Odd Phenom II Behavior

[nismotigerwvu]

OK guys, I'm stumped here. I've had this build since my first year of grad school (2009) but the system is as follows:

asus m4a79t deluxe
Phenom II 955 BE (running at 17.5x200 and 2400mhz NB on stock volts with a hyper 212 evo in push/pull)
Crucial M4 SSD and a few platter discs for storage
7950 (clearly a recent update )
Cooler Master Silent Pro 700 watt PSU


Has been running like this for years and rock solid. Then, today I woke up and heard all of my fans running, which is quite odd outside of a pretty decent load. Walked over to the system and saw it's basically sticking at max clocks/voltage (so 3.5ghz and 1.35V) and not clocking down. I tried resetting and a full cold power cycle to avail. I went in to the BIOS and sure enough both C1E and Cool and Quiet are enabled, but just not kicking in I guess (out of the blue, without even a reset). This isn't the end of the world or anything, but does anyone have any clue on how I should start getting this thing to well...run cool and quiet again (yes I can hear your groans from my terrible pun, I'm a PhD level Biochemist, what do you expect?)?

P.S. Yes, I've tried resetting everything back to mobo defaults (even the OC) with no success. Oddly enough, Core Temp is reporting my TJ max as 90C now, which I'm certain is about 30C over what the real value is. Maybe it's always been wrong in there and I just noticed now since I'm watching temps like a hawk. On that note, temps are fine (considering it is running full tilt all the time now) resting in the high 30's in a room that's currently 24.5C).

 

[monkeydelmagico]

any processes running?

 

[KingFatty]

Yeah, check your CPU load, is it like zero percent? Or is your CPU load like 99%? If so, then something is causing the CPU to do processing, and it would naturally not clock down under full load. Maybe you have malware that is making use of your CPU to do some sneaky bitcoin mining for itself?

 

[sm625]

TJMax is your max junction temp and it has probably always been 90C. But you may be on to something... if your motherboard sensor(s) are broken then your BIOS will respond by ramping up the fan speeds. Maybe CnQ and other power saving features are disabled under a fault condition...

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Oh I should have mentioned, I let it sit at 0% load (or something extremely close to it) for a while (long enough to shave, shower up and get dressed) and it still was sitting at a 17.5x multiplier. The fans aren't running at full tilt like a normal "panic mode", they are set to try to keep the system below 40C so they are spinning harder than usual at idle (since it is drawing a lot more current at 3.5ghz and 1.35V than it would at 800mhz and around 0.85V or whatever the low end may be) but not 100%. I'm just used to the system being below the noise floor of my bedroom at idle and now it sounds more like it would while gaming. I did a mild test before I took off this morning and fired up Dishonored and ran about for a bit, my temps looked normal for this type of load (low to mid 40's) so I don't think anything is seriously wrong. All of the voltages as reported in my BIOS were in line as well.

 

[Liquid_Static]

What power profile are you using in windows?

 

[nismotigerwvu]

Ahh, another bit I should have mentioned. Windows 7 x64 and a balanced power profile. Again, this issue arose overnight without any software changes (no windows updates, drivers or anything) so I really don't know where to start.

 

[SlowSpyder]

Do the fans and multiplier ramp up when you are in the bios too, or only once you're in Windows? What happens if you go to the bios and manually change it to 1GHz or something low clock/low voltage? Have you tried disabling C&Q and rebooting, then re-enabling it? (I'm not sure if when you reset the bios if it is enabled by default or not)

 

[KingFatty]

Isn't there something about a threshold multiplier limit before cool'n'quiet is ignored? I think it's 17.5 so yours should still work, but to test, try reducing the multiplier to 16. Maybe your system is somehow thinking your multiplier is above the threshold. (now my memory is faulty, maybe it's a threshold base frequency, but I'm pretty sure the threshold is based on the multiplier, and staying below that threshold to still enjoy C'n'Q.)

 

[monkeydelmagico]

try power save mode in windows profile

 

[mikeymikec]

In the balanced power profile, (in advanced settings) check the processor power management settings - minimum should be 5%, maximum 100%.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

In the balanced power profile, (in advanced settings) check the processor power management settings - minimum should be 5%, maximum 100%.

That did it! I have no clue how these got changed but I know where to look first if this happens again.