Can't cool fx-9370

[Pikininho]

Hello,

At the start of this year I bought the parts for my first build:
CPU : AMD FX-9370
Cooling: Corsair H100i (with 2 noctua NF-12 in a push configuration as intake)
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 (rev 4.0)
Memory: Corsair vengeance 8GB (2x4)
Graphics card: AMD R9 270 2GB
Storage: WD 1TB caviar blue
Power supply: Corsair CX 600 80+ bronze
Case: Antec P100
Ventilation: 2 noctua S12 at the front as intake and 1 of the case fans at the back as exhaust (I have the H100i's stock fans in case I need to replace a fan)

I bought this computer mainly for molecular simulations (they use only the CPU) and to play a bit. I have no problems while playing. When running the simulations (they have the same effect as a stress test) I can choose how many cores are used and using 6-8 cores for the simulation I get thermal throttle in under (10 , 5 or 2 minutes respectively). The CPU should not throttle as the temperature is at or under 50 C (I used speccy and AMD overdrive to measure temperatures) and I should still have 11 C of thermal margin according to overdrive and the information that I can find online. When the CPU throttles the multiplier drops to 7 and once it begins the multiplier drops every 15 to 20 seconds.

[I am not an overclocker and have very limited knowledge of it] I am running at stock clock speeds (4.4Ghz), turbo boost is off, I have tried turning C1, C6 and "cool n' quitet" off with no improvements, I have under-clocked to 4.2 Ghz (also no improvements) I tried 4.0 but I could barely boot.

Before this configuration I had the case fans at the front as intakes, the Noctua S12 as push (exaust) on the radiator and one for the H100i's stock fan as intake at the back and it was very slightly better.

So what I am desperate to know is.. am I doing anything terribly wrong? What can I do to prevent this? Should I just give up and try to trade my CPU for an 8350?

Thank you for your time.

 

[Alaric]

Do you have another mobo you can try ? Those chips can draw a lot of juice and put a lot of strain on the board's power supply. If the northbridge is overheating all the CPU cooling won't help. You could try placing a fan blowing on the back of the mobo CPU socket. It wouldn't hurt to try a fan on the chipset , too. For those chips , though , I would consider one of the two top Asus boards. So far nothing has equaled the Sabretooth and the CH with the AMD 8 cores.

 

[caddi daddi]

download hardware monitor amd give us a screenshot of it under load, your 9370 is just a special binned 8350.

re-reading your post you're just doing it wrong.

 

[Pikininho]

I only have another like mine... when you said another mobo you meant another model correct?

Thanks for the lightning fast reply!

 

[caddi daddi]

let's start you off on the right foot to get you underway to a happy dance.
this is by our very good friend Rgone>>>>>>>> http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...s-gt-gt-Using-the-AMD-FX-Bulldozer-Piledriver

 

[bassnut]

Like CD said download HWMonitor open it and run prime95 or at least your program you used when throttling happened for at least 10 min. then post a screen shot of this as well a screen shot of CPUZ .... CPU, Memory and SPD tabs. This info will show us allot..... we'll get you squared away.

 

[Pikininho]

I ran a simulation using 7 cores and waited 10 mins on throttle as you asked and here are the results:







When I wake up I'll glady try your sugestions. Thank you all for your time and good night.

 

[caddi daddi]

are all of your bios settings at default? there are some wild swings in the vcore and the clock.
plug in a flash drive and boot into bios hit the f12 key, this will screenshot the bios, let us see the whole tweeking page.

I run cfd sims, very large cfd sims, and I have found mine works best with the clocks and voltage locked down hard.
I have also found that 16 gigs of ram are better than 8 gigs, 32 gigs are better than that and that ram speed has only little effect.

 

[caddi daddi]

here is a bios setup for a good, solid 4.4 clock that our good friend Rgone left on the board when he sent it back to me, other than the ram settings and fet pwm I use these basic cpu settings, adjusted for a clock of 5.0 as I have much more cooling than you have.
the voltage settings will be very low when idle and when it's time to compute it ramps up very quickly and the vcore and clock will remain rock solid for days on end.
do not even think about running the dram voltage I am running..............

 

[bassnut]

What stands out is your core temp (Package Temp)...... 64*C and a BIOS set 1.512v for your CPU which from what we have seen is pretty much the norm surprising pretty though is your socket temp (CPU Temp) is pretty low at 50*C. These chips are run hot that is something we have found out pretty quick and why any of the guys that push big Overclocks with the FX8XXX or the FX9XXX chips all have big custom water loops. There is just so much those small all in one coolers can do. Though I would have thought 4.7 would have been possible. What I would try first is ....

Make sure the fan profile is set to High Performance not quiet or balanced.
Re seating your cooler with new paste.
Are you still running the stock fans if so can you find better fans or some extra fans you can possible hook in on a push pull setup? Even if just to test.


An 8350 clocked up to 4.7GHZ would not normally need that much VCore at 1.512v but even at lower VCore it is hard to say if your H100i would be up to cooling this beast. If the above doesn't help which it might not at all ...... ..... like I said these chips run hot. I would take a serious look at that guide CD posted earlier and think about trying to learn to Overclock that chip, take it off auto and tell it what to do and find what speed it can run with the cooling you have now or spend some coin and get a better cooler that is more suitable for that chip.

 

[ShrimpBrime]

I ran a simulation using 7 cores and waited 10 mins on throttle as you asked and here are the results:


View attachment 168448


View attachment 168449View attachment 168450View attachment 168451

When I wake up I'll glady try your sugestions. Thank you all for your time and good night.

I don't see any throttling here at all whatsoever. This chip is set up stock with "green" enabled. You will see throttle when in light or very little use, and will also see Turbo (4.7ghz) with increased voltage (1.5000v) as it should be.

You don't need to add any voltage while running this processor stock. Your adding voltage for nothing.

Run this chip stock everything on auto. It all looks normal in comparison to my FX-9590 (also 220w).

Don't increase bus frequency, it's not needed. Just leave it stock. Manually st up your ram, cpu should handle up to 1067mhz, but may as well manually set up the 800mhz and enjoy. These chips love faster Ram, so buying into new ram now is too late, performance change is very little.

Also, throttling should occur (If everything is on auto) at Cpu socket temp of 65c. The core temps are good to 90c (prefer to stay under 80c) and the board will thermal protect and actually shut off.

In addition: I see Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 (rev 4.0) listed in your spec list, but your bios looks just like a Crosshair V formula-Z.

If you don't want your clocks to drop, disable cool and quiet and C1E and C6 support. Then your clocks and voltage should stay put, but I do not recommend doing this.....

HFGL!!

The ShrimpBrime

EDIT: Why leave it stock?? H100 isn't enough to run all cores at 4.7ghz and suggested P-state voltage of 1.500v -

 

[caddi daddi]

good, the guys that know the 9xxx cpus have arrived.

 

[Pikininho]

In addition: I see Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 (rev 4.0) listed in your spec list, but your bios looks just like a Crosshair V formula-Z.

If you don't want your clocks to drop, disable cool and quiet and C1E and C6 support. Then your clocks and voltage should stay put, but I do not recommend doing this.....

HFGL!!

The ShrimpBrime

EDIT: Why leave it stock?? H100 isn't enough to run all cores at 4.7ghz and suggested P-state voltage of 1.500v -

The Crosshair screenshots are from caddi daddi

You don't need to add any voltage while running this processor stock. Your adding voltage for nothing.
Don't increase bus frequency, it's not needed. Just leave it stock. Manually st up your ram, cpu should handle up to 1067mhz, but may as well manually set up the 800mhz and enjoy. These chips love faster Ram, so buying into new ram now is too late, performance change is very little.

I haven't touched those settings. Everything is default as you can see on my screenshots

I don't see any throttling here at all whatsoever. This chip is set up stock with "green" enabled. You will see throttle when in light or very little use, and will also see Turbo (4.7ghz) with increased voltage (1.5000v) as it should be.

Maybe it was poor screenshot timing but if you go up to my first screenshots you can see the temperature hops on speccy, that's the throttle.

Here are the Screenshots from my bios, everything is default except CPU fan speed (at maximum). I would also like to point out that yesterday I replaced my thermal paste with Arctic Silver 5 and it didn't appear to have any effect.

 

[Johan45]

I'm with S_B on this one, I don't see any where that the CPU is "throttling" If it was there would be instances where the core speed drops to 3.4ish, have you seen this?
Now your core temp is fairly high at times but not dangerous. The temp fluctuations are quite normal depending on load and these 9xxx chips when needed can access 1.5v+ which would be quite a kick to the temp for a short period before the voltage drops again. Did you notice your max voltage in the SS is 1.512v ?

 

[Pikininho]

I'm with S_B on this one, I don't see any where that the CPU is "throttling" If it was there would be instances where the core speed drops to 3.4ish, have you seen this?
Now your core temp is fairly high at times but not dangerous. The temp fluctuations are quite normal depending on load and these 9xxx chips when needed can access 1.5v+ which would be quite a kick to the temp for a short period before the voltage drops again.

The speed drops down to 1.4Ghz and then goes back to 4.4 and it will keep this up until I stop using the CPU

Did you notice your max voltage in the SS is 1.512v ?

I'm sorry but I don't know what the SS is

 

[Johan45]

The speed drops down to 1.4Ghz and then goes back to 4.4 and it will keep this up until I stop using the CPU

The software that you are running, does it have slight breaks before it starts it next calculation? That would explain the drop. 1.4G is "Idle" state not throttling which would be 3.4G. I f you go into bios and disable C6 and C1E that would stop but it isn't or shouldn't be a bad thing. It helps keep it cooler.

I'm sorry but I don't know what the SS is

SS is screen shot, I was just pointing out that the voltage goes up to 1.512

 

[Pikininho]

The drop doesn't happen until 80 to 90 % when there aren't enought calculations for all the cores.. at the start the software is similar to a stress test. I got the same issue when using AMD's overdrive stability test.

As for the voltage.. I don't know the reason.. is 1.512 too high? Cause I never touched any voltage setting. I have already tried turning C1E and C6 off and I still had the same problem.

 

[Johan45]

No the voltage isn't too high, that's stock for the CPU and your temps are fine. If you think there's an issue try something like Prime95 blend torture test for 20 minutes and see if the clock holds. I still believe it's a load thing and not throttling

 

[Pikininho]

I have finally reached a stable configuration!

I made similar posts on several forums and following some advice on reddit and considering the information you all helped me find, I placed a fan at the back of the CPU plate / VRM pushing air into it. I also changed the fan at the back to serve as an intake to improve VRM cooling and I have been able to sustain 100% load without any drops in performance. I am running AMD's overdrive stability test pushing all cores to the max (for 1 hour) and playing World of Warcraft on max settings at the same time and I still have no performance drops. (temperature between 49 and 51 C )

I think the problem was the VRM overheating and that would lead to the throttle of the CPU.

I would like thank you all for your time and dedication! You have my deepest thanks!

 

[bassnut]

If If solved your problems cool glad we could help. I still don't think socket temps were an issue with only 52*C temps however we have learned that with gigabyte boards especially you can get some very odd behavior when you overclock.

Glad we could help.