20 degrees difference between Cooling and CPU temp

[Chimichanga]

Hey all! First post here, and also new to AIO, so excuse me in advance for any obvious questions. But I just couldn't find the answer, so I hope some of you can help me :)

 

I just installed my first AIO the Corsair H110i RGB Platinum. I'm fairly positive I installed all the cables correctly.

I've installed the radiator and fans at the front of my case.

Pump seems to work, fans are spinning.

Have iCue installed for control.

Both fans and the pump set to the default Balanced performance profile.

 

Main issue I got currently is:

The cooling temp in iCue seems fine, and is around 25 degrees at Idle.

The CPU temp however is higher than I expected at around 45 degrees Celsius.

Measured with HWInfo / HWMonitor.

From what I could gather in this forum the 'normal deviation' between cooling water temp and CPU should be around 5 degrees.

 

What could possibly cause this?

 

I'm a bit at a loss as what to do.

Could be possible I'm missing something very obvious (for you guys :sunglasse)

 

Thanks in advance for any advice or feedback!

Greatly appreciated.

[c-attack]

Check the voltage and CPU load when you see the 45C. The CPU temp is only going to drop down to the coolant temp level when it is fully stepped down (at 0v CPU temp=Coolant temp). The CPU does not seem to relax very often with Ryzen 3000 series or most other recent releases.

 

Be careful running HWiNFO and CUE at the same time. They are going to cross swords unless you disable all Corsair device monitoring. Try quitting iCUE and the two Corsair.Service (32bit and CPUID) from the task manager. Then launch HWiNFO so you can see the detailed CPU info.

[LeDoyen]

5 degrees seems very low :)

at idle with no background load on custom loop cooling on Intel maybe you'll get that yes.

 

It's mostly GPUs that have a temperature very close to the water temp, thanks to a very large die. the heat is less concentrated and easily dissipated by the waterblock.

 

On CPU, the dies are a lot smaller, and the transistor density is higher. that creates very concentrated heat and you'll always have large differences between water temp and CPU temp.

And here, custom loop is no different.

 

For typical figures i'll let the AIO experts answer but there's also another thing at play here, it's Ryzen boost voltages.

Little spikes of CPU usage will make Vcore go pretty high over 1.4V. That causes higher idle temps than on intel (hence my intro). So it's not unusual to see those CPUs get idle temps in the 40-50°C range even on water.

It will be adressed on Zen3 only with adaptive undervolting, so you're out of luck on that one ^^'

 

TL:DR : your temps look absolutely fine. Maybe tell us how temps are under load just to make sure the cooler works fine and is installed correctly. But so far, loooks good.

[Chimichanga]

TL:DR : your temps look absolutely fine. Maybe tell us how temps are under load just to make sure the cooler works fine and is installed correctly. But so far, loooks good.

 

Thank you, that is very reassuring to hear! I was worried because I expected lower and I probably misinterpreted the 5degrees difference

And I didn't know that about the Ryzen CPU's, Thanks!

[Chimichanga]

Check the voltage and CPU load when you see the 45C. The CPU temp is only going to drop down to the coolant temp level when it is fully stepped down (at 0v CPU temp=Coolant temp). The CPU does not seem to relax very often with Ryzen 3000 series or most other recent releases.

 

Be careful running HWiNFO and CUE at the same time. They are going to cross swords unless you disable all Corsair device monitoring. Try quitting iCUE and the two Corsair.Service (32bit and CPUID) from the task manager. Then launch HWiNFO so you can see the detailed CPU info.

 

Thanks for the reply. And reassuring me that the temps are within 'normal' range.

 

I've followed your instructions, closed iCue and it's processes for monitoring. And opened HWiNFO for the data.

CPU info as followed: (currently running background programms, Spotify, Firefox etc.)

 

CPU load: around 5-10% I would say.

CPU Core voltage (SV12 TFN): 1.369 V (approximately)

CPU (Tctl/Tdie):45 degrees C

 

Funny that you mention iCue and HWiNFO are biting each other, because I've noticed the following;

 

When I have iCue and HWiNFO running, once every interval (around 30 seconds or so, sometimes more, sometimes less), the pump and fans for a moment 'flatten out' / drop to 0rpm. Then shortly spin up to max, before leveling out at the intended steady pace. In iCue I can see the Coolant temp drop almost to zero for a moment, before correcting itself to the around 25 degrees what it was.

 

I now currently have iCue and the processes closed, and only HWiNFO running as monitoring software. And I don't have this issue. Fans are working at normal constant speeds.

 

Downside to this is that I do want to use iCue for the lightning effects and keyboard / mouse shortcuts I have enabled.

 

Do you maybe know where this is coming from? Or does it have something to do with the BIOS settings of the CPU fan (currently at PWM mode Silent in ASUS BIOS).

 

Again thank you very much for your help.

[c-attack]

The two programs (CUE and HWiNFO) are trying to access the same devices at the same time. One gets there first and the other does not. Usually you get garbage data back (negative numbers, absurd high temps, 0 rpm, etc).

 

If you want to use them both at the same time there are a couple thing you need to do. First, you must use the "Portable Version" of HWiNFO from his download page. The "installer version" tends to clash if it is running or not.

 

Second, the first time it launches it's going to give you a warning about conflict for both for your Asus Embedded Controller (EC) and the Corsair hardware. The Asus one you are generally ok to ignore. The Corsair warning you need to accept and check to the box to disable all monitoring for those devices. If you are porting over earlier configurations files from HWiNFO, you may need to manually disable them instead. Anything that is an internal Corsair device needs to be disabled. If you right click the device name on the list, it will give you the option. I don't see anything on your specs besides the cooler.

 

Third, CUE is going to launch with Windows. You will launch HWiNFO manually. After you do so, you may need to go to CUE settings and click the "restart service" button. Even with monitoring disabled, CUE may freeze on up the initial launch and scan.

 

It's pretty normal to be running both when you first get a new CPU and are curious about the very detailed information in HWiNFO. Eventually, the interest tends to dwindle and there's less management to be done. This is not related to the MB settings in any way.

 

Most AMD 3000 series owners see an idle CPU temp in the 40s regardless of baseline temp. The voltage never steps down all the way. AMD gets some criticism for this, but my Intel 10900K is pretty much the same way. With nothing running except background services and CUE fully exited as well, the adaptive voltage will still swing between 1.15-1.30v, just below it's maximum level. As the voltage rises and falls, so will CPU temps. If you have a steady voltage level and CPU workload, it will maintain a steady but slightly elevated temperature. It's doing something pretty much all the time. 5-7 years ago most CPUs "relaxed" down to their base step frequency and voltage pretty easily. Now they respond to most everything and power savings are attempted at the hardware level, usually below what software programs can monitor.

[Chimichanga]

Wow, first off, thanks for taking the time to give me this extensive explanation and solution.

 

And it is exactly like you said, if 1 of the 2 programms is running, I have no issues. So with HWiNFO off and iCue running, all is well.

 

True, mostly when I play a new game I monitor the FPS and temps for a while to tweak them. I use RivaTuner Statistics Server for the overlay. And this programm just reads the data from HWiNFO. And that's why I want to (occassionaly) want to run them both. (I've set them both to start with win).

 

I'm gonna follow your steps to see if I can get them both to work parallel.

Have a good weekend!

 

P.S. I've attached a screenshot from iCue, with the default balanced performance profile. Only iCue running (not HWiNFO), fans staying pretty much at stable speeds.