Folding Forum

Nathan_P wrote:Eco mode drops the TDP by 1 tier, so your 105w 3950x drops to 95w. It does thi by lowering voltage and clocks if needed.

It only lowers to 95W, when PBO is enabled.
The stock 105W does ~145W with PBO enabled.
I would make sure the Bios is updated to the latest, and the fan of the CPU can have it's heat exhausted outside the case.
Additionally, adjusting CPU core voltages can lower wattage (and lower frequency a bit too).

In one of my systems (3900x), the CPU got really, really (thermal limit) hot.
As soon as I changed to more modern 3200Mhz RAM, it ran a lot cooler.
I think the other ram, ran at 1,5V overclocked.
The newer RAM runs at 1,2/1,35V (OC).
CPU runs 10C lower, without performance penalty.
And enabling the ECO mode, now runs at 70-75C (another 15C lower).

MeeLee wrote:I would make sure the Bios is updated to the latest, and the fan of the CPU can have it's heat exhausted outside the case.
Additionally, adjusting CPU core voltages can lower wattage (and lower frequency a bit too).

GPU heat is another potential problem. Most GPUs with fans do NOT exhaust their heat through the GPU backplane, regardless of slots in the backplane. Ensure the adjacent backplane covers are slotted, so your front fans can direct the hot air directly out the back.

One thing I would look into is removing the CPU cooler to make sure you have good thermal paste coverage on the IHS, those CPU's have 3 dies under the IHS on that variant, 1 I/O die and 2 core clusters (CCX) so it could be possible that some areas of the integrated heat spreader aren't making good thermal contact with the cooler.

Maybe worth a look

I have a 3950x in a new build with a low end air cooler (Arctic cooling freezer 7 92mm rated at 115 watt tdp) and it also runs hot. Folding, prime 95, and handbrake all get this chip into the 80-85 degree range. Clocks are around 3900 MHz. Note this is actually fine for this CPU, tmax is 95 c and there is a safety margin (it starts thermally throttling at 90).

However I am scratching my head a bit since your cooler is like 3x the size. You should be mid to high 70s, or pushing 4100-4200 MHz at that temp.

Case airflow is critical on these r9s. They can pump out way more watts than the box TDP suggests. In my case, I have a top 120 exhaust, a rear 120 exhaust and a side 80 mm exhaust all right next to the tower. I'm running dual 120mm intakes, where the top intake is actually a custom mounted bracket taking up 3x 5.25 drive bays and blowing straight at the CPU cooler...makes a world of difference.

So I just swapped my old Arctic cooler for the Noctua NH-D15. It barely fit...ended up mounting the second fan as an exhaust on the back of the rear tower instead of as a pusher on the front one. I had to bump the fan up a bit to clear the VRM heatsink. Idle temps on my 3950x are now 33c ( down from 45). Full folding load (with the GPU going too), CPU temps went from 85-88 ish to 70. Also of note is the chip clocked itself up by 200 Mhz due to more thermal headroom. So good results for the big Noctua

Yes, you're able to get more benefit of/from pbo with the better cooler.

If you're running 1.2V RAM, you can lower VCORE SOC by 0.1 to 0.2V.
I'm running my 3900x at 0.9166V (vs 1.100V stock), and 10-15C lower temps. Now sometimes under full load it reaches 58C (other times 65C), down from 78C at stock BIOS settings (Aeolus 570)

MeeLee wrote:I'm running my 3900x at 0.9166V (vs 1.100V stock), and 10-15C lower temps. Now sometimes under full load it reaches 58C (other times 65C), down from 78C at stock BIOS settings (Aeolus 570)

What clockspeed are you running to achieve a Vcore of 0.9v?

FireFox-89 wrote:

MeeLee wrote:I'm running my 3900x at 0.9166V (vs 1.100V stock), and 10-15C lower temps. Now sometimes under full load it reaches 58C (other times 65C), down from 78C at stock BIOS settings (Aeolus 570)

What clockspeed are you running to achieve a Vcore of 0.9v?

Apologies for the confusion,
It's not the VCORE, it's the VCORE SOC.

The Vcore I'm running at 1.0160-1.0166V at 3,6-3,8GHz (depending, some projects run at 4105-4150Mhz).
On my board, I wasn't able to get higher CPU frequencies than that. I guess I either had a lousy bin CPU, or lousy VRMs.
The Vcore SOC I'm now running at 0.9275V (down from 1.100V). I upped the voltage by a few bits.
The Vcore SOC can be lowered by quite a margin if you're running 1,2V RAM, but errors with 1.35V RAM.

MeeLee wrote:

FireFox-89 wrote:

MeeLee wrote:I'm running my 3900x at 0.9166V (vs 1.100V stock), and 10-15C lower temps. Now sometimes under full load it reaches 58C (other times 65C), down from 78C at stock BIOS settings (Aeolus 570)

What clockspeed are you running to achieve a Vcore of 0.9v?

Apologies for the confusion,
It's not the VCORE, it's the VCORE SOC.

The Vcore I'm running at 1.0160-1.0166V at 3,6-3,8GHz (depending, some projects run at 4105-4150Mhz).
On my board, I wasn't able to get higher CPU frequencies than that. I guess I either had a lousy bin CPU, or lousy VRMs.
The Vcore SOC I'm now running at 0.9275V (down from 1.100V). I upped the voltage by a few bits.
The Vcore SOC can be lowered by quite a margin if you're running 1,2V RAM, but errors with 1.35V RAM.

Ahh no worries

Jon_Tesch wrote:Hello all who read,

This is my first post in this forum as I am very new to F@H. Regardless time to dig into the issue that I am having...

Whenever I run F@H, no matter the power selection, my CPU hits ridiculously high temperatures -- 87C on the first run and 97C on the second. I stopped folding immediately when I saw these temps through CPUID HWMonitor. My GPU temps (max at around 61C) are slightly elevated but not out of reason to my knowledge.

I have copied my PC specs here in case this should help...
--------
Ryzen 9 3900X CPU, Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4 CPU Cooler (only one fan attached and in use), Asus Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi) Mobo, Asus GeForce RTX 2080 Super AO 8G GPU, G.Skill TridentZ 32GB DDR4 3600MHz 16-16-16-36 Memory, Corsair Force MP600 M.2 1TB PCI-E Gen 4.0 Storage, Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SATA III SSD Storage, Seasonic Focus PX-850 850 W 80+ Platinum PSU, Fractal Design Define C TG ATX Case, Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Compound, (x5)Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM Fans, (x2)Noctua NF-A14 PWM Fans, (x2)Noctua NA-FC1 Fan Controllers
--------

I am pretty darn certain that any temperature above 80C is not normal; and F@H is the only program that I can consistently get my CPU above that limit. Cinebench R20 gets me up to 80C, sometimes only 74C. Any CPU burners that I've tried also don't go above 80C. And to be completely honest, I'm not a fan of those temperatures either given the beefy Noctua CPU cooler I am using. Anyways, I have tried to under-volt my 3900X down to a reasonable voltage with Ryzen Master... currently set at 1.30000 V -- clock set at 4.2 GHz. Still, these extremely high temperatures persist, even with the large amount of airflow that my chassis has -- 7 Noctua fans. What gives? Why does specifically F@H make my CPU into a mini Chernobyl? Is there a solution to this? Perhaps more messing around with my CPU voltages? Or maybe a reapply of thermal paste?

Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated!! ...especially as I am unable to use my PC for F@H at this time.

Thanks,
Jon T.

I use both FAH and BOINC with my 3700x. I set BOINC to run only 14 threads. I then use the remaining 2 threads, 1 to coincide with the GPU slot and 1 just to have available.

My CPU stays at a nice 77-80 C all the time. I'm only using the stock AMD cooler at full speed.

For temperature, much easier than to set the VCORE and VCORE SOC to lower values, is to have PBO do the work for you.
Set PBO to manual, and limit the WATTS, and AMPS proportionally.
On my Ryzen 9 3900x the Watts in ECO mode are 87, one of the AMPS is rated 60A, and the other Amp rating is 80A.
While the 3900 doesn't work at half those values, limiting the setting to 2/3rd of that, would result in an extremely slow CPU speed (1800Mhz).
Setting it closer to 4/5th got me values of 70W/50A/65A does make the CPU run a lot cooler. 75-82C from 92C.

Using PBO on my Motherboard, the settings often ignore the max set temperature limit (I set it to 75, 80, 85C...).
It tries to keep those values, but once the system sees that it can't keep the CPU running at the frequency set, it will ignore the temp setting and bump up the wattage/temps.
PBO will not ignore AMPS and WATTAGE, so long as your CPU and Voltages are set to Auto.

Once you found a wattage/amp rating where your CPU runs cool, and CPU frequency isn't too horrible, go into bios, and set the frequency on all cores to a fixed value.
Eg: Once you see what your CPU runs at (3550Mhz, or whatever it reads), go back in BIOS, and set your frequency to 3600MHz (or whatever is close to the readout), 25-50Mhz above the auto settings.
Having a Fixed CPU frequency, lowers temperature by a bit, and allows you to run slightly higher clocks.
I believe there's only 15-50Mhz of headroom on Auto for continuous loads.

From there it's a matter of if you are going to keep PBO enabled, or disable it, and run the CPU fixed and adjust the VCore voltages.

Going the way of PBO is just to determine the max frequency your CPU can run at a certain temperature; and is safer and easier than Voltage adjustments.

Also,
If your stock cooler was anything like mine, you'll need to buff the bottom up with some fine grit sandpaper, as the stock cooler on mine was very rough, and my CPU was thermal throttling right from the box, even with great thermal paste applied.

I have a 3900x running in a desktop case (silverstone GD09). I have reduced my avarage CPU temps (which where very high initially) by about 10 degrees by making a better airflow in my case, by mounting 5 case fans (2x 120mm and 3x 80mm). But still my CPU runs to hot for comfort while using F@H for a while, without some special bios or eco settings.

I stopped with using my CPU for F@H, because I want to use my computer normally when not folding, and my GPU does a much better job anyway. My GPU (rtx 2700 super) can score more than 1,000,000 points a day.

So if you have a decent GPU, I would not bother using your CPU for F@H at all.

The quad core Ryzens are great for pushing GPUs.
But starting with the 3600/3800 series, which have 6 or 8 cores (with HT), you'll have plenty of unused cores, that you could use for data crunching.
If you have higher end CPUs, like 3900x or 3950x, it'd be a waste to have these cores unused.

BlueTurtle wrote:I have a 3900x running in a desktop case (silverstone GD09). I have reduced my avarage CPU temps (which where very high initially) by about 10 degrees by making a better airflow in my case, by mounting 5 case fans (2x 120mm and 3x 80mm). But still my CPU runs to hot for comfort while using F@H for a while, without some special bios or eco settings.

I stopped with using my CPU for F@H, because I want to use my computer normally when not folding, and my GPU does a much better job anyway. My GPU (rtx 2700 super) can score more than 1,000,000 points a day.

So if you have a decent GPU, I would not bother using your CPU for F@H at all.

Welcome to the F@H Forum BlueTurtle,

Please note that if the CPU is running too hot, you can always reduce the number of CPUs assigned to the CPU Slot. This can have a massive impact on the temperature. I would suggest that you drop it down to 12 and see what the temperature is like. 8 and 6 are other options too. Do to so, you can open up Advanced Control (AKA FAHControl) -> Configure -> Slots tab -> CPU -> Edit -> Change value -> OK -> Save

Do note that CPU is just as scientifically valuable as GPU when it comes to folding. Some calculations are CPU only, others are GPU only while some can run on either.