Hi everyone, appreciate some assistance here. My CPU has hit 100 degrees celcius and shut down. This was happening when the CPU load was 1% with nothing running. I have ran a virus scan (both Defender and Malwarebytes) and nothing there. I have also changed the thermal paste, cleaned the fans and made sure the CPU cooler was secured properly.

This has happened randomly before, then all of a sudden it’s running fine again and sits between 40c - 60c for months. It seems to be a completely random event then goes back to normal. It occurs maybe twice a year.

This is what I have:

Gigabyte B650 Gamxing X MSI GeForce RTX 3060 AMD Ryzen 7 7700X EK AIO 240 D-RGB be quiet! Pure Power 11 Gold Modular 750W Power Supply

Anything else I can look for? Appreciate it.

Update: I’ve ended up applying for warranty for the cooler. I have tried all that has been suggested. For now, I’ve bought a Noctua NH-U9S cpu fan. If that works, I’ll probably just leave it in there.

Thanks again for helping a confused noob girl out. Love this community!

Update 2: I’ve taken out the AIO cooler and replaced with a fan (Noctua NH-U95). The temperatures are fine now. I was a little worried at first as the temperatures were better but high (70-80c under 10% load). Switched off the PC, now it’s back on and it’s staying around 43c. It’s seems some fresh thermal pastes might take a while to settle in. Thanks again everyone. Never buying water-cooling again.

  • comador
    2•7 days ago

    Sincerely sounds like your cpu fan doesn’t have a good connection with the cpu.

    Shut it down, unplug, remove the heatsink fan (hsf), clean top of cpu and bottom of hsf and apply new thermal compound as 5 dots (center and edges) to the cpu.

    Then remount the hsf and let sit for 15 minutes before powering on again and monitor temps.

      • @PriorityMotif
        0•7 days ago

        I always just smooth it out evenly with my finger, a pea would be way too much paste.

        • @WordBox
          1•6 days ago

          What got you to this decision?

          • @PriorityMotif
            0•6 days ago

            A pea is like 10mm in diameter. Go look at a pea and tell me you use that much thermal compound.

              • @BluescreenOfDeathEnglish
                1•6 days ago

                It’s generally better to use more than you need than it is to use too little. Unless you’re buying specialty thermal paste, it will be nonconductive so any paste running off the sides won’t hurt anything.

                Using different patterns can trap air, which will reduce thermal conductivity.