Safe temps for i7-4790k?

So, my new PC finally came in, and I've been putting it through it's paces. Here is the spec sheet:

- i7-4790k

- Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK

- EVGA SuperNova G2 750W

- Gigabyte Gaming G1 GTX 970

- Kingston Hyper Fury X 16 GB in dual channel

- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

My question is the following: during a Prime95 benchmark test, my max temps go to 80°C and this causes my PC to crash and go into a hard reboot after about 5 minutes of Blend testing. During real world usage, like playing Dragon Age Inquisition on Ultra settings, my temps peek in the low 70s. Are these temps normal for long term operation? Could they be better? If so, what should I check/change?

I read in a few different places that Prime95 is no longer a suitable test for Haswell CPUs due to the fact they have adaptive voltage and adaptive clocks/turbo boost, and it doesn't accurately reflect real world usage. Is this true?

Thanks for the help

You shouldn't use prime 95 newer versions because it uses AVX code on the FPU and that causes really high temps of the cpu. Now with a Hyper 212 EVO you shouldn't peak into the low 70's using stock speeds. What case are you using and cooling setup?

Have you tried reapplying the thermal compound. If it's dried out then you'll get high temps, I'd also suggest using Arctic Cooling MX-4. This is definitely the first thing to try, providing your case has sufficient airflow and you don't live in a desert.

@GarGx1: Well, I just applied the thermal paste. I used the stock one that came with my Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. My Dad used a technique he used on my last case, where he applied a bunch of thermal paste onto the CPU and spread it around evenly with the tip of an old credit card. He says this worked well on my last PC, since I was getting temps of 65°C max with my Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3.16 Ghz. Though I should note that he probably used a higher quality thermal paste back with my old CPU than with my current i7-4790k.

@04dcarraher: My case is a Corsair Obsidian 450 D. It's got dual 140 mm fan intake and a single 120 mm fan as exhaust, as well as the PSU that pushes out the bottom. My Cooler Master 212 EVO has a single fan in push configuration, in the sense it pushes air towards the back of the case towards the exhaust fan.

I've upped the CPU fan speed to max, and noticed a 5°C decrease in temps.

If you want to achieve 20C on idle I'd recommend on CM Nepton 280L - I've recommended it to a friend of mine and he's more than thankful now =)

Kraken x61 is another option for an AIO cooler.

3570k at 4.6Ghz and it idles at 23c, load at 70c.

Also I've only got 2 fans pushing, I don't know what temps are like with another 2 fans.

The difference with quad fan setup is a 1-2C down, not something that is actually worth spending money on - it's more of a cool thing to do - to make your rig look as beasty as you can ( I know so, I've got dual fan setup on my H60 :P )

@GTR12: @PredatorRules: Thanks for the replies guys. I'll definitely check out these coolers. However, what I'm more curious about is whether I'm getting the ideal temps I should be getting from my i7-4790k/Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO combo. Getting a new cooler is certainly a possibility. However, I'm not a aiming for super low temps. All I want is for my Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO to be doing the best cooling job it can, and I'm wondering if it's currently doing that with my temps in the 70s. Should my temps be in the 70s with my Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO, or did I perhaps not install something correctly/Bios issue/etc. preventing me from getting lower temps?

Usually in reviews you see the lowest temps with the best water coolers.

It's hard to know unless you check some forums and ask people about their temps since the EVO212 is pretty old cooler and it was tested on previous gen CPUs.

A friend on mine got 4790K with good airflow case and H60 and got about 65C so yes you're probably good with your setup.

Make sure you've got good case with good airflow and cable management, that CPU is pretty new so I'm not sure about reapplying thermal paste.

@PredatorRules: Case is Corsair Obsidian 450. Airflow is good I think, but like I said, I've got dual 140 mm intake fans and a single 120 mm exhaust fan (not counting the PSU, which exhausts out the bottom). Cable management is very neat, with most of the cables tucked behind the mobo.

But based off what you say with the H60 achieving 65C, I guess I'm good with my setup. As long as these temps are safe for long term and aren't damaging the CPU, then I'm all good.

@genius2365:

Grab more fans and deck out that cooling potential. Do a push pull fan setup on that H60 and add fan/s on bottom(intake) and top of case (exhaust) Here is a pack of good 120mm fans LINK

@genius2365: Oh lol oops, yeah 70c on the Hyper 212 is what is expected.

@GTR12: Thanks, this is really what I wanted to know. Are these temps safe over the long term? What would be the benefits of getting a higher end cooler besides lower temps? What would lower temps gain for me, besides maybe a longer lifespan for the CPU (and is it even that much?)?

@genius2365: Overclocking

It should work this way under load it's safe, they're built for those temps.

Getting higher end cooler will give you lower temps which doesn't necessarily mean longer lifespan but it may indicate in such direction.

Oh and as @GTR12 said, the possibility to OC with higher clock speed while maintaining lower temps.

Your case is excellent one, I'd install 2 more top exhausts I recommend on either one of those: Noctua NF, Corsair AF, CM JetFlo.

i have a 4770k, and when I was testing it for stability i never found it crashed when it hit 80c areas. Even when testing out its frequency limits and having it hit the thermal limit of 100c, it didnt crash as long as it had enough voltage. I found all crashes were due to lack of voltage. Put the voltage up a few notches and see if it still crashes. You may have to knock down your overclock 100mhz though, because your temps will go even higher with a bit more voltage. 80c shouldn't crash an intel cpu if it has enough volts (this is based off my overclocking experiences on my 2600k and 4770k).

+1.

If I remember correctly, prime95 uses FMA3 and/or AVX2.

AVX2 fries every Haswell CPU. When the program asks the CPU to use AVX2 instructions, the CPU automatically adds 0.xV to the Vcore.

I was testing it too when I first bought i7 4770K and the temp was very high with Noctua NH12S.

So 80C is natural and you will never seen these numbers again, ever, unless you will run a stress test or if you run a math computing program.

@GTR12: Hmm, at 4 GHz for my i7-4790k, I don't think I'm worrying too much about overclocking potential, at least for now haha. But at least now I know temps are a barrier for overclocking. Thanks

@PredatorRules: Ok, so I know my case is solid now. You say you recommend installing two top exhaust fans among those brands suggested. How much of a temp decrease would I see? Probably 2-3C? Would it be too optimistic to ask for 5C :)

Also, another potential issue: my mobo only has 1 fan header left, and it's a 3 pin, so it doesn't have the "Sense" feature (which I think allows it to adapt to temps). So even installing one extra fan is iffy at best. My friend suggested I find a way to combine the wires for my two front fans so that they can be controlled by a single fan header. But then there are more questions. Is this bad for the mobo (maybe power draw issues)? Is it bad for the fans? Is it even possible to do this?

Also, would I see more of a benefit to my CPU temps if I instead I slapped an extra fan onto my CPU heatsink and ran my Cooler Master 212 EVO with two fans in push-pull configuration, rather than the single fan push configuration I have now?

@04dcarraher: @Coseniath: Ah, some clarification about prime95 and Haswell. I knew I had read in some places of the issues, but now I finally got a solid answer and some technical details as to why there are issues. Thanks guys :)

Noctua fans come with split adapters so you could basicallly install infinite fans on any MOBO.

Proper cooling makes your case enviroment stay as cool as possible and not gather heat more than it should; right now it's summer and my personal case with 1 intake and 1 exhaust doesn't supply with good airflow with my 290, both CPU and GPU went 80C which is kinda bad IMO since my CPU shouldn't go above 70 - perfect example of heat gathered inside a case for too long.

Double fan on heatsink might improve and might not, you could try for yourself or search for an answer on the forums, I've got a friend who had Noctua D14 and installed another fan for triple setup - no idea if it improved anything except for making it look beastier.

@genius2365: Anytime :).

By the way, this is not an issue. This is made by Intel and its intended to run like this. Its normal, its not a third party software etc etc.

Its just that Intel wanted to boost the GFLOPs of CPUs in order to reach GPUs. 4-core Haswell with AVX2 can reach 400 GFLOPs SP which is double than IvyBridge.

Check this:

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Intel’s Haswell is an unprecedented threat to Nvidia, AMD

Wider, deeper, faster

Haswell is a logical extension of the microarchtectural improvements Intel first introduced in Sandy Bridge. The new chip adds support for Intel’s second-generation Advanced Vector eXtensions (AVX2), which doubles the core’s peak FPU throughput. L1 and L2 bandwidth have been doubled to ensure the execution units stay fed, and the integer and FPU register files have all been enlarged. Branch prediction efficiency also gets a boost. Haswell’s real-world single-threaded performance in unoptimized code is expected to improve by 10-15%. In optimized, AVX2 code, the leap will be much larger; AVX2 includes support for integer vectorization that AVX lacks.

The increased FPU capability and additional AVX2 functionality make a huge difference in Haswell’s floating-point performance. The CPU is capable of up to 32 single-precision and 16 double-precision floating point operations per core. That’s twice what Sandy Bridge could achieve; a theoretical eight-core Haswell clocked at 3.8GHz will offer 972.8 gigaflops of SP and 486.4 gigaflops of DP performance. While it’s true that current GPUs exceed these levels, x86 compatibility is one heck of a carrot. Intel’s “good enough” argument sank the big iron RISC vendors of the 1990s and early 2000s, and it’s a real threat to Nvidia’s GPGPU momentum. The chip’s L1/L2 cache bandwidth is vastly increased from current levels; the L1 bus is twice as wide as well. The massive amounts of additional bandwidth are what the chip needs to keep the AVX2 units busy; Haswell should be able to hit a relatively high percentage of its peak theoretical gigaflops rate in real-world scenarios.

While Team Green will likely retain the overall performance advantage, a quad-core Haswell with a 4GHz Turbo mode will offer 256 gigaflops of double-precision floating point (512 gigaflops single-precision). That level of single-precision performance is right in the neighborhood of Nvidia’s GT 640. Because Nvidia has historically hobbled double-precision performance on consumer cards, quad-core Haswell could well outperform Nvidia’s GTX 680 and possibly pace the GTX 580 in DP operations.

Nvidia could win the battle at the high end, only to lose the war at other price points if Intel chooses to make an issue of it. Worse, there’s the fact that every single Nvidia-equipped HPC system comes with an Intel solution by default. Make no mistake, Intel is playing up the potential Xeon Phi connection; three of the company’s IDF seminars addressed vectorization for both Haswell and Xeon Phi.

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So the reason you CPU heats more than normal when the program asks for it, its cause it reaches Super Sayan levels of SP/DP for CPUs. :P

ps: Here is a link to Intel's pdf about Advanced Vector Extensions.

70 at stock with a Hyper 212 Evo sounds about right. My 4771 never goes above 61.

Lot's of people forget the most important figure to mention...ambient temp. Where I live (in the hot desert) my house is 80f, or around 26-28c in my house. Once I boot up a game, my office gets even warmer (85f). Thus my idle with a h110i gt on a 4790k is a little over 30c. Usual gaming temps are in the mid 50s, with occasional spikes above 60c. That's with a 280mm rad and push/pull config intaking fresh air from outside the case. Don't forget the huge roll ambient air plays!