3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (2024)

I also own a 3950X and I too have noticed that idle temps can be higher than expected. Note: your temperatures dependgreatly on the powerplanyou choose, as I have found out and tried to show this in the pictures below. While my idle temps are usually in the mid 40's (if not using the Power Saver plan),they do seem to ramp up to ~65C, despite the fact the PC is just idling.

I have found that ASUS's "LightingService.exe" constantly calls on the CPU, it shows about 10-15% usage of the 3950X (in the Ryzen balanced plan)... This service is only forthe silly RGB LEDs!!! Whydoes a basic RGB application need 10% of a 16C/32T CPU? Then I saw that Corsair's iCUEsoftware isn't doing much better, it's on average using 5-8% of the CPU (in Ryzen Balanced Mode). Of course I went in and killed those apps, but that isn't enough to really change the temps. However, that is something worth checking on your system, what is running at start-up.

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CPU:AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
Mobo:ASUS Strix X570-E (BIOS 1405)
RAM:G.SKILL TridentZ Neo DDR4 3733 1.43V (CL18) 4x 16GB
GPU:MSI GTX 1070 Armor @ 2.14 GHz / 9.624 Gbps (45C Max Temp)
SSD:NVMe PCI-E 4.0 Sabrent Rocket 1TB & 500GB + Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SATA
Display:HTCVive+ Viewsonic XG2760-GS (G-Sync 165Hz 1mS) 27"
Sound:ES9038Pro DAC + FUN01 (SU-1 Clone) + Yamaha RX-V863 (LPCM) + Wharfedale 220s
PSU:Corsair HX750i 750W 80+ Platinum (63A)
UPS:Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD (900W)
OS:Microsoft Windows 10 Pro x64
Cooling:Corsair Air 740 + NZXT Kraken X62 + Corsair H110
Fans:Noctua NF-A14 iPPC-2000 x4 + NoctuaNF-A15 1500 RPM x2 + Corsair AF140

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Depending on the Power Plan selected, services and applications will vary their load on the CPU.Is this normal behavior?

"System" is there at the top of the list, because it keeps the minimum processorstate constantly at, or above, the set value in the powerplanmenu. I don't understand why this also affects the app/service CPU usage amount. This also doesn't compute when you look at those pictures,the min processorstate on the Ryzen Balanced is 50%, yet it's forcing the CPU to 100% usage. However, if you look at Ryzen Performance Mode, I put the min at 75%, yet it's only at 9% in the picbelow. What is going on here?

Look at how much difference there is between the same exact process/app running in Task Manager between the two pictures below. It's basically 10x more in the Ryzen Balanced Mode than in the Ryzen High Perf Mode. Then you find out High Perf mode won't clock up consitently across all cores as high as Balanced Mode stays at.

AMD RyzenBalanced Mode - Task Manager Comparison

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (1)

AMD Ryzen High Performance Mode - Task Manager Comparison

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (2)

I use a Windows 10 gadget called "System Monitor II", I have been using this since Windows 7 was released. I started to notice something kind of strange, if I drop my CPU down to the normal "balanced" powerplan,the temps constantly ramp up and down, usually going from 45C to 65C, repeatedly. However, if I switch over to the "Ryzen Balanced Plan" plan,then my temps are almost constantly at the minimum temperature of the "normal" balanced plan(46C).Temps will still ramp occasionally(and this is expected from background services), but the amount of ramping up/down is FAR less when using theRyzen Balanced plan. Thus, I almost always run theRyzen planunder normal usage.

Now,if I switch over to the Power Saver plan,then my temps will fall an additional 10-15C, because this locks the CPU at a speed of 500 MHzacross all cores. I usually run either Ryzen Balanced Mode or Power Saver mode (you'll see why I was doing this below).

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (3)


Above you can see the difference in idling inRyzen Balanced Mode(where speed is constant) vs. idling inRyzen High Performance mode, orthe other two modes (not counting PS mode). You'll notice that the temperatures becomeless stable and I constantly hear my fans ramp up/down when in any other mode besides AMD Ryzen Balanced. The temperatures reported by both "System Monitor II" and the ASUS "AI Suite 3" software, are much higher than shown above (roughly 8-15C difference). I couldn't find any temps in that histogram above, where CPU reached 58-65C, as reported by both other SW suites. Are the other software monitoring suites really that far off from the actual temperature?

Why dowe see "High Perf, Balanced, Power Saver, as well as AMD Ryzen Balanced, and AMD Ryzen High Performance" power plans? Should we only be using one of the two Ryzen powerplans?

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (4)

Finally, a question about Ryzen HP vs Ryzen Balanced planswith regard to clock speeds. It appears that HP mode is giving me lower overall clockspeedswhen taking the averageand HP mode is causing higher temperature fluctuations.

AMD Ryzen HP Mode - PhotoWorxx Run (AIDA64 6.20.5300 Extreme)

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (5)

Ryzen High Performance Mode: 32899 MPixel/s

AMD RyzenBalanced Mode - PhotoWorxx Run (AIDA64 6.20.5300 Extreme)

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (6)


Ryzen Balanced Mode: 32866 MPixels/s

(So, HP mode beats Balanced mode by 33 MPixel/s, that seems like a prettysmall difference.)


Another quirk I noticed, my clock speeds, in general, are higher when I am using theRyzen Balanced Plan vs the Ryzen High Performance Plan. I even went in and made the two plansliterally identical and still, the balanced planproducesmore stable, and in general, higher clock speeds. While Ryzen HP Mode gives you higher burst clocks, but a lower constant clock speed, overall. This is prettystrange, you'd think the AMD HP mode would producethe highest clocks. Notice how stable the temperature is while running the Ryzen Balanced Plan (despite the clockspeedbeing at a constant 4.1-4.2 GHz).

However, when I actually ran the benchmarks above, you'll see the Ryzen HP planbeats the Ryzen Balanced plan,but only just barely. Is this behavior the way AMD intended for the power plansto function? It seems like these burst of higher speeds in HP mode must make up for the lack of a constant 4.1-4.2 GHz clock in the Balanced Plan? I am still left with one question, even if that is true. Why is the Ryzen Balanced Plan sticking to a high clock speed and refusing to downclock, while the Ryzen HP mode does throttle when the cores aren't under a load.I did some further testing in AIDA64 and it seems like Ryzen HP Mode is beating Ryzen Balanced Mode in every test, despite the changing clockspeedin HP mode. Would be interesting to hear a little bit of explanation on these results, considering the static 4.1-4.2 GHz in Balance vs. the dynamic clock speeds in HP mode.

AIDA64 DRAM Read Test w/ DDR4 3733 CL18:
HP Mode: 54802
Balanced: 54609

AIDA64 Julia FPU Test
HP Mode: 149237

Balanced: 149060

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Edit: I came across multiple articles talking about the "1usmus Ryzen Power Plan" I am going to give it a shot and see what happens. Will report back later!

Initial testing is very positive, I got a 600 MB/s jump in the DRAM Read test!

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (7)

Now, I brought my DDR4 down to 3666, just testing out some stuff. However, look at the response to this custom power plan! It downclocks the way I want it to when it's not being used, usually sitting around 3.5GHz or less and it taps the upper end of the boost boundary (4.28 GHz) when under a load. Look at how much more consitent the under load core clocks are with this capture below, compared to the "High Performance" plans above. The Balanced Plan gets close to these boost speeds (not quite though), but it won't downclock for me at all, just sits at 4.1-4.2.

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (8)

This custom plan seems to be a great tradeoff between those two other plans. Although without further testing, I don't feel comfortable fully recommending using it yet. Although my initial findings are very good! Look at how stable the temperatures now are compared to the graphs above!The part of the graph under SOC Power is when I ran an AIDA64 FPU test, that boost is almost perfect, in terms of nearly all cores reachingright up to 4.3 GHz.

I did make a few BIOS tweaks as well, according to the instructions on Guru3D.

Enabled Global C-State Control (from Auto)
Changed Power Supply Idle Control to LowCurrent Idle (from normal/typical)
Enabled CPPC (from Auto)

I'm looking for ASUS alternatives to the rest of the list, which includes:

CPPC Preferred Cores to Enabled, AMD Cool'n'Quiet to Enabled, PPC Adjustment to PState 0, and optionally disable PBO (enables Precison Boost 2.0 for clk management).

3950X High Idle Temperature with Corsair H150i Pro (2024)
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