New build, wondering if my temps are too high

[sebazvideo]

I finished my build two days ago, and I think something may be wrong. For starters, every now and then, on bootup, the motherboard shows this old style screen from American Megatrends, instead of the normal simplistic Asus bootup screen. At the bottom of the screen, it says CPU FAN ERROR and below Press F1 for setup, and when I press F1, it just loads Windows. This doesn't happen every time. Of course, before I closed the case I turned on the PC several times and verified that each and every fan is working, especially the CPU fan, the one that comes in the CM Hyper 212 EVO cooler. The motherboard is an Asus P9x79 Pro.

However, even after booting up like that, HWMonitor shows that the CPU fan is working fine, although there are more fans but they are 3 pin so they are not showing. I'm not sure which one is the SYSFANIN showing on HWMonitor, because all the case fans are 3 pin.

Then there's the issue with the temperature.

Last night I setup the XMP profile from the UEFI BIOS because the RAM is XMP certified, the Corsair Dominator GT 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 1866, and I set it to 1600 because the CPU (i7 3930k), according to its page on the Intel website, only goes up to 1600 Mhz for RAM and my main priority is stability.

But then I ran Prime 95 and after a couple of minutes the temps would go up to the sky, getting really fast to 75 and even 80 before I stopped it. CPUz was showing a vcore of about 1.35v, which sounded to me was too high from what I had read for this CPU. But then I read that some people were having high temps when enabling XMP, so I turned it off, and the temps are better now.

Still, they idle at about 43C and this is without any OC, and almost everything CPU and RAM related set to Auto in the BIOS. Running Prime95 in blend mode with this configuration sent the temps to about 65C, with CPUz showing that the core speed was a little over 3500 Mhz. Now, I know that the Hyper 212 Evo is not the best cooler by far, but I don't plan to overclock, so I didn't think I would need anything else. My case is a CM ATCS 840 with two gigantic 240 mm fans on the top, another one on the front, and a 120mm in the back. The same case with my previous build, a AMD 1090T CPU with a CM Hyper 212+ cooler, kept the CPU at 32C idle, and it would go up to less than 60 when running Prime95.

Then there is something that seems weird. HWMonitor doesn't show the logical cores, only the 6 physical ones, and as you can see in this capture, Core #2 is between 3 and 8 degrees lower than the rest. And that happens every time I run HWMonitor, even though Task Manager shows all 12 logical cores at full 100% all the time while running Prime95. Even at idle, that particular core is 36 while the rest are at least four more degrees.

So I'm wondering if I got a faulty motherboard, a faulty fan, CPU, or what is it. I wonder if I didn't apply the thermal paste correctly, but I followed all the instructions from the paste's manufacturer website, and I spent extra in this Artic Silver 5 because it's supposed to be one of the best. Per the paste instructions, first I "tinted" the cooler surface with a tiny drop of the paste and spreading it back and forth with a credit card (which was brand new, still in the envelope). Then I used the instructions on this website: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...sk=view&id=150&Itemid=62&limit=1&limitstart=5 to apply the paste on the cooler as the final application. If you scroll to the last picture, that's the method I used. There was a tiny bit of paste coming out of the sides, but I used a few q tips to clean it all.

So I apologize for the long post, but what do you guys think could be causing this? I want to get this sorted out before I go on to install all my programs, I don't want to realize that I have a faulty component 2 months from now and then having to go through the whole thing again.

Thanks,

Sebastian

 

[dma0991]

CPU fan error happens when the fan connector isn't connected to the CPU_FAN header. There should be a clear, written label on the motherboard itself to show that it is a CPU_FAN header. If it is connected anyways, try searching through the BIOS for settings that might have been changed or better yet, find BIOS revision updates that might fix the problems you're having with the motherboard.

HWMonitor or most temperature monitoring software will only show the physical cores. HT does not exist physically and it only works by implementation and any additional workload that is placed on the logical threads will result in an increased temperature reading of the 6 physical cores.

There is nothing wrong with the CPU, there will be slight temperature variation from one core to another based on its position. The TIM spreading method is meant for the older CM Hyper212+ which had gaps between each heat pipe with aluminum spacers. The CM Hyper212 Evo has each heatpipes side by side, eliminating most of the gaps. A simple rice grain method will suffice most of the time.

 

[sebazvideo]

Thanks for your reply. The CPU fan is actually plugged into the CPU FAN connector. Now what I'm trying to find out is if there is a way to change the fans that are not PWM to voltage controlled. I replaced the rear fan with a CM that is PWM, but the other three in the case, also Cooler Master, are 3 pin, so when I play around with Fan Xpert I can change the speed thresholds for the rear fan, but the other three, even if I put all three handles at 100%, they keep the same speed, which is rather slow, so when I run something like Prime95, most of the work is done by the CPU fan and the rear fan.

I suppose I could buy three of those 240mm that are PWM, but all my motherboards before this one had a setting in the BIOS to choose between PWM and voltage. I've been to every single item in the BIOS and I can't find it, is it that voltage control is not available in current motherboards?

 

[dma0991]

PWM fans only works with a 4 pin connector, anything less and it will be voltage controlled by default. A 4 pin fan connector that is plugged into a 3 pin fan header will not be PWM compatible. If you prefer a more manual approach to fan control, get a fan controller instead of a software approach.

They are pretty cheap and based on my experience using a Lamptron FC5v2 to control 4 of my fans, it is as fine grained adjustment as it gets. However, there is no on the fly fan speed adjustment based on the CPU load so if you've specified that the fans should run at 50% it will run at that speed the moment you turn on your PC.

 

[sebazvideo]

OK, but what I don't get is why this board doesn't allow to select PWM or voltage controlled? I haven't had a lot of boards, but the other three systems I built had that option, and all were different brands of motherboards. In them, I could adjust the speed of the 3 pin fans to whatever speed I wanted, and while I don't want them at 100%, I want them faster than the current speed.

 

[dma0991]

It depends on what the motherboard manufacturer implements on their products. It won't be the same for all motherboards, some may have features that others don't. For example, my MSI Z77A-GD65 only comes with manual core voltage tweak and doesn't come with offset voltage settings that other motherboards do.

 

[danjw]

OK, but what I don't get is why this board doesn't allow to select PWM or voltage controlled? I haven't had a lot of boards, but the other three systems I built had that option, and all were different brands of motherboards. In them, I could adjust the speed of the 3 pin fans to whatever speed I wanted, and while I don't want them at 100%, I want them faster than the current speed.

PWM, means Pulse Width Modulation, it refers to either a modulation of a dedicated control signal on the fourth 5V pin or of the 12V power for the fan. Voltage drop is a different method of control for a fan, where the voltage is adjusted to control the speed of the fan. They are entirely different methods of fan control.