Is your CPU thermal throttling? how to check easily and fix it

There's a good chance that your CPU might well be thermal throttling without you realising. Simple things can cause your CPU to overheat which in turn leads to a reduction in performance. That thermal throttling might not even be noticable in day-to-day use but could be having a negative impact on system performance and even on the overall FPS you're getting while gaming.

Luckily there are ways you can check to see if your CPU is thermal throttling and if you're running an Intel CPU it's really easy. Firstly download Intel XTU and then run the system stress tests.

You can also use Cinebench

One of which is simply thinking about your fan configuration and seeing if it can be improved.

In this video you'll see how I didn't have enough intake fans on the Lian Li Dynamic Evo XL. Swapping the fans to Infinity Reverse fans so that the air is now being intaked through the AIO radiator now means a reduction in temps which in turn means no more thermal throttling.

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Products featured may also have been sent for free for review/testing purposes. Often these have to be returned by me, but not always. I endeavour to avoid bias in my videos wherever possible and try to give honest, subjective opinions. Unless otherwise stated, the videos are not sponsored financially.

Specs of this build: (note this includes affiliate links that earn me a commission at no extra cost to you)

Also included in this video:

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[MrVoayer]

Yet another important and valuable lesson in fan placement ! A video that has to be seen several times to get all that has been said and suggested ! Well done !!!

[nal_er]

❤ Love your work. Always teaching and learning at the same time!

[gamingcorneruk]

Finally... a clean cut, concise and straight to the point channel.

[kalevi]

Funny you say that/ When I built my PC a couple of months ago I put the paste on the CPU but forgot to take the seal off the AIO, I put it on. I had to take the AIO of not long after because the cable had to go around to make it look neat. Then I noticed. I used what little I had left and it seemed fine for a couple of weeks. Its a 12900KF. It started to hit 90+ degrees more regular. I bought Grizzly thermal paste, cleaned the cpu and applied the paste. The CPU hasnt went above 85 since. I have an Artic Freeze II 360mm

[jouldalk]

At what temperature do modern cpus throttle? What temperature should I set for my AIO fans to run at 100%? 80°c?

[Michael]

Intel's program is not supported for my Ultra 7 155H cpu. Are there any alternative programs to check for thermal throttling?

[theonlygmk]

Thank you for the information very helpful! My only thing is when I run a CPU stress test I get no thermal throttling yet when I run a Memory Stress Test the Extreme Tuning Utility tells me multiple times that I am thermal throttling. Do you or anyone else know why this might be and how to fix it?

[sympul]

is there a simple, similar utility like this but for AMD cpus?

[RMasnyk]

Starting my first build which will be almost identical to the one here. My question is for the side mounted AIO radiator as intake using push/pull. Would using the INF reverse fans on one side and the regular INF fans on the other cause problems? Or are they similar enough in specs where it wouldn’t matter?

[christophergrace]

I just built my PC in the same case. This is only my second time building a PC, and the first time wasnt for myself. I'm using a Ryzen 7900x, and have 3-140 intakes on the bottom, 2-120 intakes on the back 3-140 exhaust on top, and then a 360 Galahad 2 with push pull on the side for exhaust as well. It seems to be running fine, and when monitoring the Temps in just regular use it seems to be doing fine. I believe the highest I've seen it ramp up temp wise is 80ish. When I run Cinebench though, it's showing 95 on the main temp, but it still seems to be getting over 5Ghz on all the cores.

It's funny you post this today because I've been curious if I am throttled and if my paste job was good enough. I've been tempted to pull the pump off just to see how well the paste had spread....

[SOYTIANGO]

What thermal paste did you use in the video?

[ILOVERIDINGMYBIKE]

broo, my 12400f keeps on going to 4.3 for a little then slows to 3.9 but it is at a stable 60c, please help idk what is wrong

[DustyCruz]

I have a question about fan orientation. I have two 140mm fans at the top of my case as exhaust, two front 140mm fans as intake, and one rear 140mm fan as exhaust. Is this enough to keep my computer nicely cooled? I am using a Noctua NH-D15 on an i9 13900k inside of a Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 Full tower chassis. My temps are fine for the most part, but games like Dead Space Remake shoot my cpu temps up to as high as 80c. I think my Asus ROG Z790-H motherboard is doing something strange when it comes to regulating power on the CPU but I just want to know if that amount of fans is enough? I was thinking of switching the top two 140mm fans from exhaust to intake, or should I get more fans?

[HEATHEN_NATION]

My cpu temp is all over the place while I'm gaming what is this called? How do I fix it??

[ridwanahamed]

Do you disable Virtualization in the BIOS in order to use the XTU?

[joemamauwu]

xtu only works on 12th gen intel cpu's or newer from what it looks like.

[photobeast]

Nzxt Kraken here.. I have four fans doing the push-pull configuration as well as about six other fans. By CPU is a constant 30° C. But when I run my stress test I'm getting throttling and I believe this is causing my blue screen crashes which happened continuously. I have a I-9 13k chip, ddr5 Ram which I've changed out twice so that's not the issue, and the Asus Z 690e motherboard, as well as the Asus GeForce RTX 3070

[stevenspicer]

You have the radiator mounted with the outlet on top. If there is any air at all in that AIO system, isn’t the CPU pump sucking air?

[mohameddia]

I have my aio cooler mounted up top. Considering doing a push pull config. I currently have the sl120 v2s exhausting air out of the radiator, how should I have them set up? My cpu is thermal throttling.

[qbnkeyd]

For the rad fans behind the radiator, those can't really be seen through the case so why not use the stock ones with the kraken aio instead? Thanks!