CPU temps and Graphics

[jimortality]

I posted a cpu temp thread over on the official forum and got some good replies. I thought I would post here because you can never get enough information. So since version 1 was released, you know how excited I was but......... That excitement is now tinged with a little concern about my cpu temp in game. When the game is running and I have 22 or more AI then my cpu is running close to 90° raceroom runs at 52 max. I've got the fan turned up to 100%. I have I7 6700k, acer predator 34p and 1080ti. I've turned the graphics down to high apart from temporal which is on epic. A lot of people say I need better cooling while others say it's ok to run that high. I don't want to spend money when it's only 1 sim as all the others run lower. I just need reassuring lol.

 

[jimortality]

What cooler to you have?

It's totally normal for raceroom to run cooler. The crucial fact here is that acc is finally a sim that is making at least a little use of modern mukticore CPUs.
Raceroom basically on 2 big threads internally. Meaning in theory, a 3 core cpu would be plenty enough (2 for the big threads, 1 for the little threads).
This also means that me, with 4 cores + HT am seeing stuck fps although my cpu is at about 40% load and my gpu at 60%.

It's the "single thread performance limit". The game simply doesn't have enough threads to use the whole cpu.

Acc uses 3 big threads and a 4th kinda big thread.
Together with the rest (multiple little threads), it means that a 4 core cpu can be fully used. Way more than raceroom can!

Sadly instead of seeing the fps go into the 200's if you lower the graphic settings or resolution, acc needs the whole cpu to run basic 60-90 fps.

This leads to a fully loaded cpu while playing acc and therefore a lot higher temperatures.

Now 90° with the fan at maximum isn't great. Especially since acc doesn't even "redlines" the cpu. You'll probably see it fluctuating between 70-99% cpu load.

When checking if the fan is okay for a system it's always recommended to do a so called "stress test".
Intel burn, prime95, 3d Mark (cpu tests), running cinebench.
Or my favorite: the cpu stress test coming with msi kombustor. Kombustor is a great tool for overclocking the graphics card and the cpu stress tool is very simple, easy and shows the same temperatures like rendering a video or multi core games do.

Anyway, to sum up your problem:
Your cooler isn't good enough for your system. It's like telling a car owner "yeah if you go over 3k rpm or 150 kph, your engine will overheat".
Now raceroom is like City traffic. It's okay.
Acc is Autobahn.

Imo something like a cooler should always be able to take full load. Maximum temps I would tolerate would be 80° in acc and 87° in stress tests.
I personally have a very very bad pc case with one of the best Air coolers (le grand macho rt).
I'm reaching 74°c in acc and 78°c in stress tests.

It's not really known what too high temps really do to a cpu. Many say it would accelerate degeneration though. So at some point it will either fail or you'll have to run at lower GHz.

Anyway what case, cooler and case Fans do you have and how are they set up?
Maybe we can find something without you buying stuff

The Kombuster only seems to stress the GPU? Scratch that, that's just for overclocked cpu's

 

[EsxPaul]

Jim, no need to buy a new PC just yet. The stock cooler you are running is about as bad as it can get.

Depending on your budget, upgrade that cooler to whatever you can reasonably afford as it will be transferrable to a new PC later on down the road and not just a one off investment for your current setup.

 

[RasmusP]

The Kombuster only seems to stress the GPU? Scratch that, that's just for overclocked cpu's

It's mainly a bunch of different graphics cars stress tests and benchmarking, yes.
But there's also one button called "cpu burner".
What I love about this one is that you can say how many threads it shall run on.
So for our 8 cpu threads i7, I always pick "7".
Clicking in the field where the "8" stands at default, editing to "7".
That way your cpu will get loaded pretty heavily but keeping a little bit free to maintain normal functionality like updating the temperature sensors.

While for most games it's a rarity to use all 8 threads of your cpu to the maximum, some will do.
Like assassins creed odyssey, battlefield 5 and other modern multi threading games.
For applications it's pretty normal to do it. Rendering a video, running industry simulations, compiling code.

Just because you don't overclock your cpu (so the stock cooler should be at least not making the cpu self destruct) and are only playing games that can't use a mukticore cpu with more than 4 cpu threads, it's not a bad thing to at least find out once for a short moment what might happen if the cpu will be used fully.

It's a bit like saying you wouldn't need to know if there's a proper rev limiter in your car or not. Since no normal person would ever go there.
But like a failing application might run into 100% cpu load, the throttle in a real car might get a leak and the engine go into the rev limiter in neutral.
You just don't want to make it even possible for things to self destruct.

That said your pc runs fine for a while now so I guess it's all fine. But you get the point here

Your situation is a bit like a city traffic car always running between 3-7 k rpm. Sure, the rest of the car might still screw up and fail before the engine does but it simply hurts people like me and Martin to witness it

A graph to show why to invest 30 bucks into a cooler:

And the cooler master isn't even great. You probably have the small
https://www.howtogeek.com/320705/ho...market-cpu-coolers-than-intels-stock-coolers/

 

[Andy_J]

Hi Jim. I over clock my intel CPU's but always go for better air cooling and they they work well for me.

Try here: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/coo...an-single-tower-aluminium-fins-4x-copper-heat

 

[jimortality]

So I press the CPU burner and then what? It just seems to give me the option to start or stop nothing else on screen.

 

[RasmusP]

So I press the CPU burner and then what? It just seems to give me the option to start or stop nothing else on screen.

Oh you might have the new one. I'm not sure if you can still select the amount of threads with v4. I'm still using V4 as I see no reason for re-download and re-install for V4.
Here's how it looks like for me:

Running it for a moment and then stopping it looks like this in afterburner (I selected all core usages etc in the afterburner settings):
You can see the overall cpu temp going up from 48° to about 72°. And cpu 1-7 being at 99%, cpu 8 not.
Running 8 threads instead of 7 will make the updating of the temps etc stutter and the temp going up to 75°C.

 

[jimortality]

Hi Jim. I over clock my intel CPU's but always go for better air cooling and they they work well for me.

Try here: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/coo...an-single-tower-aluminium-fins-4x-copper-heat

View attachment 308939

That is very sexy looking

 

[Neilski]

Personal view: yup the stock cooler is naff in general, but heck the CPUs all throttle when they get too hot so provided you don't make the mistake of running one with no cooler at all I don't think it's really possible to damage it by sitting up at max temp for hours at a time.

Btw, I thought the 6700K didn't come with a cooler? There are (at least) two recent stock Intel coolers - one is weak, and the other is really weak. They differ in the mix of Al and Cu in the main block, IIRC.
If you picked up or recycled a stock cooler for your i7, it may have been one of the lower end ones. (E.g. I bought a G4400 and then an 7700K, and for a week or two I used the i7 with the crappy (worst of the bunch) cooler that came with the G4400 - it got rather toasty )

 

[Case_]

Even if the CPU will likely throttle, the thing is...why even risk it when it is a question of getting a 30 euro cooler and fitting it? And why have your CPU throttle at the exact moments when you want as much performance as possible?

 

[jimortality]

Even if the CPU will likely throttle, the thing is...why even risk it when it is a question of getting a 30 euro cooler and fitting it? And why have your CPU throttle at the exact moments when you want as much performance as possible?

It's all in hand, I shall be with cooler very soon.

 

[Neilski]

Even if the CPU will likely throttle, the thing is...why even risk it when it is a question of getting a 30 euro cooler and fitting it? And why have your CPU throttle at the exact moments when you want as much performance as possible?

Nah, I'm not against a better cooler at all - perfectly good idea to do that. But I also don't think an i7 will throttle at only 90°... And all academic now since Jim's swapping the cooler

 

[Case_]

Maybe it's not throttling at "only" 90 degrees, but I just don't like CPUs or GPUs getting over say 75 degrees, much less close to 90. Maybe it's way too cautious, but I just don't feel comfortable testing these limits, especially not long-term. I like to think it's better for the longevity and all to not push things to the extreme.

 

[RasmusP]

Did some quick research because this bugged me. What I've found:
Tcase i7 6700k: 64°c
What you see in most tools: core temp.
What I've found about core temp and tcase:
Core temp seems to be about 15° higher than the actual tcase.

The difference is that the core temp is the temperature of the actual cores inside the cpu whereas tcase relates to the heatspreader on top of the cpu.

Anyway let's even stretch it to 20°c difference, then 84°c would be the temperature where throttling starts.
Meanin Jim currently has absolutely no headroom available and should check if the cpu is throttling down.
Easiest way would be, since afterburner is used anyway, to activate the cpu clocks to show in the graphs.
Afterburner - > right click in the bottom graph - > properties - > monitoring - > scroll down and set the hook on the left for cpu clocks 1-8.

Then play acc or do the cpu burner thing and see if it clocks down.
If it does clock down, it's close to being a little degenerating for the cpu over time and we all should be as worried as Martin

 

[Hor-hay]

quick easy fix: leave the side panel off, blow any dust off with a can of air.

 

[jimortality]

Did some quick research because this bugged me. What I've found:
Tcase i7 6700k: 64°c
What you see in most tools: core temp.
What I've found about core temp and tcase:
Core temp seems to be about 15° higher than the actual tcase.

The difference is that the core temp is the temperature of the actual cores inside the cpu whereas tcase relates to the heatspreader on top of the cpu.

Anyway let's even stretch it to 20°c difference, then 84°c would be the temperature where throttling starts.
Meanin Jim currently has absolutely no headroom available and should check if the cpu is throttling down.
Easiest way would be, since afterburner is used anyway, to activate the cpu clocks to show in the graphs.
Afterburner - > right click in the bottom graph - > properties - > monitoring - > scroll down and set the hook on the left for cpu clocks 1-8.

Then play acc or do the cpu burner thing and see if it clocks down.
If it does clock down, it's close to being a little degenerating for the cpu over time and we all should be as worried as Martin

Do you mean to show the clocks on the screen where my gpu and cpu temps are?

 

[jimortality]

quick easy fix: leave the side panel off, blow any dust off with a can of air.

Problem is, I have a manual fan attached to my side panel.

 

[jimortality]

I'm running everything on high except temporal for now and it stays 74-81 when I get my new cooler fitted, it'll be on epic city! It runs fine on epic now but temps go to 87

 

[EsxPaul]

Problem is, I have a manual fan attached to my side panel.

I suspect your system will run cooler with that side panel fan disconnected and that panel removed.

As was suggested, give that a try if you can as it'll be a good indicator on how your pc is cooling in general.

A few pics of your system would also help us to see exactly what you have in terms of fans and how much space you have for a larger CPU heatsink etc.

 

[jimortality]

Well I've ordered a new cooler and some more expensive paste and I've got someone to come and sort it for me. That is an interesting point about the side panel because I don't think the 2 manual fans do very much, the temps don't change whether they're running or not but hopefully by the weekend I shall be a lot cooler

 

[EsxPaul]

Well I've ordered a new cooler and some more expensive paste and I've got someone to come and sort it for me. That is an interesting point about the side panel because I don't think the 2 manual fans do very much, the temps don't change whether they're running or not but hopefully by the weekend I shall be a lot cooler

That sounds like a good plan. Let us know how it all goes