AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs Reportedly Run Hot, Up to 95C - ExtremeTech:
Right after AMD's launch of Zen 4, we now have a report of its new CPUs running at blistering temperatures. This isn't a huge shock since AMD is notably increasing TDP for Zen 4 in order to crank the clocks. However, Zen 3 was famous for its efficiency, especially compared with its competition from Intel. So while Intel's chips have always run a bit hot under full load, that wasn't the case with AMD's consumer CPUs. That might change with Zen 4, though. According to a new report, the Ryzen 9 7950X can get as hot as 95C. The mainstream Ryzen 5 7600X can also hit temps as high as 90C. Keep in mind these are engineering samples though, so this might not be the case with actual retail CPUs.
News of the surprisingly high temps comes from a normally reliable source: Enthusiast Citizen at Bilibili, via Wccftech. It was previously reported that AMD would allow for up to 230W to be consumed by its flagship CPU. In a post, he notes when that happens, the 7950X can hit 95C [203F]. This is a CPU with a 5.7GHz boost clock, but he says it struggles to maintain 5GHz at that temperature. The 7600X is also reported to consume 120W under full load, and to run at 90C.
This could be partially due to the tiny size of AMD's triplets, which the company says are half the size of Alder Lake's monolithic dies. Raptor Lake has the same design, and Enthusiast Citizen concludes Intel's 13th generation CPU will easily vanquish AMD's Zen 4 flagship. "Multi-core 7950X will basically lose to 13900K without suspense. The heat accumulation combined with the temperature wall will cause 7950X under heavy loads to be unable to maintain 5G, 230W 95 degrees, and it will be ashes when it comes out," he wrote.
It should be noted that 230W is in the vicinity of the Core i9-13900K's power envelope, which is reportedly around 250W. However, Intel is also reportedly planning an "extreme performance" mode on some high-end motherboards that will let it consume up to 350W. However, we doubt a lot of people will use that feature given the cooling requirements. It also needs to be said that like Alder Lake and assumedly Raptor Lake, the Ryzen CPU will only hit those temps under intense, all-core workloads. That's not something that will typically happen when casually gaming.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday September 07 2022, @05:36PM (8 children)
"engineering samples" are a red flag, and high temperatures have been blamed on the BIOS and may have already been fixed:
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X multi-core Cinebench R23 performance seemingly much better than previously rumored without needing 360 mm AIO cooling [notebookcheck.net]
You should wait until actual reviews come out later in September before drawing any conclusions.
Meanwhile, even a Raptor Lake engineering sample is seemingly more efficient [notebookcheck.net] than Alder Lake.
If you are buying a high-TDP, high-core count chip, you should either know what you need to cool them effectively, undervolt and limit clock speeds, or accept whatever the hardware is going to do automatically to keep itself from boiling.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday September 07 2022, @07:13PM (2 children)
I built the system I'm on right now in early 2021 with an AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz and the stock heat sink and fan. After reading some bad stuff about the stock thermal paste that comes on that heat sink (issues like difficulties with removing the CPU later), I decided I'd redo that. I used Arctic Silver thermal paste after cleaning, conditioning, and tinting the surfaces as per their instructions.
I can't say enough about how well that worked out. I just tested, and if I force all 16 threads across the 8 cores to 100% and leave it that way, the hottest it gets is just barely over 80C with no CPU throttling etc. Can't beat that.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 08 2022, @01:05AM (1 child)
> Can't beat that.
Technically speaking... yes, you can.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday September 08 2022, @10:11AM
Granted. I suppose "Nothing wrong with that" would've been more appropriate ;).
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday September 07 2022, @07:44PM (4 children)
Thanks for the info, and I have to agree with above statement, but how does one do that?
The only 2 things I know of are:
1) use a motherboard that lets you tweak things. But that's a pretty big undertaking- researching, buying and trying motherboards... time and $ consuming at least.
2) OS-level utilities that can get in and tweak voltages, clock speeds, multipliers, fan speeds, etc. What little I've messed with those, they are very MB and chipset specific. IE, you could find a great MB but the tweaker software doesn't work.
Fortunately I'm not a "power user", but if I ever needed to build a very high-end system, I wouldn't know how to navigate the MB maze... (and MB prices vary wildly).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday September 07 2022, @09:51PM
Ryzen Master is the official program on Windows, and you can just set a lower TDP target such as 105W or 65W. There are other utilities on Linux, some of which may need to be updated for Ryzen 7000.
But if you can use your motherboard's BIOS, that might be the way to go.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday September 08 2022, @11:20PM (2 children)
Here's some related info on a recent CNX post:
https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/09/08/how-to-check-tdp-pl1-and-pl2-power-limits-in-windows-and-linux/ [cnx-software.com]
I think I've seen stories on Phoronix about AMD CPU power/temperature monitoring improving in Linux lately, but it might only be applicable to recent generations.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday September 09 2022, @01:14AM (1 child)
Thanks, that's awesome. The problem with the MB / BIOS settings approach is if you push things, you can get some ugly crashes.
What little I've played with some tuning software, the software would settle the system (close out applications and open files) and do its own autotuning until it flaked and froze, but it remembered the last good setting. Sorry, I don't remember what software that was... probably on some system I haven't fired up in a few years. I used to be more of a tweaker / tuner / overclocker but systems have been fast enough so I don't push them anymore.
Thinking out loud (sort of), I suppose you could clone your HD and run experiments with BIOS settings, that way if you clobber it, no great loss.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday September 11 2022, @12:26AM
https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-P-State-EPP-Linux [phoronix.com]
https://www.phoronix.com/search/AMD%20P-State [phoronix.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rupert Pupnick on Wednesday September 07 2022, @10:05PM (1 child)
Junction temperature or case temperature?
Still or moving air? Ambient temperature? Any heatsinking? What kind?
Was the test platform shared with other components dissipating significant heat?
What about thermal paths through the PCB itself?
If that's too much detail, then just give us the relevant thermal resistances (deg C per W) along with power dissipation, or call your publication something other than "ExtremeTech".
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Wednesday September 07 2022, @11:33PM
All good questions, but, well, it's "lay-tech", if you will.
I can't speak to this particular CPU- not sure if they have internal temp. measurement. They could, I suppose. What I've seen on many motherboards is a thermistor (usually) on some springy flexible circuit material in the middle of the CPU socket, such that it touches the bottom of the CPU. It's pretty shielded under there (open center area of the socket), and at steady-state it's going to be pretty close to actual CPU silicon temperature.
Bigger CPUs pretty much all must have heatsinks with fans.
Yeah, I've noticed quite a bit of heat, just touching the underside of a motherboard in operation, where the CPU pins conduct heat into the socket and down into the PC board. But my hunch is that it's a very small percentage of the total heat dissipated.
Motherboard probably in a typical PC case with some kind of case fan, probably typical "room" temperature of say 24 C? Most other motherboard parts would emit negligible heat compared to CPU.
Most power supplies have their own exhaust fan, so that heat should be going out of the case- not getting sucked into the CPU cooler.