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Comment by enronmusk | Hacker News Reader

If OP's CPU cooler (Noctua NH-D15 G2) wasn't able to cool down his CPU below 100C, he must have been (intentionally or unintentionally with Asus multi core enhancement) overclocked his CPU. Or he didn't apply thermal paste properly or didn't remove the cooler plastic sticker?

I have followed his blog for years and hold him in high respect so I am surprised he has done that and expected stability at 100C regardless of what Intel claim is okay.

Not to mention that you rapidly hit diminishing returns pass 200W with current gen Intel CPUs, although he mentions caring able idle power usage. Why go from 150W to 300W for a 20% performance increase?

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He did have the Fractal Define 7 Compact case, and the pictures[1] only show a single 140mm case fan. From personal experience the Fractal Define cases are great at sound reduction due to the thermal padding, but those pads also insulates well.

Given the motherboard and RAM will also generate quite some heat, if the case fan profile was conservative (he does mention he likes low noise), could be the insides got quite toasty.

Back when I got my 2080 Ti, I had this issue when gaming. The internal temps would get so hot due to the blanket effect of the padding I couldn't touch the components after a gaming session. Had to significantly tweak my fan profiles. His CPU at peak would generate about the same amount of heat as my 2080 Ti + CPU I had then, and I had the non-Compact case with two case fans.

[1]: https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2025-05-15-my-2025-high-...

Excellent point. A single case fan is highly atypical and concerning.

I also have a fractal define case with anti noise padding material and dust filters, but my temperatures are great and the computer is almost inaudible even when compiling code for hours with -j $(nproc). And my fans and cooler are much cheaper than his.

> thermal padding

That should of course be sound padding...

> […] so I am surprised he has done that and expected stability at 100C regardless of what Intel claim is okay.

Intel specifies a max operating temperature of 105°C for the 285K [1]. Also modern CPUs aren't supposed to die when run with inadequate cooling, but instead clock down to stay within their thermal envelope.

[1]: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241060/...

I always wonder: how many sensors are registering that temp?

Because CPUs can get much hotter in specific spots at specific pins no? Just because you're reading 100, doesn't mean there aren't spots that are way hotter.

My understanding is that modern Intel CPUs have a temp sensor per core + one at package level, but which one is being reported?

There's no way on Earth Intel hasn't thought of this. Probably the sensors are in or near the places that get the hottest, or they are aware of the delta and have put in the proper margin, or something like that.

I haven't said they didn't think about it, I'm just asking due to sheer ignorance.

Yes, I have read the article and I agree Intel should be shamed (and even sued) for inaccurate statements. But it doesn't change the fact it has never been a good idea to run desktop processors at their throttling temperature -- it's not good for performance, it's not good for longevity and stability, and it's also terrible for efficiency (performance per watt).

Anyway, OP's cooler should be able to cool down 250W CPUs below 100C. He must have done something wrong for this to not happen. That's my point -- the motherboard likely overclocked the CPU and he failed to properly cool it down or set a power limit (PL1/PL2). He could have easily avoided all this trouble.

The cpu temps are one thing, but if - as you said - even a beast like the D15 G2 has it pegged at 100C, this very much sounds like bad ventilation and other parts of the system being toasted as well - VRMs in particular, for which the "PRIME" (actually being the low-end series) mainboards from Asus, as used here, don't exactly have a stellar reputation.

And yeah, having Arrow Lake running at its defaults is just a waste of energy. Even halving your TDP just loses you roughly 15% performance in highly MT scenarios...

> If OP's CPU cooler (Noctua NH-D15 G2) wasn't able to cool down his CPU below 100C, he must have been (intentionally or unintentionally with Asus multi core enhancement) overclocked his CPU. Or he didn't apply thermal paste properly or didn't remove the cooler plastic sticker?

I did not overclock this CPU. I pay attention to what I change in the BIOS/UEFI firmware, and I never select any overclocking options.

Also, I have applied thermal paste properly: Noctua-supplied paste, following Noctua’s instructions for this CPU socket.

Thank you for responding. How do you explain your CPU hitting 100C in that case? That should not have happened.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-ultra-9-285k/2... lists maximum temperature as 88.2C with the previous gen NH-D15 cooler.

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