I have an ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S motherboard that's been randomly shutting down. After hours of troubleshooting, I narrowed the problem down to an overheating CPU. I would have never known the CPU was over heating, if it wasn't for the HwMonitor app, which revealed the temp values.
I've always had a pretty extensive background in computer repair, but got out of computers around the Windows 7 era, which I ran for many years. I barely started using windows 10/11 about a year or two ago. RIP Win 7. Anyhow... after doing a bit of research, I've seen a few issues that could cause the overheating.
Not peeling the plastic off the heatsink
Not applying the thermal paste correctly and or it degrading over time
Undercooling (fans installed wrong, etc...)
Failed or failing water pump
A bit about this build. It was given to me, and after overlooking everything, an Intel Core i& 9700K processor, 750W power supply, which was temporarily swapped out with a brand new one and the issue persisted, a GeForce RTX 2080, which was pulled and left out to troubleshoot and the issue persisted, 4 sticks of ram which were tested with MemTest and issue persisted. There are 3 120mm fans in the computer. One at the front chassis sucking in air and two at the rear exhausting air across the water pump radiator (assuming that's what it’s called), with one behind the radiator and one in front of it, and then the heatsink on the CPU.
The BIOS has been updated to the latest. I happen to notice while checking event log in the BIOS, that this computer has been experiencing "AC power Loss" since 2019. And seeing that the 1st event in the log is "New CPU Installed" continuously followed by “AC Power Loss”, I'm going to assume it's had this issue since it was purchased / built. Not sure if iBuyPower built it, or if an individual built it.
Okay now that I'm done ranting with all the details, my question is... w/o putting a bunch of money into trying to figure out exactly what's causing the CPU to overheat (buying un-necessary things), where exactly should I start in terms of resolving this issue? I know replacing the thermal paste is a given.
If it helps, the CPU is overheating doing the bare minimal on it. So, I'm assuming increasing the number of fans would be putting a Band-Aid on the issue. I may eventually plan to add more fans, but a CPU shouldn't over heat simply from browsing the internet. I’m giving this computer to my son who will probably only use it for RoBlox and eventually school work.
I tried to see if the water pump is working, but I'm unfamiliar with how to troubleshoot that component, and also couldn't find anything in HwMonitor to indicate if it's properly functioning. I can hear liquid running through it, but not all the time. Not sure what is normal for these liquid coolers.
Anyhow, thanks for any input in advance.
