CPU would ‘throttle down’ when it gets too hot. After asking if this means a drop in FPS(like what I saw in Modded Minecraft), they stated that it may not even be noticeable in performance.
Another suggested I use CoreTemp to get a better reading of the temps. Tried it out, and it’s pretty cool and straightforward. It also has a feature called ‘Overheat protection’ (which simply warns the user of the “OSHI–” critical heat level).
Then they asked me to take a picture of my current CPU Cooler. Here, I was kind of convinced it had a heatsink (because I saw the familiar brass pipes on the back of it). Taking the picture wasn’t the problem (used the flash feature of my phone)…it was uploading it. Now, I own a Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G. Yeah, I know..VERY old phone(one of the first in the Samsung Galaxy series). Was frantically looking for the drivers for the phone (so my computer will see it as a device and attempt to connect to it), but it seems my phone is so old…the drivers don’t exist.
Got an idea of sending the picture to one of my email accounts (and then just copy/paste the pic to Discord). THIS turned into madness. My primary email that’s attached to my ISP, was showing mail..from three years ago (and nothing else). Sent it to my gmail account, and that FINALLY got the pic uploaded! Freakin’ hell, that took nearly an hour trying to get one picture uploaded!!
After pasting it to Discord, I learned that it was a stock cooler. Crap. However, I was told “you should be fine”, and another mention of the throttling.
Finally, one jokingly suggested that I buy at least two dozen of these things to cool the CPU… nah, not when they’re $14 a can.
As for the CPU Cooler that was too big for my case, I got ahold of one of them that suggested the cooler. After giving him the same pic I had for the other Discord channel, he was really surprised of just how close the RAM was to my current cooler. He suggested to either getting a smaller cooler, or 2x 8GB sticks (instead of the current 4x 4GB sticks).
The next day, I called the guy who installed my hardware and asked him, just how far the RAM was being covered by the new cooler. He said, all of them. So that proves sending the cooler back is the best thing to do. He also said (after I asked him) to not worry about the stock cooler, that “as long as it doesn’t hit 120*C, you’re good”.
That is a MAJOR sigh of relief there. Though I will continue monitoring the temp, at least I don’t need to switch to ‘panic mode’.
And..that’s about it. I’ll need to contact Newegg for the return labels, and get that CPU Cooler shipped back (and get my money back).
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EDIT: It seems the ‘war’ over if the CPU is overheating or not, is continuing. I was watching some videos from Simon’s Tech Tips, and he’s talking about a $5 cooler and if it’s better than an Intel stock cooler.
Now, this wasn’t the focus here. It was this comment made by “Razor Gaming;
Actually this can only happen with Intel CPUs. They have an insanely high shutoff temperature, while Intel’s is 90°C or lower. Also Intel CPUs tend to run hotter. It’s hard to get AMD’s chips over 60°C unless you’re doing serious overclocking on a stock cooler.
I made a response, and he says I’m “talking out of my ass” saying the 9590 doesn’t come with a stock cooler…no shit, it doesn’t. I never even said it did, and stated I’m using a cooler from an old 4350. And now several people are questioning how or why in the fuck I’m doing this.
Ok, it’s obvious.. the temperature sensor in the chip is bad. But…I don’t know what to believe, really. You got to trust someone who’s got experience (which is obvious). But do I trust the guy who installed my hardware (saying 120*C is the danger zone), or someone claiming that 80*C is? With the sensor malfunctioning, I have no idea who to believe.
So I tried downloading and trying to run a free trial of ‘AIDA64’ (as this is what Simon used to test). What I meant by “trying”, is I’m trying to figure out where in the fuck is this ‘stress test’ he uses. Finally found it as ‘System Stability Test’. Of course, since I don’t feel paying the asking price, I get “TRIAL VERSION” over the two helpful graphs.
Ran a stress test on my CPU, the FPU(I guess I should ask what the hell this is), and the Cache(is this like browser cache?), for at least 10 minutes. For one thing, I didn’t notice ANY throttling, which is good. Yet it seems this test (with it having 100% usage on all 8 cores), it’s not getting anywhere as hot as CoreTemp showed.
I’m seeing an average of 63.1 to 63.3*C, with the min/max temp around 58*C, to 73-74*C (instead of close to or at 80*C when playing a game).
On top of that, when I stopped the test.. I noticed it’s saying the CPU temp is around 40-41*C(with a few times going to 45*C) on idle…w..what the FUCK is going on here?! Are these my ACTUAL temps (instead of what seems to be complete bullshit from HWMonitor and CoreTemp)? Yet, by what this guy claims, why hasn’t my CPU ‘shut down’ when it reached 70*C? Again, I noticed absolutely zero throttling.
I am so confused (and scared) here. Perhaps I’m just worried over nothing, or this is something else. I think I’m going to lose my mind over this…