[Z590] Asus ROG Maximus XIII Hero - PCH High Temperature

[EncodeGR]

My PCH temperature is fairly high, which concerns me. I'm used to everything else in my system being pretty chilly, usually around 28-30 C. The airflow is also really good. The *only* thing that gets hot is the PCH, and i don't understand why.


-- Some Backround Info, Setup --

Intel Pentium G6400 4.0GHz (Lol, well... until i get my Rocket Lake chip)

MSI GTX 1070Ti Gaming X (Until i actually manage to find a 3080/3070, if ever...)

HyperX DDR4 32GB 3600Mhz XMP CL17 (4 x 8 GB)

Asus ROG Maximus XIII Hero (Z590)

Asus ROG Thor 850 Plat

Samsung 980 Pro M2. NVMe PCIe 4.0 500GB (installed in M2.2_2, cpu bound)

Noctua NH-U12A

Noctua NF-A14 PWM (x6)



-- Things i've tried --

• Updated Drivers. Updated ME FW. Updated BIOS.
  
• Inspected PCH heatsink and thermal pad and resit. No change.
  
• Removed M.2 NVMe drive and GPU. No significant change.
  
• Checked the PCH 1.8v VCCIN voltage, stable 1.8v.
  
• Made sure nothing is "overclocked", using XMP, or enhanced in any automatic way.
  
• Lowered VCCIO and VCCSA to 1.10v, since automatic was pushing both to 1.40 for some reason !! (CPU weak memory controller ?). No change.
  

** I need to mention i couldn't find the PCH Core Voltage, anywhere in the settings. No idea why.


-- PCH Temperature --

PCH temperature starts at 35-38 C, during a cold boot. During the next 5 minutes it climbs and stabilizes at 56 - 62 C, while IDLING.

And that's with a system without GPU, or M.2 NVMe drive. Just the CPU and its iGPU which stay at 24 C, cooled by a Noctua NH-U12A. With a fully assembled system and under load it goes up to 70 - 80 C.


Now... The only thing i have not tried yet, is to completely remove the plastic ROG-logo cover, on top of the PCH, as it may be severely suffocating the heatsink, restricting the airflow towards it.

That would explain the temps under load, but i'm not sure if that explains the initial fast-climbing temperatures while idling. And honestly, without the cover the LEDs underneath it are blinding, so the Aura lighting needs to be completely disabled. Could this be a flawed design ?? I doubt.

I don't understand what's wrong. I've seen people reviewing this mothereboard, while reporting PCH idle temps at 35C and 55C under load. I know that right now, it's not gonna cause any sort of damage. I am however concerned about the longevity and a possible degredation over time, thinking that my PCH is at 75-80 C while gaming.

Sorry for the long post, had to make sure everythong's covered.

Any help would be appreciated 🙂

-- HWInfo & HWMonitor -> 3 minutes after cold boot --
-- Bios Monitor -> 10 minutes after cold boot --

[sdmf74]

tflor wrote:
Hey sdmf74

Thanks for trying to be helpful, but I'm acutely familiar with the architecture of Z590 chipset - it wasn't ASUS' choice; ASUS don't design chipsets. It was Intel's decision to switch the DMI link speed from PCI-E 3.0 x4 to PCI-E 3.0 x8. As ASUS was engineering the motherboard, this should've been taken into account and PCH heatsink design beefed up to ensure the PCH is being cooled properly.

I have read the thread through and through, ahead of writing up my 1st post, and as I'm sure you can agree, solutions posted here so far are half measures and not permanent fixes.

The only two permanent solutions to this problem that I can envisage are:
1) ASUS release new BIOS version, with PCH undervolted (unlikely as might cause instability; unless the PCH is overvolted in the current BIOS version)
2) ASUS release a revised PCH heatsink and agree to supply at no additional cost, to all who purchased the board, and pull the existing inventory from the channel to apply the revised heatsink (extremely unlikely, as this would mean lost revenue and reputational damage - this would basically be ASUS admitting that this is a PCH heatsink design flaw)

I'm unwilling to be applying half measures to limit the connectivity options which I paid for (and it isn't a cheap mobo we're talking about here), increasing fan speeds, buying new fans or cases - just to accommodate the product that should not have had this design flaw in the first place. It is your right of course to disagree with me and do all those things, if you prefer.

I sincerely hope ASUS will own up to the problem and fix it, but given the choice between entrusting to a soul-less company and returning what I consider to be a flawed product, I choose the latter.

And finally - I have returned my flawed Maximus XIII Hero motherboard, exercising my right of return, as any sane consumer would, and I would highly encourage everyone who can, to do the same. I purchased an ASUS MAXIMUS XIII Apex instead (best motherboard I could find with an actual PCH heatsink), and here are my temps (note that I didn't buy a new case or fans - neither of which I need; I didn't increase the fan speeds, nor did I apply any other shenanigans):

So you exchanged your motherboard for an Apex w/ one Nic and now you have a PCH temp of 66c

I temporarily disabled one of my nics and have 59c

I noticed at least two people asking what disabling APSM does.
Read the thread I already explained it.

I can enable apsm and open hwinfo64 and watch the whea errors rise from zero and keep going up and up!

[Psycrow]

Hi

Im having 73-75c for pch chipset
Once my chipset was 88 c but then i tryed to give all my power cables on the board a firm press and one of the two top 8 pins was not fully pressed down since i heard a small click. That seems to make stuff runs stable and lowered my chipset to 75 ish.

Also i want to tell you that if you use any RGB in ur pc from asus or any software, then you see a lighting serice running in task manager that eats 8 % of ur cpu and easy heat it with 5-10c. If you stop that serive then ur temps c will be better all round but ur RGB wont wont 😄 double edged blade here people

Hero xiii
i9 11900k Turbo mode 5 ghz idle 800 mhz
3080 ti auros OC vertical
32 gb trident z royal ram
Coolermaster 520 argb
Noctua NH12A cooler 2 fans
Ill try disable stuff i dont need in bios if that is the fix.

What do you mean with remove plastic ? Like the whole casing with the rgb logo ?
i got 3 m2 drives installed ?

How do you even install a fan on there ?

[kernolsz28]

I see people say they disabled apsm in their bios? what exactly will that do? anything negative?

10900k 5.1
590 hero
vcore 1.315 llc 4
3200mhz cl14 32gb kit

My VCCIO on my 10900k runs at 1.152 and my VCCSA runs at 1.136
I have disabled my thunderbolt ports, sata 5-6

[Bronson]

i have hero maximus xiii and had also high pch temp, i read about it and it turns out its the thunderbolt thing. try turning off thunderbolt in the bios, if you dont need it, and see if your temps drops 😉

[emsir]

EncodeGR wrote:
My PCH temperature is fairly high, which concerns me. I'm used to everything else in my system being pretty chilly, usually around 28-30 C. The airflow is also really good. The *only* thing that gets hot is the PCH, and i don't understand why.


-- Some Backround Info, Setup --

Intel Pentium G6400 4.0GHz (Lol, well... until i get my Rocket Lake chip)

MSI GTX 1070Ti Gaming X (Until i actually manage to find a 3080/3070, if ever...)

HyperX DDR4 32GB 3600Mhz XMP CL17 (4 x 8 GB)

Asus ROG Maximus XIII Hero (Z590)

Asus ROG Thor 850 Plat

Samsung 980 Pro M2. NVMe PCIe 4.0 500GB (installed in M2.2_2, cpu bound)

Noctua NH-U12A

Noctua NF-A14 PWM (x6)



-- Things i've tried --

• Updated Drivers. Updated ME FW. Updated BIOS.
  
• Inspected PCH heatsink and thermal pad and resit. No change.
  
• Removed M.2 NVMe drive and GPU. No significant change.
  
• Checked the PCH 1.8v VCCIN voltage, stable 1.8v.
  
• Made sure nothing is "overclocked", using XMP, or enhanced in any automatic way.
  
• Lowered VCCIO and VCCSA to 1.10v, since automatic was pushing both to 1.40 for some reason !! (CPU weak memory controller ?). No change.
  

** I need to mention i couldn't find the PCH Core Voltage, anywhere in the settings. No idea why.


-- PCH Temperature --

PCH temperature starts at 35-38 C, during a cold boot. During the next 5 minutes it climbs and stabilizes at 56 - 62 C, while IDLING.

And that's with a system without GPU, or M.2 NVMe drive. Just the CPU and its iGPU which stay at 24 C, cooled by a Noctua NH-U12A. With a fully assembled system and under load it goes up to 70 - 80 C.


Now... The only thing i have not tried yet, is to completely remove the plastic ROG-logo cover, on top of the PCH, as it may be severely suffocating the heatsink, restricting the airflow towards it.

That would explain the temps under load, but i'm not sure if that explains the initial fast-climbing temperatures while idling. And honestly, without the cover the LEDs underneath it are blinding, so the Aura lighting needs to be completely disabled. Could this be a flawed design ?? I doubt.

I don't understand what's wrong. I've seen people reviewing this mothereboard, while reporting PCH idle temps at 35C and 55C under load. I know that right now, it's not gonna cause any sort of damage. I am however concerned about the longevity and a possible degredation over time, thinking that my PCH is at 75-80 C while gaming.

Sorry for the long post, had to make sure everythong's covered.

Any help would be appreciated 🙂

-- HWInfo & HWMonitor -> 3 minutes after cold boot --
-- Bios Monitor -> 10 minutes after cold boot --

You are lookin to much at temps and go....oh no! Do you have problems? NO! You are just scared because you see normal behaviour. Chipset temp is normal, nothings going to happen. Do you really think ASUS sell millions of boards with abnormal temps? . I have 2 Maximus X III Hero boards - both have chipset temps around 65-70 degrees after 15-20 minutes. Computer works just fine in games and normal work. 2 years without ANY problems. So I think maybe you should
worry less about what you see. And another user claim the the PCH voltage is to high...how do you even know if it's to high -Who told you it's to high?. It's normal.... Everything on the board is normal. If you overclock, you will get higher temps and if you increase voltage, well, you will get higher voltages. But when you do that, you can't blame ASUS.

[PerpetualCycle]

emsir wrote:
You are lookin to much at temps and go....oh no! Do you have problems? NO! You are just scared because you see normal behavior. Chipset temp is normal, nothings going to happen. Do you really think ASUS sell millions of boards with abnormal temps? . I have 2 Maximus X III Hero boards - both have chipset temps around 65-70 degrees after 15-20 minutes. Computer works just fine in games and normal work. 2 years without ANY problems. So I think maybe you should
worry less about what you see. And another user claim the the PCH voltage is to high...how do you even know if it's to high -Who told you it's to high?. It's normal.... Everything on the board is normal. If you overclock, you will get higher temps and if you increase voltage, well, you will get higher voltages. But when you do that, you can't blame ASUS.

The PCH voltage, which is around 1.8v, is relatively high because it is a supply voltage for a FIVR (Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator) on the chipset that provides a regulated lower voltage to the chipset.

Temperatures approaching 80c or above may be a concern for the longevity of the chipset - they really should be better cooled on these boards.

[tcttcf]

emsir wrote:
You are lookin to much at temps and go....oh no! Do you have problems? NO! You are just scared because you see normal behaviour. Chipset temp is normal, nothings going to happen. Do you really think ASUS sell millions of boards with abnormal temps? . I have 2 Maximus X III Hero boards - both have chipset temps around 65-70 degrees after 15-20 minutes. Computer works just fine in games and normal work. 2 years without ANY problems. So I think maybe you should
worry less about what you see. And another user claim the the PCH voltage is to high...how do you even know if it's to high -Who told you it's to high?. It's normal.... Everything on the board is normal. If you overclock, you will get higher temps and if you increase voltage, well, you will get higher voltages. But when you do that, you can't blame ASUS.

Mine was idling at 80-85C way too hot for no activity. I got it down to 60-62C by turning on the GPU fans with GPU Tweak III ( set to 850 RPM), and turning off unused features in BIOS. I disabled one ethernet port, WiFI, bluetooth, and PCIe_3. My case has 3 140mm fans in the front a 120 in the back and 2 120s on te top mounted CPU cooler. After 2 years of expensive trial and error the whole system is stable and at reasonable temps.

[PerpetualCycle]

I did remove the plastic shroud on my Hero. It did reduce the PCH temperature by about 8-10c. Now I am in the mid 60s and never above 70c.

It does leave those LED that lit up the Asus logo bare though they are pretty obscured by the graphics card anyway (my case is on the floor).

[SoppingClam]

I had the same board and mine would sometime max around 90c. Anyway, I managed to discuss with a technician from Asus that advised me how to fix. Unfortunately, it was too late and a melt occurred with a toxic electrical fire. The circuit and bang destroyed my PC and burned my office.
I was lucky I had reported this and supplied the evidence for the fire investigation. Asus paid the $90k damages and you should note the newer bios fixes have fixed the issue.
Also a word of warning, if you have a Samsung 970 Evo 1tb, G.Skill memory this combination causes odd behaviour.
There is more I could discuss, but upon payment, I agreed to an NDA.

[tcttcf]

I needed a two fold approach, but mu PCH idle temp dropped from the Mid 80s to the low 60s. I used GPU Tweak III to turn on the fans in my RTX 3060 and set them to about 850 RPM. Then I disabled all the unused features in BIOS. I don't use WiFI or Bluetooth, disabling them made a huge difference. Each user will be different, but reducing PCH traffic is free and it works.