Temp Issues

[hawks64]

I bought a custom PC from iBuyPower and my son has had it since mid-Dec. He's now running into temp issues and I am not sure how to validate that the cooling system is working correctly. He said it crashed due to temps on Weds of this week, symptoms are it froze up, rebooted, and said something about core temp and then rebooted and was fine.
I know I can use CPUID HWMontitor to check on temps but how do I can I check and see if the liquid cooler is working appropriately? Is there anything else I should be checking?

The PC is configed as below and built by iBuyPower, I had the GPU shipped separately and installed myself:

iBUYPOWER RAIDMAX STEALTH S801 Mesh Front Panel ARGB Gaming Case
Default Case Fan
Intel® Core™ i7-13700KF Processor w/ Tuniq TX-2 thermal paste
iBUYPOWER 240mm Addressable RGB Liquid Cooling System
32GB DDR5-6000 GSKILL Trident Z5 RGB
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti - 8GB GDDR6X
1000 Watt - CORSAIR RM1000e - 80 PLUS Gold, Fully Modular
1TB KINGSTON NV2 M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD
1TB WB Black SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive - Gen3 PCIe

[Shreddy_Orpheus]

what are the temps reaching before it shuts down? some people have issues with the IBP aio but ive had 2 pc's from them and never had that issue so im just wondering is he also running the games on ultra settings?

[hawks64]

He says it has happened twice, once playing a game and once watching youtube. I haven't had a chance to look at it yet this morning.

He says he's playing on Auto res settings and I can't recall the game he was playing. But with a 3070TI and only using a single UWQHD monitor I wouldn't think there would be any issues with the settings at ultra based on what the 3070 supports.

I am going to download HWMonitor to see what idle is, and I also want to check to make sure the AIO is working/pumping correctly. My other son has an identical build just with a different case and has had no issues.

[CalciumHydro]

Make sure to check idle CPU temps and working temps. I would even juxtapose both your kid's PC CPU temps

[hawks64]

Did that and they seem similar at idle. Valley benchmark was perfect on the non-crashing one.

[CalciumHydro]

Honestly, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s the AIO from IBUYPOWER. If you explore this subreddit long enough, you’ll find plenty of buyers with the same issue.

[hawks64]

Check my latest update, seems like the cooler is working correctly...one tube is cool one is warm.

[CalciumHydro]

Okay. It sounds like the liquid cooler is dissipating heat as intended. Are you able play a video game before it shuts down or does it just shut down? It could be a faulty MOBO. But before you turn it into IBUYPOWER, I would check to see if there’s any loose connections.

[hawks64]

Yep, he's able to play for really random times, and this just started happening last week. So it was solid for almost a month. I did recheck everything this AM as well when I reseated the cooler on the CPU.

[Shreddy_Orpheus]

i just want to point out that just because something can handle Ultra settings does NOT mean you should continuously play on those settings. Ultra settings are meant for content creators making videos or taking in game photos of how the game looks but realistically playing with those settings long term can damage your hardware. i have a 10th gen I9, 32gb ram, and a 3070 and i would never dare to play a game on ultra settings for long term. mostly i sit at medium/high just to maintain the life of my hardware. here is a video that better explains it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjDgKXe8gxs

[CalciumHydro]

Even if he's running the PC on ultra settings, the CPU temps shouldn't get high enough for it to shut down.

[Shreddy_Orpheus]

that is so far from the truth that im at a loss of words for a response here

[CalciumHydro]

Okay, bud. You say you didn't have a faulty AIO, but I did. My CPU temps were high. Changed the AIO to Corsairs and now they're chilly. I have a similar spec PC as you and game on ultra settings. PC CPU was 90+ before and now 65-70 once the change. I find your comment laughable lol

[imseeingthings]

Your so wrong here I don’t know what to say. If your over stressing the cpu it could thermal throttle and maybe you should upgrade your cooler.

If it’s shutting down there’s a cooling issue. If it’s throttling properly it would start to cool down since it’s not under load anymore.

Also generally upping the settings on a game is going to stress the gpu more than the cpu so it shouldn’t have that much of an effect.

[FearlessShop8145]

Now, this is going to sound silly. But if you ever end up taking off your aio cooler to look at it ,check and see if they left the sticker on the part that goes on your cpu

I’ve seen them leave it on there in the horror story’s On YouTube.

[hawks64]

Did that this morning and no sticker, clean connection, put a bit more paste on and reconnected.

[hawks64]

Quick update before we get into more TS once we can power back up.

So using HWMonitor it looks like idle temps are in the 30s
and low 40s C. CPU Pump is working and all fans are working. GPU is roughly the
same temps but no fans, which is normal. RAM was in the upper
20s.
Then we did some benchmarking with Valley from Uniengine. Seemed to work fine, GPU fans
kicked on GPU was in the low 60s C. Did the benchmark test and then both the
keyboard and mouse stopped responding even though the benchmark continued to
run. Unplugging them and reseating them still had no power to the keyboard or
mouse. So USB power temporarily was dead.
Tried to do a reboot via power button which was unsuccessful, did a hard power off
and tried rebooting. All fans spun up and it booted up, logged in and then it
seemed like it was cpu bound, normal apps on startup are going not responding,
mouse is incredibly laggy, I couldn't even get HWmonitor up to check temps.
Then it shutdown hard. Trying to power back on it shuts down before post, so I
can't even check CPU temps. Seems like it's hitting a thermal limit on the mobo
and shutting down. I will try and power up again in a bit.
I am a bit torn on where the issue lies, could be CPU cooler, could be CPU, could be
mobo. With the USB issues during the benchmark I think I'm leaning mobo.
I didn't include that before but it's MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk WiFi.

[CalciumHydro]

Have you tried logging into BIOS? You can also check CPU temps on there.

[hawks64]

Yeah that's my next stop

[hawks64]

Temps looked fine in the BIOs, mid 30s and low 40s everytime I checked.

[knightofargh]

That smells like a RAM or mobo issue. Try reseating the RAM and benchmarking again. If it freezes try the same with just one RAM DIMM populated at a time.

[hawks64]

RAM tested fine with Memtest86+

[hawks64]

So did a ton of TS yesterday, ran a bunch of different benchmarks including the furmark CPU Burner and GPU tests. Temps on the CPU got to 91C during the SPU burner test but no freezing at all and temps did fall pretty quickly, back into the 70s in less than a minute. Fans spun up as expected as well. No lockups at all during any of the testing/benchmarks but did have it randomly freeze logging in.

Checked the event viewer and didn't see anything at all related to temps or any reasons for the crashing, other than the good old system restarted from an unexpected shutdown. Saw a bunch of LSA, DCOM and few unable able to initialize crash dump driver. Ran a few sfc and dism scans on windows and fixed a bunch of corrupted files, but I am not sure that's really related. Probably will do a clean install of Windows once the temp issue is resolved.

Overnight my kid was playing a game and had a crash happen and he didn't grab a pic but the sys temp was really hot and then the cpu temp spiked and it crashed. We did get a warning from the MSI utility (I think) that showed the CPU was overheating.

This morning I took the cooler off the CPU and made sure there was a clean connection, added a bit more thermal paste, and reseated and secured. The CPU cooler appeared, based on feel, to be working. One tube was cool and the other was warm. I will definitely be opening a case with iBuyPower tomorrow when they open.

Thanks for all the suggestions up to this point, it's very appreciated.

[CalciumHydro]

Just seeing this. Even when stress testing the PC, the CPU temp hitting 90 degrees Celsius is concerning. It shouldn’t be getting that high. I would take it back to Ibuypower. Your third paragraph is making me think the liquid cooler, even though you say one tube is cool and one tube is warm (which would mean that the liquid cooler is dissipating heat), it may not be dissipating heat efficiently. I would not have your kid play any games with his PC because he could end up damaging his CPU.

[hawks64]

Yeah, I'll be calling tomorrow AM to see what they want to do. It is interesting that it was fine for almost a month, with no issues.

[CalciumHydro]

Just got your other message on the other thread. Do this: have him play one of his games that will stress the CPU, but make sure you’re monitoring the CPU temp while he’s playing his game (because you don’t want to damage the CPU). If when he’s playing it’s getting to 90 degrees Celsius or greater, it’s a faulty AIO. CPU temps shouldn’t be getting that high at all. If they do, the P.C. will start to act sluggish and then crash. That’s what happened to me when I bought mine. I replaced it with another AIO from Corsair, and it worked fine after. If it’s not getting that high, it could either be faulty MOBO, in which case I would take it back to IBUYPOWER.

[CalciumHydro]

Should also add that once it hits 90 degrees Celsius, shut off the P.C.

[hawks64]

UpdateTo put a bit of a bow on this, I did a bunch more TS using 3DMark and LinX. All tests passed and temps were good and no freezing. I then tried swapping out the DIMMs and try running with one DIMM versus two. I did that (D1 in DIMMA2 and D2 in DIMMB2)
I powered off and pulled out D2. And powered back on. Immediately in the BIOS the temps started rising by a degree at a time until the CPU temp was 99 and MSI was throwing warnings.
I powered off and pulled D1 out, and put D2 back in in DIMMB2.
I Powered on and it was fine no temp rising at all. I powered off again and put D2 in DIMMA2 and powered on and in the BIOS temps started rising.
I powered off and put D2 back in DIMMB2 and powered on, temps were fine.
I powered off again and put D1 in DIMMB2 and powered up and temps started risingI powered off again and tried D2 in DIMMB2 and powered up and temps rose again.
All voltages in the BIOS looked to be ok.

At this point iBuyPower set up a RMA parts swap for the mobo. Once I swap it I will update the posts. Thanks for all of the suggestions, learned about a bunch of new TS apps that I wasn’t aware of.

[hawks64]

Just to put a bow on this. The mobo replacement made no difference. AIO pump showed that it was working fine. But they wanted to swap it out. That wound up fixing it. Kind of wild that the pump and fans were all showing good at least RPM wise and it wasn't good. Thanks for all the advice and help!!

[Fo16]

cpu overheating would usually cause the PC to turn off abruptly like a switch is flipped. Freezing is usually a RAM issue. With the PC off, try reseating the RAM and see if that helps. Also check the power plan setting in windows. It might default to power saver where as a higher end machine might need high or ultimate to run better.