back to article Gamers red hot with fury over Intel Core i7-7700 temperature spikes

Owners of Intel's new i7-7700 processors say the chips have been randomly revving up to extremely high temperatures, and Chipzilla won't give the issue so much as a second look. Reg reader Bastard-Wizard says that he and many other i7-7700 owners are finding that the chips will occasionally kick themselves into overdrive, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Onboard sensor problem or is it a genuine high temp as measured with a probe ?

  2. Ol' Grumpy

    It's probably just me but I'm finding Intel's attitude of late leaning towards arrogance. The whole shroud of secrecy surrounding the C2000 SoC issues and now this.

    (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/06/cisco_intel_decline_to_link_product_warning_to_faulty_chip/)

    Maybe it's time to try AMD again?

    1. Alpy

      White Knight AMD

      Great timing from AMD on rejoining the CPU race! Intel have artificially inflated prices and delivered little to nothing in advancements. They should be ashamed on how they pocketed from market dominance.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: White Knight AMD

        Its interesting that people think that being the de facto for years is a good thing. Supremacy breeds arrogance, I have said for years that Intel plays the market, not lead the industry. Tic-toc is what they have done for years instead of leaps and bounds.

        Over the last few years with all the talk of green this and green that maybe people should remind companies like Intel (and companies that exclusively use their tech) that green also means not baby stepping your way through technological possibilities ... meaning instead of making 50 generations of tech to achieve what is mass producible right now maybe doing it in half or 1/4 of the steps, thus producing less e-wast and having a much lower carbon foot print never mind the amount of poisons spewed back into the environment.

        I guess I have wished for many years people would stop being fan boi's so much and buy what makes more sense to the pocket book and environment. Companies that allow you to upgrade hardware a few times are and should always be preferred than ones that force full upgrades every baby step along the way.

        For those thinking AMD might be a good choice are thinking since AMD has a history of sticking to a socket for a long time and allowing multiple generations of CPU to be compatible to it. Case and point, my last AMD system I started off with a quad core, then 2 years later bought a 6 core, then 2 years later an 8 core, costing me less than 800 dollars over a 6 year period and each time it felt much snappier after the upgrade. Also to boot much less energy (aka carbon foot print) and much less poisons produced. To me its a win-win situation, unless things go very wrong in the world we are gonna have to buy this stuff for life.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Given Intel's R&D budget and AMD's R&D budget don't be so sure loads of other nasties exist in AMD solutions. Having suffered years of shit quality drivers from AMD there probably are plenty of bugs lying in wait with their silicon as well.

      1. Known Hero

        Hi Mr Positive !!!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          >Hi Mr Positive !!!

          It's called being a realist, especially as Ryzen is a brand new design and we all know what happens with brand new designs in the form of early adopters curse.

          1. AMBxx Silver badge
            Flame

            Shows how times change - talking about using AMD to avoid problems with overheating CPU!

          2. AkuBerhala

            What curse? I still have my Core i5 650 up and running and I bought the chip on launch day.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Long term reliability

        One of the first machines I built for myself had an AMD XP 3200. Eventually replaced with a C2D E8400 only for the better performance, not because it stopped working.

        However, lately I've seen a number of AMD based machines die inexplicably. I suspect the chipset as most other components on the boards tend to be the same.

        I like what AMD have done with Ryzen 7 (5 not so). I just hope there aren't any gremlins lurking.

        And I hope Jim Keller comes back to up IPC again for Zen 2 and beyond. Or the IPC lag will only get worse...

        Disclaimer: I own some AMD shares.

      3. psychonaut

        no, he's right - amd drivers are fucking terrible. particulalry their chipset / sata drivers. terrible performance with ssd

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          I can halfway agree-- the integrated Radeon drivers (for 780G etc) were kinda crap and regularly produced text corruption in Win7, and they had already kicked them down to "legacy" rarely-updated status after only a few years, but at least they bring OpenCL 2.0 on *anything*-- as opposed to nVidia... who can't be bothered to help anyone except with CUDA, but who at least still release drivers for their oldest 8-CUDA-cores-512-MB junk which may in fact still work with many modern mainboards and OSes, if you just need a flippin' DVI output :D

          /me wants a toilet icon because every vendor blows crap in their own special way

      4. FSM

        [citations needed]

    3. PNGuinn
      Trollface

      Not Intel's fault

      Probably the mobo makers fault misusing some unused undocumented pinouts?

      Probable Intel workaround: Dynamically divide clock speed by 2.0005467399999 .....

      I'm tired - help me - was it the whale or the bowl of petunias who said ....

      > See icon.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Oh noes....

    ...my CPU is operating within expected tolerances, quick complain!

    What? The company has said, yeah it's fine.

    Bloody outrage I tell you!

    1. Solarflare

      Re: Oh noes....

      In all fairness, this is the same company that played down the FDIV bug, said it wasn't serious and wouldn't affect users.

      'x company says everything is OK with their product' is hardly a cast iron guarantee...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A lot of variables

    I've built 3 machines with the i7-7700K so far. From what I've seen, the number one reason for temperature spikes is certain BIOS settings.

    The 'Intel' setting allows each core to clock up/down individually according to load and yields the lowest temperatures. The default on some boards ramps up all cores in sync, unsurprisingly leading to rapid fluctuations in temperatures. I saw the chip hit 90 Deg C easily with this setting compared to 84 Deg C on the 'Intel' one. And that was with a £11 Akasa heatsink. With a Noctua NH-D15, that dropped to 68 Deg C under full load. No delidding required and no risk of liquid leakage either. The NH15-D15 is a beast of a HS though & you wouldn't want to courier a machine with this installed...

    Of course, incorrectly applied thermal paste or a heatsink with only partial contact can be another culprit.

    1. Cuddles

      Re: A lot of variables

      "No delidding required... Of course, incorrectly applied thermal paste or a heatsink with only partial contact can be another culprit."

      Indeed, it seems that the sort of people who actually notice this are the sort of people who tend to play around with things, as with the person quoted in the article talking about delidding - for those unaware of what this is, it means dismantling the CPU package to remove the standard heat spreader, which can easily damage or destroy the actual CPU if not done correctly. It appears the problem is not that anything is actually wrong with these CPUs, but rather than they may simply be less friendly to DIY shenanigans than previous chips may have been. Intel say there isn't a problem because when tested under normal conditions there is not, in fact, a problem. It's only those wanting to play around that notice a problem because the normal behaviour gives them less headroom to play in. Certainly a shame for those people, but "CPU runs inside safe thermal limit" is a problem that is really hard to get worked up about.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A lot of variables

        I think I get what you're saying and I want to point out there's basically no reason to think that keeping the heatspreader would make it run cooler in general or heat up less aggressively. It's an additional thermal interface with the associated thermal resistance and with Intel's choice of heat sink compound underneath yours. Last time I checked, they're nickel-plated copper but have very little mass. The most obvious proper functions are to protect the die from your heatsink under the force of the retaining clips or springs and to present a wider area for being able to move the right amount of heat through substandard heatsink compound on top-- which Intel can't control but which an enthusiast makes a moot point. If Intel's HS compound is so much better than what an enthusiast will apply to the same surface area (the die), then they should be selling *that*. But probably they just tested a lot of market offerings and picked a good one with a decent price. It's still not as good a configuration as if the heatspreader was the same metal object as, or at least soldered onto, the thing with the mass and the exaggerated surface area. Yeah I know that's kind of impossible, I'm just saying. The best thermal conductors are the best electrical conductors for a reason. So you put your heatsink where the heatspreader goes, optimization complete.

        And while DIY shenanigans certainly can send your CPU to the bad place, that will probably manifest as random crashes and temperature-related crashes because the damage will probably be limited to the bonding between the die and the package (unless you crack the die-- then you must be feeling lucky, to fire it up again). These people aren't complaining about crashes or even erratic behaviour, they're complaining about what seems to be a step backward in the "more performance for less power" sense.

  5. Ian Knight

    At last someone else has the same issue

    I have had one for a couple of months and was really annoyed when I first got it and put the PC components together, thought my Fan was faulty at first and returned it.

    In the end I had to change the fan speed profile so it is up to a reasonable level of annoyance, which basically means it only ramps up the speed at a high temp. i.e. from memory there are 5 temp / speed trigger points in the Bios and all apart from the first are set to the far right.

    (and no I'm not talking about their political views, which would send anyone's temperature rising)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    "opening a browser or an application or a program"

    I want to see this made into a Venn diagram by the person who wrote it... but at least they didn't say "an app". Chipzilla remembers what computers are for; 8.3/10

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: "opening a browser or an application or a program"

      Indeed. Language is an ever-evolving thing, so I prefer to err on the side of clarity. For that reason, I use 'application' for a desktop program, and 'app' for a phone or tablet program. In time, the distinction will become less useful as more applications run on ARM, and more predominately ARM OSs play nice with mice and keyboards. Hey ho.

      ( I also use 'program' for computer software, and 'programme' for theatre and television shows.)

    2. PNGuinn
      Trollface

      "Chipzilla remembers what computers are for; 8.3/10"

      Chipzilla remembers what computers are for; 8.3008732/10

      FIFY.

      Anyone got a spare bridge to sell? It's getting a bit crowded under this one.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Trollface

        Try the northbridge... and take your rounding errors with you!

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "opening a browser or an application or a program"

      but at least they didn't say "an app".

      I've called them apps since the days of DOS and 8.3 filenames because they went in the apps directory, as opposed to the tools dir, pics dir, docs dir, db dir etc.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "opening a browser or an application or a program"

        Would never have guessed. A while back I was pondering about why it is that I strongly prefer programs, and maybe it isn't the stupid phone craze starting 10 years ago. Maybe I just hate the wordlet 'app' (and not the word 'applet') because it was traditionally only used for 'job application' which was always a way to invite some potential employer to dutifully ignore me, which they did, and they do.

      2. Pompous Git Silver badge

        Re: "opening a browser or an application or a program"

        "I've called them apps since the days of DOS and 8.3 filenames because they went in the apps directory, as opposed to the tools dir, pics dir, docs dir, db dir etc."
        Most of my DOS-using colleagues called them programs, or proggies. Application was more a Mac-user term.

        My proggies/applications lived in the BIN directory* and naturally my batch files lived in the BELFRY.

        * Except for those that insisted on living in the root dir.

  7. Rich 11

    Nominative determinism

    Intel Core i7-7700K Processor

    Maybe 7700K is its target temperature. Give it time, folks, give it time.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nominative determinism

      You have to wait for the core(s) to reach the needed temperature to prime a nuclear fusion, then surface temperature will reach the designed 7700K one. But you need to keep on opening browser *or* applications, because the CPU actually can tell the difference, just like any PR.

  8. Your alien overlord - fear me
    Facepalm

    " we did not observe ... outside of the expected behavior " - so they are saying they know about it but it's expected !!!

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      It is. Turn off TurboBoost. The culprit is more than one core at a time powering up ABOVE nominal spec. The easy solution to this is to turn off Turbo Boost in the bios. The performance gain from it is negligible in the first place.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The performance gain from it is negligible in the first place.

        But for the hard core hardware boys, even a negligible gain is worthwhile. It could be the 0.01 fps between glory and ignominy, or hundreds of places on a protein folding leaderboard.

    2. Pompous Git Silver badge

      "so they are saying they know about it but it's expected !!!"
      Like the excessive temperatures reached by their first 1 GHz chip?

  9. Anonymous Coward
  10. 0laf

    i7?

    My cheepo i3 does it as well and it's the feckin Windows update service that does it. Are these guys sure it's a problem with the hardware?

    1. P. Lee

      Re: i7?

      I have yet to understand why Windows Update uses up so much CPU and takes so very, very long to think about the problem of patches.

      But then, I don't run it for personal use, so its all billable time :)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: i7?

        You think update is bad, try working with WSUS. Let's see, my server has 5 updates on 5 different architectures that have been superceeded, and should be cleaned up. The cleanup process should take, oh 30 seonds? 5 minutes? wait, what, how many hours?

        From what I've read, it's possible to smooth things out with some mucking about in the underlying DB.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: i7?

      Any updates by any OS are cryptographically signed nowdays. Computing a SHA-2 (or higher) hash over several 100MB of downloads is not a low CPU cost operation.

      1. Ramazan

        Re: i7?

        "Any updates by any OS are cryptographically signed nowdays."

        apt-get update + apt-get upgrade don't take several days as windows update does.

  11. Terje

    There must be something dodgy with the thermal design of that cpu, if it even manage to spike up to 90+ degrees with serious cooling. My venerable 5930k with a nice and toasty 140W tdp never get close to 90 even under max load, and the thermal mass should be large enough to effortlessly soak up any spike.

    1. P. Lee

      My 130w 3930k cores sit at 35-45 C but spikes to around 50 C under load when transcoding or something like that. Go-go water cooling!

      It would sit at 60C before the water cooling and I was concerned, but that could have been a poorly installed fan.

      It also returns a 20% higher cpubenchmark average than the (4 generations later) i7-7700 <pointlessly-smug/>

    2. ro55mo

      Concur

      Indeed. My i7-4930K with a TDP of 130w never makes it past 65C with a closed loop liquid cooler. Even when smashing the hell out of it during encoding with handbrake.

      1. Rob D.

        Re: Concur

        Not having the luxury of a more up to date model, the two 2.66GHz X5355s in my home office system provide central heating through the worst of winters, and currently are hitting 80-90C continuously with their stock metal heatsinks and fans when running around half the cores. If all eight get busy, the fans go in to helicopter mode somewhere about 95C at which point I usually start reigning things in. Not great, I know, and I have reseated the sinks with proper thermal paste but they have survived years.

        In theory, the Xeons are supposed to be more resilient - interesting to see how the i7's last.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Concur

          One server, both to my left, has X5550's and the other X5650's. I can certainly validate the "Helicopter-mode." Really reminds me of US Navy S-3 sub-hunter jets (which are nicknamed "Super-hoovers" for cause). Tough chips.

  12. adam payne

    "For the i7-7700K, momentary temperature changes from the idle temperature are normal while completing certain tasks like opening a browser or an application," a spokesperson said. "We've looked into the reports and have not seen any unexpected behavior or indication of performance impact."

    Opening an application really shouldn't put the temps up to the red line.

    "For those annoyed by the constant on-and-off frenzy of cooling fans, Intel suggests you set the speed control so that the whirring kicks up gradually, rather than all at once.

    We're sure customers will find that recommendation to be wholly satisfying and adequate for their concerns."

    From the amount of people still complaining I would say the whole press release is inadequate.

  13. steamnut

    self destruct feature?

    Even though Intel are saying the the chip is "within limits", the life of an IC is shortened the longer it is operated at it's maximums.

    What is worse here is the manifestation of a temperature "spike". The sudden temperature changes adds thermal stresses to the silicon. Computers are more reliable if they operate at a steady temperature. That is one of the reasons that some of us never switch our systems off.

    Starting from cold is the most likely time for a fault to occur due to the large current inrushes into the un-clocked silicon. It seems that Intel are looking to increase sales by selling us kamikaze chips!

    Thank goodness for AMD coming back into the arena.

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      Re: self destruct feature?

      "Thank goodness for AMD coming back into the arena."
      Let's hope that their new CPUs come with decent chipsets...

  14. John Savard

    Alternate Measure

    Instead of changing how my fan works to come up to speed more slowly when the chip's temperature rises, which could put the chip at risk, wouldn't it be safer to just have the fan running at maximum all the time, so when a sudden temperature spike comes, it will be taken care of?

    If the temperature spikes are, as Intel says, within the operating parameters of the chip, then that should take care of the problem, except, of course, for the noise and power consumption of the fans.

    1. 0laf

      Re: Alternate Measure

      I think if you did that the processor work be at risk of a catastrophic deconstruction. When you smash the thing to bits for making such a bloody racket.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    That's not hot...

    My CPU got so hot the other day during a Win10 update that I was able to use it to BBQ my steak dinner on the thing.

    The foil wrapped potatos, corn on the cob, & shrimp were excellent!

    /s

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