MSI Z790 GAMING PLUS WIFI + i7-14700k: Slightly high CPU temperature even not heavy load

[Otto_83]

Hello, I would like some suggestions regarding the temperatures of my CPU i7-14700k, which at the moment seem slightly high to me.
To avoid CPU thermal throttling during benchmark, I changed these settings in the motherboard BIOS ( Msi Z790 GAMING PLUS WIFI- AMI BIOS 7E06vH4 ):
CPU cooler type: Boxed Cooler
PL1-PL2: 240W
MSI enhanced turbo = Disabled
Intel C-State = Enabled
IA CEP Support = Enabled
tvb voltage optimizations = enabled
tvb ratio clipping = enabled
tvb ratio clipping enhanced = Enabled
In this way, the CPU temperature under heavy load (Cinebench 2024), is around 93°.

Working with Adobe Lightroom the average temperature is 30°, but sometimes it suddenly rises to 72°, after a few seconds it returns below 40°.
What worries me most are the CPU temp spikes, especially when the load is not that high, such as when I use Lightroom or other programs that are not very demanding on the CPU.
I'll post some screenshots to help you understand better.
Thanks in advance and sorry for my bad English

My PC specifications:
-MB: Msi Z790 GAMING PLUS WIFI
-CPU: I7-14700K
-PSU: Kolink REGULATOR 750W
-RAM: CORSAIR VENGEANCE DDR5 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 6400MHz CL32 Intel
-VGA: ASUS DUAL NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 OC Edition
-AIO: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 (Rev.7), mounted on top of the case
-CASE: be quiet! Shadow Base 800
-FANS: 3x PURE WINGS 3 140mm on front- 1xPURE WINGS 3 140mm on rear

 

[plutomate]

72 degree C is not really dangerous.
See your number looks fine, i wouldn't worry that much.

You could also attempt to change CPU lite load mode lower such as mode 9, if your CPU can handle it, your temperature should even do better.
Latest BIOS introduce Intel default (performance) profile, but look like your settings is already way more conservative.

https://download.msi.com/bos_exe/mb/7E06vH51.zip

 

[Otto_83]

Thank you for your help.
Honestly, I was a little worried about my CPU temperatures, maybe because I was used to my old i7-6700k CPU, which had significantly lower temperatures.

These new CPUs have dynamics that I am not familiar with: its temperatures seem to fluctuate when operating under relatively low load, instead when operating under heavy loads, the temperatures become more stable.
However, in general, it seems that the temperatures of these new CPUs are really high.
I hope this CPU will last for a long time because they are very expensive.

Anyway, I had installed the new beta bios, but then I went back to the previous one because strangely I had noticed a worsening of temperatures with it. In fact, my CPU temperature was as high as 97° during tests with cinebench 2024
I attach a screenshot below. This is when I had installed the new bios with the optimized preset by Intel

 

[polishsirhawk]

You're boosting to 250W, so of course temperatures are gonna be kind of high, especially if you've got IHS to coldplate mismatch and since you're on Liquid Freezer, that's most likely exactly the case.

 

[Otto_83]

You're boosting to 250W, so of course temperatures are gonna be kind of high

Yes, you are right

especially if you've got IHS to coldplate mismatch and since you're on Liquid Freezer, that's most likely exactly the case.

Regarding my Artic freezer II 360, could you explain more about what you are referring to?
I mounted the Thermalright contact frame, did you mean that?. Or do you think it is not fully compatible with my CPU?
In that case, which cooler do you suggest?
Thank you

 

[polishsirhawk]

Intel's CPUs got the integrated heatspreader, which currently dominate in a banana shape, where you've got a valley in the middle of it, Liquid Freezer's II coldplate is as flat as it gets, resulting in a usually horrible geometry mismatch and temperatures way higher, than you'd expect. Contact frame doesn't fix IHS' for the most part, they do certainly help still. Applying liquid metal (DC2 Pro, Conductonaut) should help tremendously with mismatch, but in terms of coolers Valkyrie AiOs are probably the only one with coldplate the most suitable for current gen Intels. The rest is classic convexity in the middle.

 

[Otto_83]

Thank you for the further clarification and for suggestions.
I prefer to avoid the liquid metal, because I'm not very familiar with it and I don't want to do any damage.
The cooler you recommend seems great, but it is very expensive, at least in Italy. I will take it into account for a future purchase.

 

[polishsirhawk]

What you can do is to remove the cooler and check how the thermal paste compressed, just try to not twist the block.

 

[citay]

-RAM: CORSAIR VENGEANCE DDR5 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 6400MHz CL32 Intel

You need to enable XMP for it. It's only running at DDR5-4800.

PL1-PL2: 240W

Low- to mid-90°C is still a bit high for my taste, so i would try 230W perhaps. There is no need to fuss over the performance difference from 230W to >250W, or buy a better cooler just because of this. 230W is still good and you will almost get the full performance. You can even improve the performance later from tuning CPU Lite Load, as has been mentioned, but that has to be properly tested for stability.

Working with Adobe Lightroom the average temperature is 30°, but sometimes it suddenly rises to 72°, after a few seconds it returns below 40°.
What worries me most are the CPU temp spikes, especially when the load is not that high, such as when I use Lightroom or other programs that are not very demanding on the CPU.

Honestly, I was a little worried about my CPU temperatures, maybe because I was used to my old i7-6700k CPU, which had significantly lower temperatures.

The 14th gen i7 and i9 models are absolute monsters, with low efficiency. The 6700K was a tame house pet in comparison. With some load on a couple cores, the power draw can jump up tremendously on a 14700K, way past what you'd have gotten with a 6700K with full load on all cores. So this is a completely different league. Even compared to a 14600K, the 14700K is in a different league, it's worse than a 13900K when it comes to the power draw.

You had the right idea initially, setting power limits to protect your cooling (so you don't have to rely on thermal throttling). In the beta BIOS, they have the wrong preset for your cooling, also see here. The presets are all more or less arbitrary, the only new thing is, Intel are recommending numbers for different CPU models and different scenarios which should not be exceeded according to them. But if we take the 253W or even 320W limits (if you had a 14900KS) for example, that could still overpower a lot of cooling solutions, so the power limits are best set individually for each case, if you run into thermal throttling. Only if you don't, you can keep them at Intel recommendations (of course, for a 14th gen i7/i9, not with the 125W Long Duration power limit, this would hinder the performance a bit much under prolonged full load).

Anyway, i've seen you've done a bit of research already, if you do a bit more, follow some links from the thread i linked above, i am sure you will better understand how it all works together.

The main takeaway is, with a 14700K, you will already have to set power limits with a lot of coolers, see here. And setting power limits is nothing unusual with a 14th gen i7/i9, it's normal. Otherwise the power draw can become too much for the cooling to handle. If you read the CPU reviews and don't only look at the performance numbers, put also at the power consumption numbers and temperatures (while also checking what cooling they use), it should have become pretty clear that this i7 behaves much more like an i9, it is not comparable with a 13700K there. It can easily have 20% higher power draw in just about every load scenario.

(from https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i7-14700k/23.html)

 

[Otto_83]

Thank you citay
You have given me a lot of useful information.
I will follow the links you posted to get an even better idea of how these new generations of Intel CPU's works.
I agree with you when you say that Intel has been overdoing it with these CPU's.

I will set the Power limit to 230w as you suggested and do some testing. After that, if needed I will modify the CPU Lite Load and do some stability tests with Prime95 Small FFTs or with OCCT for 15-30 minutes, as you recommend in one of your posts.

I really appreciate the help you guys are giving to me.

 

[polishsirhawk]

Please, don't use SmallFFT, this is a complete waste of time... Go for y cruncher VT3 ideally. Thermally there's around 20C to be gained, since you're at 90C on LF II 360mm and just 253W, but it requires better matched cooler, liquid metal or lapping the IHS. My 12700k under LF II 360 only sees 85C at 275W burst, but it's lapped and with liquid metal, stock had 90C at 220W already. Lite Load may or may not be overexagerrated (with emphasize on may), but make sure to check VID against Vcore under 100% all core load (so any stress test, including a memtest), it has to match. Since you opt for Lite Load (just go advanced mode, set AC to 1 and bump Loadline Calibration until it's stable, no redundant overvolting on low load this way) and power limiting you want your power draw reading be accurate. Having DC mismatch will result in incorrect VID and thus power limiting kicking in or not incorrectly, then you'll need to continue bumping DC until vid=vcore under said load.

 

[mardon85]

Great work MSI on releasing this new Bios. I'd rather start at what I know is intel's base and then work the voltage down lower.

 

[polishsirhawk]

Intel's base was known since forever on their respective CPU product pages on their ark site. There is no guidance on AC LL either, as that depends on default LLC and VRM design. AC LL being set currently is taken out of an [***CENSORED***] from the "max value" column and it's wrong to set that high in the first place, since CPUs have issues due to vdroop, there's zero reason to bump idle and low load voltages with AC LL. I still cannot comprehend why manufacturers somehow forgot Loadline Calibration exists and serves exactly to fix vdroop related issues.

 

[Otto_83]

I did some testing with y-cruncher VT3 stress and cinebench 2024.
I set the power limit to 230W.
With Cinebench after 10 minutes the temperature was at 88°. Instead, with y-cruncher running a VT3 stress test, after a few minutes some CPU cores getting thermal throttling.
So I decided to adjust the CPU Lite load.
I started from level 5 and lowered one step at a time after each test passed.
During all tests, the Vcores and VIDs were both very close.
I didn't go below level 3 because even though the PC was stable, Cinebench 2024 score was really low (920 pts).
Temperatures, with the CPU Lite Load set to level 3, were 68° with y-cruncher, and 64° with cinebench 2024.
At the moment temperatures are really low, but performance is also dropped a lot. At least according to the latest Cinebench score.

 

[polishsirhawk]

Oh yeah, forgot, with Undervolt Protection and/or IA CEP enabled you can encounter clock stretching while undervolting, which basically throttles CPU cycles to prevent instability, the surefire way to monitor its occurence is by checking effective clock against reported clock in HWiNFO. Monitoring score in benchmarks can show that, but it's not as reliable. You'll only need to unwind core clock and effective clock sensors and then compare them. Having clock stretching doesn't mean the CPU can't operate perfectly fine at lower voltage with full performance after disabling aforementioned functions.

There's like 10-15mV discrepancy between vcore and VID, so it's pretty much perfect, meaning DC LL at default settings is correct enough.

 

[Otto_83]

I did the same tests again as before.
PL1-PL=230W - CPU Lite Load set to level 3.
This time in the BIOS I changed these settings:
-CPU Under voltage protection= Disabled
-TVB Ratio Clipping = Disabled
-TVB Ratio Clipping Enhanced = Disabled
-IA CEP Support = Disabled
The PC seems stable, temperatures seem good, and the score in cinebench seems good too.
In your opinion can I leave the PC like this for daily use.
I use Adobe suite for photography and Davinci Resolve for video editing.
With the current settings, could I have stability issues while using these programs?
Thank you

 

[polishsirhawk]

You won't know, until you stress test for enough time, do 30 cycles of y cruncher N63 and you'll know. If your 14700kf truly sustain its full all core performance at just 1.1V then damn, that's a good unit.

That said... wtf is up with the effective clock, why is it 0 MHz? From what I can see, Avast may bug it out like this, not that Avast or any similar AV is even useful anyway.

 

[Otto_83]

I honestly don't know why it is 0 mhz. Maybe it is a bug with HWiNFO64 or something else. Avast is disabled but its modules remain active as you already know so it could be that.
Anyway, I appreciate the help you are giving me, I will do that test tomorrow.
Maybe at least once in my life I got lucky with something or maybe not and tomorrow my PC will be on fire, tomorrow we will know.
Ciao

 

[polishsirhawk]

Yeah, so it's the Avast bugging it out. Just yeet this spyware away from your PC, it's not even doing more or better job than Defender does and only causes issues.

Also - playing with AC Loadline moves voltage across the board (since AC Loadline is a dynamic offset added to VID), in contrast to LLC only affecting vdroop, so you'll want to do intermediary load tests as well, Geekbench 6 is very good for that, too bad it doesn't have a looping option. So once you're fine with N63, do like 40 repeats of GB6 back to back (a successful run will produce a score and open up browsers page, you can cancel the last test and launch it again) and you'll be pretty much golden.

 

[mardon85]

This seems much better for me as my voltage is pretty low.

I'm running AC/AC at 9 and max Core VID is 1.33v with max reported VCore being 1.37 its typically around 1.21v in game.
Only thing I'm noticing is its not hitting max 5.6Ghz fixed in game. What would you suggest to tweak? Its not hitting the power or amperage limit at I maxed the short term power limit time and upped both of these to 340w and 340A respectively.