I recently built a PC for a friend featuring an i5-14600KF paired with a dual 120mm fan tower cooler. While the idle temperatures are around 30°C, I noticed that during benchmarks like AIDA64, the temps shoot up to 100°C almost immediately and hover around 95-100°C. The program indicates that it's throttling. In gaming, the CPU sometimes spikes to 95°C, but it usually settles between 75-85°C without significant FPS drops. I have the same CPU but with a 360mm AIO cooler, and my temperatures are much more manageable. I've already removed and remounted the cooler and reapplied thermal paste, but the temperatures haven't improved. I'm using a default BIOS setup with only XMP enabled. Are these temperatures typical?
4 Answers
Those temps are definitely not normal. It sounds like there might be an issue with cooling performance. Make sure you’ve taken off any protective stickers from the bottom of the cooler and check if it’s firmly making contact with the CPU. If the cooler is mounted properly, you shouldn't see such high temps at idle. Also, the idle temps being fine suggests that contact might not be the issue, but it’s good to double-check everything just to be sure!
You might want to look into the power limits (PL1/PL2) on your motherboard settings. If everything is set to default, they should be around 125W and 180W. Adjusting these might help manage the temps better during benchmarks and gaming sessions.
Good point! I’ll check that out. I'm using the MSI Pro Z790-P.
The load line modes on MSI boards can be too high for the 14000 series CPUs. You should experiment with some settings related to power limits and load line. For a Z790 motherboard, undervolting and adjusting the load line can sometimes keep you around 90°C even under load, especially with just a dual tower cooler. Let me know if you want specific settings!
What case is your friend using? Also, how many fans does it have? If you take the side panel off, do the temps change? That could give some insight into airflow issues.
He has an NZXT H7 Flow with three intake fans at the front and one exhaust at the back. We tried with the case open and temps didn't really change.
I checked, and the sticker is off and the cooler is seated right. If it were a contact problem, wouldn’t the idle temps be high too?