Keep an eye on the “Power” line, then. That tells you directly how much load you’re putting on the cooling system. My prediction is that your cooling system can’t currently take more than 20-30 watts before rising to extreme temps. A good AIO cooler should be able to handle like 200 watts.
It could be that your other programs aren’t that good about multi-core work; if they’re pegging a single core, your setup may still be able to deal with that. 8 cores at 20% load is more than a single core at 100% load (at the same clocks).
There are others, but Prime95 has always been my go-to burn-in program. No installation required, just unzip and run it, and hit the “just testing” button. Not only should it not overheat, but it should also not produce any errors. I usually do a 24-hr burn-in on any system I build.
It was worse than 80C at a 20% load, though. At the same 20% load, it would quickly reach heat death at 115C and shut down the computer. 80C was just where I stopped it for the “experiment” in the post. But it would have gone much higher after a few minutes if I let it. Also worth noting is that if I wasn’t “playing the game”, so if I made another window the active window (even without minimizing the game), the load was still 20%. So, the load was not changing but the temperature would go down and return to normal. The AIO was more than capable of cooling the processor. It just would not cool it if the game was the active window. The processor was using between 15-19 Watts of power in either scenario, and running at 2698.03 MHz in both scenarios (remember, I underclocked it). In both scenarios the power draw, the core load and the freq was nearly identical. But if the game screen was not the active screen, the PC would cool itself and if the game screen was the active screen, the PC would begin to cook until it reached 115C and would shut off.
Now that I’ve fixed the problem by turning off Game Mode, the processor stays cool like it should. I haven’t downloaded the Prime95 yet (I want to give my chip a much needed break). But I did get it up to pulling 50 Watts with no increase in temperature. So, it’s not the AIO. It was something about the Game Mode preventing the computer from cooling the processor. But I have no idea what that could have been. If Game Mode works by prioritizing processes needed to play a game and marginalizes other processes, I wonder if one of those ignored background apps were responsible for temperature regulation?? Maybe the program was screaming, “We’re getting hot!!! Activate a fan or something!” and Game Mode was saying, “Shut up! We’re playing a game over here!!”
I missed this earlier, sorry. While the problem has been solved, I’ll answer these questions in case someone else stumbles on this thread searching for a solution to a similar problem.
It didn’t matter what monitor the game was on. The only thing that mattered was if the game screen was active. I tried it in windowed mode and full screen mode. If the game was active, the problem presented itself. I guess this is how Windows determines whether or not I’m “playing a game” as the Game Mode description says it’s not supposed to do anything unless you’re playing a game.
2, Yes. In fact, I initially was covering the game monitor with another full sized window because I originally thought the problem involved the game being displayed. Eventually, after trial and error, I realized it wasn’t related to whether the game was actually displayed or visible, partially or totally. All that mattered was if the game was the active screen. I first noticed this when all I had in the other screen was the Temp Monitor program. That’s just a tiny little window. One time I clicked on that window without even pausing the game or minimizing it or covering it up with another full window. As soon as I clicked on the small window of the CoreTemp program, the temperatures started dropping drastically.
3. Yup. I’ve tried all kinds of stuff. This has been a problem for a while. I just don’t play games enough for it to be a huge priority. Recently I’ve gotten fed up with it again. I was about to spend like 1000 bucks on a custom water cooling system or buy a new PC or something. Finally I realized that there might be something I’m missing. (And there was! It was Game Mode)
4. ONI is extremely CPU intensive. There is another game I play that is more GPU heavy. That game lasts longer, but even it will kill the computer eventually. (Not any more, though!!)
50 watts is still not much. My CPU pulls ~95 W in Prime95, and it’s not as beefy a processor as you have (though it is on an older process).
There’s really nothing that Game Mode can do except uncorking the clocks and removing any frame rate limits. There’s still something going on with your system.
I don’t suppose you have a wall-outlet power meter, like a Kill-A-Watt? That will tell you if something else in your system is drawing a lot more power in the bad state.
BES is a small tool that throttles the CPU usage of the process you “target” : for instance, you can limit the CPU usage of a process which would use CPU 100%, down to 50% (or any percentage you’d like). With this, you can use other programs comfortably while doing something CPU-intensive in the background. For more than 10 years, BES has also helped various gamers as a handy “anti-freeze” agent, though that was not the original purpose of BES.
Don’t know if this will be of use to you but there may b other member who might find it useful.
Since April, 2017 – 4-1/2 years ago. Also, when it was added, the default was set to ‘ON’. Microsoft seems to have a habit of choosing wrong when picking defaults.
I’m not sure if you’re missing the point or if I am. Switching Game Mode from On to Off, and toggling the game from being the active window does not affect the power draw, or the clock freq, or the core load. The only difference is the fact that when Game Mode is ON and the game is the active window, my PC stops cooling itself. That’s the strange behavior. You keep saying that the AIO is the problem. This would only make sense if Game Mode somehow affected the heat production of the processor. If Game Mode made the processor work harder, or faster, or draw more watts or increase the load, then we could conclude the the AIO simply can’t handle the increased processor demand.
But that’s not what’s happening. None of that changes. In fact, in some cases, the demand decreases in Game Mode. But the heat still rises. There is something buggy about Game Mode that is reducing the performance of my cooling system. While that does show there is a problem with the PC, the problem doesn’t appear to be hardware related. Game Mode is just buggy, I think.
I think I’ve only been having this problem for a year, two at most. There must have been something added in an update or something I’ve installed since that isn’t playing nice with Game Mode.
The problem is that this is essentially impossible. Game Mode isn’t reducing the effectiveness of your cooling. I can’t quite say that it’s totally impossible, since under some conditions it’s possible to alter fan speeds and such from software, but these all require special drivers or software and Game Mode isn’t going to interact with those. Besides, you’d notice your fans turning off.
Game Mode can put more heat into your system by driving the CPU or GPU harder, which is why I’ve been focusing on that. I agree that you’ve seen some seeming contradictions to that. Maybe Core Temp is buggy and misreporting–hard to say right now. Maybe unlikely, but still far more likely than Game Mode somehow causing your AIO to malfunction.
There’s a mystery, still. Maybe you’re happy with the current result, but it doesn’t sound like you’re yet stressing your CPU (try filling up the entire asteroid with your base in ONI!). I still say that disabling Game Mode has simply reduced the power to a point where your AIO can cope. That theory could be wrong but I’m certain it’s much better than the idea that Game Mode is somehow bricking your cooler.
Incidentally, I just put together a Ryzen system and have been stress testing it while I type this. It’s been going for about 30 minutes now. Temp is at 59 C, which is maybe 30 above ambient (it’s a little warm in here). Power is 135 W. 16 cores at 100% load, all at ~3.3 GHz. That’s how an AIO should behave.
I had an AIO pump die and I never got a warning from my PC. Somehow it thought it was working enough even though it definitely had given up the ghost. My CPU got super hot like you reported and would not throttle. I ended up killing that CPU (it happened pretty fast).
Also, proper mounting (orientation) of an AIO can make a difference as this video shows.
I have since given up on AIOs. A good air cooling heat sink is more than enough for all but the most serious of overclockers or those who want the cleaner/more cool aesthetic of water cooling. Air coolers are far more reliable.