High idle CPU temps on i7-14700K in a Silverstone CS381

[jester]

I've recently finished a new build, with an Intel i7-14700K CPU, an ASRock Rack W680D4U-2L2T motherboard (which STH reviewed here), and a Silverstone CS381 case (which STH reviewed here). It's running Proxmox, with a main function being a virtualized TrueNAS Scale, and a bunch of other VMs, Docker containers, etc., most of which are idle most of the time.

Long story short, I'm getting very high CPU temps even at idle, with core temps in the 60s C with the CPU at 1–2%. When the CPU load gets even a little higher, all the fans start ramping up. For the CPU I have a low-profile Noctua fan that I think is properly installed—I might end up opening everything up to check the heatsink, but I'm reasonably confident I at least didn't mess it up too badly. The drive cage is right on top of the CPU area of the mobo, so there's no room for a large fan. I appreciate the fact that this case isn't regarded as great for cooling, but my expectation is that this will only rarely be pushed very hard, so I thought it would be OK. By comparison, there are six HDDs in the drive cage, and the drive temperatures are perfectly reasonable, in the 30s C even when I'm running a scrub.

A separate issue is that the fans are entirely controlled by the BIOS, and don't seem to pass anything along to the OS, and the settings are so complicated I can't figure out how to change them. Currently all three fans (CPU and two case fans) are tied to the CPU temperature sensor, so the case fans noisily ramp up when the CPU is stressed (I did post about the general problem in the TrueNAS forums). But I think this is separate issue; if the CPU were cooler, I could worry less about the fans.

Any thoughts welcome! FWIW, I have the exact same CPU in my desktop machine, in an mITX chassis, and while this does have more aggressive cooling, the temps are much lower when idle and the aggressive cooling is rarely necessary.

 

[Tech Junky]

Could be as simple as not enough contact between the cooler and CPU. Make sure the cooler is tightly screwed down.

Maybe it's crap paste that's degraded and not passing the heat along to be dissipated efficiently. I've had instances of this in the past and got sick of dealing with not only the mess and expense to switch to using a graphite pad instead on everything. $10-15/pad and never having to crack things open to clean/paste again. If you have to pull the cooler or move things around it's less hassle.

As to the bios/fans can't really say but, typically the board should send the info over to the OS for some control. I would have probably went AMD though or a lower level model with a lower power draw than a K CPU in a tight case. Intel is a bit out of control when it comes to temps / power.

temps in the 60s C with the CPU at 1–2%.

This does seem a bit higher than normal though. When I was running a 12700K the best I could do was just under 30C but, that's with a proper setup in an ATX case with tons of airflow / fans. Now, my laptop on the other hand with a 12700H will typically sit around mid 40's with typical apps open.

 

[jester]

Could be as simple as not enough contact between the cooler and CPU. Make sure the cooler is tightly screwed down.

Maybe it's crap paste that's degraded and not passing the heat along to be dissipated efficiently. I've had instances of this in the past and got sick of dealing with not only the mess and expense to switch to using a graphite pad instead on everything. $10-15/pad and never having to crack things open to clean/paste again. If you have to pull the cooler or move things around it's less hassle.

As to the bios/fans can't really say but, typically the board should send the info over to the OS for some control. I would have probably went AMD though or a lower level model with a lower power draw than a K CPU in a tight case. Intel is a bit out of control when it comes to temps / power.

This does seem a bit higher than normal though. When I was running a 12700K the best I could do was just under 30C but, that's with a proper setup in an ATX case with tons of airflow / fans. Now, my laptop on the other hand with a 12700H will typically sit around mid 40's with typical apps open.

Yeah, it's not ideal, but in this case I wanted Intel with an iGPU with Quick Sync, for Plex transcoding, and it also had to support ECC RAM, so there weren't many options. I certainly don't need that much speed, but it felt like the power requirements were all the same and a few extra dollars didn't matter much in the long term.

I'll have a go at redoing the cooler/CPU contact. I would be relieved, if embarrassed, if it turns out that I just did a lousy job attaching them.

 

[Sealside]

Sounds like quite hot temperatures.
I'm running a 14700K with stock settings.
I have two 120mm fans in the chassi. One in the front and one in the back.
Ambient temp in the room is 28.1 (Quite warm)

CPU cooler is a Thermal Right Phantom 120.

		CPU Temp	34	Temperature
		PCH Temp	56	Temperature
		System Temp	32	Temperature
		Peripheral Temp	33	Temperature
		VRM_VCORE Temp	29	Temperature
		VRMVIN_AUX Temp	31	Temperature

Quite high PCH temp, probably should install one more fan on the heatsink.

 

[Tech Junky]

relieved

I've done it before while rushing things. Temps shot up to 100 fairly quick. Then when testing different pastes I had one brand fail 4 days into testing. So, there's a bit of a chain of how things fail to provide food cooling. I've built and rebuilt countless times over the years so, it's always a possibility of matter if it's your 1st or 1000th system

 

[Sealside]

Have you tried increasing the speed of the fans? What ambient temperature do you have?

 

[jester]

I'd meant to return to this thread with an update! One which I still don't understand.

After running Proxmox for a month, I got too frustrated with it to continue; I was getting frequent crashes, and there were many things I didn't like about it. So I decided to install TrueNAS SCALE on the original machine (which was its main purpose in the first place), bare metal, and I got an MS-01 to use as an XCP-NG host for VMs.

And the temperature issue has gone away. The CPU temps under SCALE are more or less where I'd expect them to be--in the 30s C when unloaded, which is most of the time.

I have no explanation for this. I didn't rebuild the machine physically. And I'm sure it wasn't just Proxmox mis-reporting the temperature data in some way; I looked at the IPMI report on the mobo itself, and it's in the 30s now and was in the 60s under Proxmox. But even without an explanation, I figured it was worth mentioning here.