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by edgineer 300 days ago
"We don't overclock or overvolt or play other teen games with our hardware."

You overclock as a teen so that as an adult you know to verify your CPU's voltage, clock speeds, and temperature at a minimum when you build your own system.

They made no mention of monitoring of CPU temperature, ECC corrected/detected errors, or throttling. They then ran CPU benchmark loads for several months on the system.

"The so-called TDP of the Ryzen 9950X is 170W. The used heat sinks are specified to dissipate 165W, so that seems tight."

Yikes. You need a heatsink rated much higher. These CPUs were overheated for months.
1 comments
Gracana 300 days ago
CPUs with stock cooling solutions will turbo boost up to max temp and stay there, that's completely normal and shouldn't cause a CPU to physically burn up, even if you do it for months.
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edgineer 300 days ago
"boost up to max temp and stay there"

At stock settings CPUs will boost depending on many factors. Once one of several different limits is hit the CPU will not boost as high, trying to find a steady state where it stays below Tjmax.

Note the following: the 9950x does not come with a stock cooler. AMD recommends water cooling for the 9950x. Transistor lifetime decreases exponentially with temperature.

I'd expect that a 9950x under sustained load paired with a "165W" cooler would not only not boost, but would throttle to below base clocks.

In the case of CPU cooling, I don't agree that relying on the CPU's thermal safety nets to continuously regulate the system to avoid damage is good practice. With additional cooling to ensure it never reaches Tjmax, this also will result in better CPU performance, a tangible benefit.

Had the author monitored his systems, he would have observed high temperature and throttling. Yes, in 2025 it's arguable that a CPU's safety net should be reliable wrt temperature, even if you run with no heatsink at all. I also agree that TDP specifications are unclear.

But the bottom line is that you should pay the extra $100 or so to cool your CPU properly. It will be faster and more reliable.

Please take care of your equipment; do not take it for granted.

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