Sudden spikes in CPU temp

[Chrispy]

I recently built a new PC that has a Ryzen 5 5600x using the wraith prism cooler. I haven't overclocked the CPU so the cooler should be overkill for this.

Most of the time the wraith prism is almost silent with a reasonable fan speed but occasionally it ramps up for a few seconds which makes it pretty loud before going quiet again. This happens randomly with roughly 10 to 60 second intervals.

In MSI afterburner the temperature sits at 35-40 degrees C until it very suddenly shoots up to around 65 degrees before gradually returning to 40 within the space of about 5 seconds. This is all with <5% CPU usage. I applied plenty of thermal paste to the CPU so I don't think thats the problem.

Thanks in advance :)

Edit: I just noticed it seems to happen when the CPU usage increases for a short amount of time like when opening task manager. Occasionally the usage may go above 15% which makes the fan go crazy for a few seconds

[Illusion of Progress]

This is not too unusual with Ryzen CPUs. I observed similar behavior on my Ryzen 7 3700X with the stock cooling, and even now with a Dark Rock Pro 4, at least as far as temperatures go. The fan noise never became noticeably louder, although it's overall quieter with the better cooling.

Ryzen CPUs can go into some very low clock speed/sleep states when they aren't doing much, and when they get a demand to do something (even if it's to open a web browser), temperatures may shoot up many degrees for a split moment.

[CravenCoyote]

This is boosting. It's normal and nothing to worry about

[smallcat]

it sounds like bad aitflow/cooling . A workaround - set max processor state at 90% in power options

[Supafly]

Even intel cpus have spikes. There running at a specific speed for the task at hand when you open or something runs in the background the CPU speed ramps up to run it as quickly as possible. That involves a spike in voltage, higher clock thus high temps. Once the app or task he began the temp like the clocks and voltage will drop to maintain the app processes. Doesn't need to spike anything to keep it running. It's only when things starts that the spikes occur.

Just opening a web browser, wordpad or the calculator will do the same. How high of a spike all depends on what else is running at the same time. lower Clockspeeds, voltage and temps will result in lower spikes. if they're high when you open new apps the spikes will be higher.

It's normal. Unless you're having issues with it spiking high enough to throttle or something there is nothing to worry about

[Marble]

Best thing to do is run cinebench, or something. Make sure the clock speeds remain within spec while it's running. I believe Ryzen tries to adjust clocks based on a 90C limit, so what you should be seeing is clocks of at least the base speed and temps at 90C (if it runs cooler than 90C, it will bump the clock speeds up until it hits that threshold).

[Chryseus]

This is completely normal with the Ryzen series, they have a very high boost to the point where it's not unusual to see them pegging at 90c under maximum load, this is perfectly safe according to AMD.

[smallcat]

not only some Ryzen processors have high turbo clock , 11th gen Intel have it too .

[Mihryazd]

Your BIOS should have a setting where you can adjust the delay before your fans ramp up. A higher delay will cut down on the ramping.

[Chrispy]

I adjusted the fan temperature interval from 1 to 3 in the bios. This might've made a slight difference but the fan still does the same thing sometimes. Perhaps this is normal for ryzen. My old PC used intel and didn't have this. I guess I expected the wraith cooler to be near silent all the time with a 65w cpu

[smallcat]

What about the case ? And the GPU

[Supafly]

Originally posted by Chrispy:

I adjusted the fan temperature interval from 1 to 3 in the bios. This might've made a slight difference but the fan still does the same thing sometimes. Perhaps this is normal for ryzen. My old PC used intel and didn't have this. I guess I expected the wraith cooler to be near silent all the time with a 65w cpu

Will depend how high it spikes. Keep in mind if you reduce the speed the fan hits when it spikes it will be spiking higher because the fan is running slower thus making the fan run faster and creating more noise.

Personally I'd change fan curve if possible. Make it run faster while it's cooler. Yes a little noisier but more bearable. That way when the spikes happen the CPU is already cooler so shouldn't be spiking as high.

For example lets say it's running at 50 and spikes to 65

If you increase fan speed for the normal temps so that the 50 is not 40/45 the spikes will likely hit 60 or maybe less. Fans won't be ramping up as high because it's slightly lower.

Actual results will vary and take time to find your preferred settings. I'd start with increasing fans to the highest speed you accept for your normal usage. If the fans are fine when it spikes lower the speeds by 5%/10% and repeat till you get a fanspeed that doesn't sound to high during spikes and is acceptable for normal use.

EDIT: my Intel 4790k didn't have this either. However, my 7700k does so it's not just Intel or AMD. Newer cpus try to get things to run as fast as possible once new things have started and running the cpu's don't need to ramp up current to make the system stable when the clocks spike the higher vvlts cause the temps to rise and the fans to spin faster to cool them

[Chryseus]

Originally posted by Chrispy:

I adjusted the fan temperature interval from 1 to 3 in the bios. This might've made a slight difference but the fan still does the same thing sometimes. Perhaps this is normal for ryzen. My old PC used intel and didn't have this. I guess I expected the wraith cooler to be near silent all the time with a 65w cpu

There should be a fan curve editor in the BIOS, you can adjust it to allow a higher temperature before ramping up the fan, but I would not expect silent running during heavy load, standard settings allow the 5600x to hit 88W or more, if you really need it quiet use a much larger cooler or liquid.

[emoticorpse]

Originally posted by Chrispy:

I adjusted the fan temperature interval from 1 to 3 in the bios. This might've made a slight difference but the fan still does the same thing sometimes. Perhaps this is normal for ryzen. My old PC used intel and didn't have this. I guess I expected the wraith cooler to be near silent all the time with a 65w cpu

I'm using a wraith prism cooler on a 1700 x and it is pretty much silent all the time from what I notice.

Try plugging into a different fan connector. Your motherboard doesn't have a silent profile?

[_I_]

keep the cpu fan plugged into the cpu fan socket

check bios settings, it may be turning up at load before the cpu gets hot
put it to a temp controlled profile
0% @ 60c and lower, 100% @ 80c

[Chryseus]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

Originally posted by Chrispy:

I adjusted the fan temperature interval from 1 to 3 in the bios. This might've made a slight difference but the fan still does the same thing sometimes. Perhaps this is normal for ryzen. My old PC used intel and didn't have this. I guess I expected the wraith cooler to be near silent all the time with a 65w cpu

I'm using a wraith prism cooler on a 1700 x and it is pretty much silent all the time from what I notice.

Try plugging into a different fan connector. Your motherboard doesn't have a silent profile?

The 1700x is not really comparable, the 3000 and 5000 series tend to boost significantly more and with higher core voltages so it's typical for them to run hot, I had a look around and it seems the wraith prism at max RPM is around 45 to 55dB which is modestly loud so it shouldn't be considered a silent cooler.