Intel's [lousy] cooler cannot cool i3 100% load for even 30 seconds

*NixUser

Member
Apr 25, 2013
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I just ran OCCT on my i3-4330 and the abysmal intel cooler wasn't even capable of keeping the temps below 85ºC for even a single minute. My case has good air flow, in fact I had removed the side panel as I was doing some cable rearrangement prior to testing. Room temp ~26ºC.

Intel should be ashamed to ship a product with a cooler that cannot handle default clocks :thumbsdown:

No profanity in the tech forums, please
-ViRGE
 
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Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
17,484
33
86
Was it throttling (should be 100C, by default)? It should not throttle, without custom fan profiles. If so, check your cooler installation, to make sure it has good contact.

If it's getting hot, but not throttling, it's probably just the fan control defaulting to a quieter profile v. better cooling profile, and not a problem at all.

Sounding like an angry wasp is trying to escape the case after running such testing programs for a few minutes is what's really bad, IMO :p.
 

Yuriman

Diamond Member
Jun 25, 2004
5,530
141
106
85c shouldn't be a problem. Most modern Intel chips will shoot up to around that or higher, even with great cooling, unless they're delidded.
 

mistersprinkles

Senior member
May 24, 2014
211
0
0
So you're upset that the stock cooler was performing within it's specifications?
Stock cooler gets up into the 90s when the chip is at 100% load. It should be JUST enough so that the chip doesn't throttle, provided you have good case airflow and a room temp of about 22 C or lower. 26 is a little high.
 

escrow4

Diamond Member
Feb 4, 2013
3,339
122
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This is why if you can afford it always put in an aftermarket heatsink. Even in an office box. Less heat is a longer lifespan. And Yuriman, my 4770 and NH-U14S peaks at 50-55 celsius flat gaming. I forget the Prime95 temps, although they will be high as it hammers the CPU.
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,580
10,217
126
My G3258 @ 3.8 and 100% CPU load, gets to 81C, with the copper-cored stock cooler.

Not a big deal. These chips can go up to 95C before you need to worry.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
85C is well within specification. Tjmax is 100C.

Also quiet fan speed control is a regular feature on the boards today. So even at 85C I doubt the fanspeed is at 100%.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
20,618
15,531
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IMO clearly has something implemented incorrectly - I have a Core i3-4330 in a brand new rig here, running Prime 95 with small FFTs, monitoring temps with CPUID HW_Monitor, CPU freq with CPU-Z (3498MHz) and CPU usage with Task Manager (100%).

Room temp 22.5C.

I've been running Prime 95 for about five minutes so far and the CPU temp is reported as 68C (and it appears to have settled at that figure). The stock fan is audible (slightly noisier than when idle - when it's idle IMO it's virtually silent), but not annoying/loud.

My money is on the OP's CPU HSF being mounted incorrectly.
 

Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
2,650
4
81
wasn't even capable of keeping the temps below 85ºC
...
Intel should be ashamed to ship a product with a cooler that cannot handle default clocks

As others have already noted, the chip doesn't throttle until 100C, you're well within spec, so to say the stock cooler can't "handle" the load, is just flat-out wrong. It's toasty, but not dangerously so. If you want better temps than that under power-virus style synthetic loads, you need to purchase an after market cooler.
 

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
3,931
189
106
I just ran OCCT on my i3-4330 and the abysmal intel cooler wasn't even capable of keeping the temps below 85ºC for even a single minute. My case has good air flow, in fact I had removed the side panel as I was doing some cable rearrangement prior to testing. Room temp ~26ºC.

Intel should be ashamed to ship a product with a cooler that cannot handle default clocks :thumbsdown:
No profanity in the tech forums, please
-ViRGE

Your temps are on the high side. The Sandy Bridges are in the 60s, Ivy's and Haswell's are higher, usually in the 70s.
Check to see if you've applied the heatsink correctly and use a good aftermarket thermal paste.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2047683
Then check the motherboard bios settings for the fan is set appropriately, not set on quiet or on a low pwm slope.
 

sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
8,172
137
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If it uses AVX it is going to put out some serious heat. I run my G3258 at 4.5GHz on the stock cooler. Luckily it doesnt have AVX. (Even if it did, it would rarely get used anyway except in benchmarks.) But it is able to run this fast all the time without overheating because it is only used for web surfing, videos, and single thread gaming. Even when it goes to 100% load for any sustained period, the load is very light compared to something like OCCT. So the temps stay under 80C even though OCCT will peg my cpu to 100C.
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,695
2,293
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I usually have some extra copper cored stock coolers from i5s and i7s that can be used on i3s, this gives more headroom versus what I agree is a marginal stock cooler. But even the little stocker should be able to keep the CPU from throttling, and that seems to be what it was doing. AVX2 loads are about the most punishing test I've seen for a CPU, frankly it about scares me to run it for any length of time, and I don't know what app would do this irl.

edit: typo
 
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exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
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I guess all current and previous-gen GPUs are junk too, because they would otherwise throttle on OCCT if NV/AMD didn't prevent a full (artificial) load on them?

You are taking a budget chip with cheap cooler and complaining about high temps. As long as the CPU functions within spec and operates, that is all that is promised. Go back 10 years and look at the old P4-Ds (2C) that constantly throttled under load. They didn't even have AVX or anything like that which would have pushed TDP even higher.

Get a decent cooler or stop complaining. :)
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,501
1,963
126
I guess all current and previous-gen GPUs are junk too, because they would otherwise throttle on OCCT if NV/AMD didn't prevent a full (artificial) load on them?

You are taking a budget chip with cheap cooler and complaining about high temps. As long as the CPU functions within spec and operates, that is all that is promised. Go back 10 years and look at the old P4-Ds (2C) that constantly throttled under load. They didn't even have AVX or anything like that which would have pushed TDP even higher.

Get a decent cooler or stop complaining. :)

POSTSCRIPT TO EXAR333's PRONOUNCEMENT:

Just as coincidence, I had only downloaded OCCT the other day, long after an earlier download had expired for the shareware version. I have been "twiddling, tweaking and tuning" my old sig-rig processor.

The author of the program doesn't write tomes on the origins of his program -- I still can't tell for sure if he's French or Russian (doesn't matter, though). But he's clear about a couple things.

His own stress-test -- maybe it's called "CPU: OCCT" -- is supposed to detect problems or instability with an overclock setting within ~ 3 hours running. He distinguishes between problems with a thermal cause as opposed to other causes. And so that particular tab of OCCT shows me temperatures that are roughly between 5 and 10C lower than the result of running IBT or LinX on the same configuration.

No less -- the LinPack tab of OCCT still shows temperatures as much as 5C lower than what one experiences with other traditional stress-tests.

Somehow, this reminds me of certain aspects of the Dan Brown "Digital Fortress" novel. One could make your CPU overheat, but the only source of failure at that point would be thermal. And -- in fact -- we know that the electrical leakage within these newer processors increases as temperatures climb.

I might say that these facts about OCCT could lead to greater worry about the OP's i3 processor. But I doubt that Intel ever intended the processor's usage to generate these temperatures. Mythical and near-meaningless as it may seem or as some may argue, I'd think that anything over about 83C exceeds the processor TCASE spec, which would be about 10C lower than what is measured by the core thermal sensors (83C for reference). Or perhaps I should be corrected for not knowing the OP's processor specs, but it applies to my own. I'm not sure that the spec has changed much over a few generations of Intel chips.

The other point: these i3 cores are fabricated like all the "non-E" chips, with a "new polymer" TIM. There's no certainty that this or that chip isn't showing the variability among production units we'd seen since Ivy Bridge.

So -- yeah -- spend $30 on a better cooler.

AFTERTHOUGHT ABOUT OCCT's TEMPERATURES: As I discovered (or rediscovered, since I haven't used the program for a while) -- the differences in reported temperatures, I wondered if the programmer had "got something wrong" about reading the thermal sensors. As far as I can tell -- no, he didn't. Since my fans are controlled independently of the program, I see that they're not ramping up as far as they had with IBT or LinX. Amen.
 
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AkumaX

Lifer
Apr 20, 2000
12,643
3
81
don't i3's come w/ the all-aluminum design? i swap all intel chips with a copper-slug design every chance i get!
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,501
1,963
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don't i3's come w/ the all-aluminum design? i swap all intel chips with a copper-slug design every chance i get!

Also -- yeah -- I don't know the particulars of those heatsinks well, since I usually just throw them away. But some -- indeed -- had the copper slug, which I'd discovered by lapping them. Or, in others, it was already exposed.
 

AkumaX

Lifer
Apr 20, 2000
12,643
3
81
Also -- yeah -- I don't know the particulars of those heatsinks well, since I usually just throw them away. But some -- indeed -- had the copper slug, which I'd discovered by lapping them. Or, in others, it was already exposed.

haha i do quite toss the non-copper slug ones. usually keep the copper versions for a 'rainy day' lol. think the copper ones came w/ i5 and up, whereas aluminum was celeron/pentium/i3. except for the pentium AE :awe:
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,695
2,293
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don't i3's come w/ the all-aluminum design? i swap all intel chips with a copper-slug design every chance i get!
Yeah, and that is a good reason to hang on to stock i5 and i7 coolers if there are extras due to the use of aftermarket cooling. They work great on the dual cores!
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,501
1,963
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Yeah, and that is a good reason to hang on to stock i5 and i7 coolers if there are extras due to the use of aftermarket cooling. They work great on the dual cores!

At one time, I used the Intel fan as an HDD cooler. I still can't remember exactly whether there was a cost in noise, but I think I had it running at lower rpms.
 

BSim500

Golden Member
Jun 5, 2013
1,480
216
106
I just ran OCCT on my i3-4330 and the abysmal intel cooler wasn't even capable of keeping the temps below 85ºC for even a single minute.
Can you not simply set a fixed voltage in the BIOS? That solves the unwanted +0.1v auto-overvolt on Haswell's when running AVX software? In fact if you can't overclock an i3, why not instead use the headroom to undervolt it?
 

exar333

Diamond Member
Feb 7, 2004
8,518
8
91
Yeah, and that is a good reason to hang on to stock i5 and i7 coolers if there are extras due to the use of aftermarket cooling. They work great on the dual cores!

Totally agree!

I keep them with my extra wires and they come in handy for cheap-builds you might do for yourself and/or others. MUCH better than the all-aluminum versions. Plus, you can't really even sell them, so why not save them for a rainy day? :)
 
Feb 25, 2011
16,992
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That's funny, because my Intel stock cooler will keep my OC'd 3570K below 80C.

Maybe you installed it wrong?
 

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,695
2,293
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That's funny, because my Intel stock cooler will keep my OC'd 3570K below 80C.

Maybe you installed it wrong?

We have to deal with AVX2 on Haswell. I never thought it could make such a huge difference, but it does. Your same cooler on a 4670K would not keep it from throttling a bit under AVX2, I would bet.