Overheating chipset.

[Murph_9000]

It's not "bad design" if it's running within the Intel thermal specs. I can't find the number right now, but I believe the Intel spec for max temp is over 100C. People need to recalibrate their expectations with the modern chipsets, the board vendors are not failing in their thermal design (in general), but people are expecting it to behave like historic chipsets (which is not reasonable). Yes, vendors could force them to run cooler, but they don't need to do that when Intel say they can happily run hot.

[JohnAb]

A few months ago I started using 2x 8cm fans resting at the bottom of the case to blow air over the PCH heatsink which reduced the temperature by about 10C. I also reduced PCH voltages to their mid-points and chipset temp settled down to 59C idle with all NVME slots occupied.

I just set link power management to max savings (as suggested above) and now it's running at 51C. I had tried this before, but I was convinced it was affecting the stability of an external NVME drive. It turned out that the drive had some corruption and it just needed to be reformatted. Since then, I never thought to apply the link power savings again.

Thanks terrywany2k - great call

I know that 59C was well within spec anyway and nothing to worry about, I just don't like things running that hot if avoidable. I'm extremely happy now with 51C and editing the Windows power plan settings is the most effective/easiest thing to do for sure. I'll see if this little change causes any other stability issues, but I'd be surprised if it did.

[JohnAb]

UPDATE

Since applying max link power savings to reduce chipset temp, I immediately started getting Windows hardware (WHEA) errors as reported by HWINfo (more specifically, PCI/PCIe bus errors). I got over 1,000 errors in less than 10 mins.

Before the change, I got 0 WHEA errors, even over weeks of monitoring.

I just set link power saving to moderate instead and the errors have completely stopped. PCH temp is now up from 51C to 56C. Since I'm happy with anything below 60C, that's still good, I just thought I'd let you all know that it might be something to keep an eye on.

[geneo]

Yeah, this is the first Asus product that I have been disappointed with. As you say, cheeping out on the chipset heatsink, what were they thinking. I am seriously thinking of buying a Gigabyte Z790 motherboard and selling this one, I have had nothing but trouble with it since I installed it.
I have solved every problem so far and have managed to get the chipset to idle at 50/52. But I shouldn't have had to waste weeks of my time finding solutions.
It's either buy a Gigabyte board or strip my computer down and try to fix the heatsink on this one. I will sleep on it. Either way I don't think I'll be buying Asus stuff again. The quality seems to have taken a dive.

I don't have this board, but I do have the z590 Hero. Its idle temperature was around 35c. I took the plastic shroud off and it dropped by about 10 degrees. Only con is the LEDs that lit up the Asus Logo are then bare on the motherboard, but it is below the graphics card anyway,

[NotHarry]

It's not "bad design" if it's running within the Intel thermal specs. I can't find the number right now, but I believe the Intel spec for max temp is over 100C. People need to recalibrate their expectations with the modern chipsets, the board vendors are not failing in their thermal design (in general), but people are expecting it to behave like historic chipsets (which is not reasonable). Yes, vendors could force them to run cooler, but they don't need to do that when Intel say they can happily run hot.

It's not about it running at safe temps, it's about how it heats up every other part of my computer that would normally stay cool. It's about the noise levels it creates.

[NotHarry]

I don't have this board, but I do have the z590 Hero. Its idle temperature was around 35c. I took the plastic shroud off and it dropped by about 10 degrees. Only con is the LEDs that lit up the Asus Logo are then bare on the motherboard, but it is below the graphics card anyway,

Thanks to what I already knew and some tips I picked up here on this thread I have now got a idle temp of 50. I still mean to strip it down and remove the plastic shroud and reseat the heatsink, screwing it down tightly. Doing this seems to have the greatest result and is reported to bring a chipset down from 60/70 to as low as 30. Only trouble is I have no idea how to remove the heat sink even with the board out. I can find nothing on the net showing how to do this.

[Silent_Scone@ROG]

Hello, 50-60 degrees Celsius is well within spec. Given the amount of data being thrown over the bus with modern storage devices and GPUs higher temps are to be expected. If one has an unnatural preoccupation with such things it would be better spent on temperatures that have noticeable impact on performance*

[NotHarry]

Hello, 50-60 degrees Celsius is well within spec. Given the amount of data being thrown over the bus with modern storage devices and GPUs higher temps are to be expected. If one has an unnatural preoccupation with such things it would be better spent on temperatures that have noticeable impact on performance*

Correct, and that's what I'm trying to do. All my temps but the chipset are nice and low, GPU, CPU etc. What drives those temps up are the excess heat coming from the chipset. You see where I'm going here?
So if I can keep my chipset temps under control I keep all temps under control.
Anyway this is no longer a problem, my new Gigabyte board arrives today. I am going back to what's stable over what's flash.

[Silent_Scone@ROG]

Correct, and that's what I'm trying to do. All my temps but the chipset are nice and low, GPU, CPU etc. What drives those temps up are the excess heat coming from the chipset. You see where I'm going here?
So if I can keep my chipset temps under control I keep all temps under control.
Anyway this is no longer a problem, my new Gigabyte board arrives today. I am going back to what's stable over what's flash.

The chipset doesn't use enough current to have a negligible impact on surrounding components, so I believe you're wasting your time.

[NotHarry]

The chipset doesn't use enough current to have a negligible impact on surrounding components, so I believe you're wasting your time.

That might have been possible if it wasn't for the fact my Son upgraded to Z690 at the same time as me but he went with Gigabyte. Yes, he has none of these problems. As far as the chipset goes Gigabyte have gave it adequate cooling, keeping the chipset around the 35c over the fancy but inadequate of the Asus board.
There are also many questionable stability issues with my Asus board that never appear on the GB board.
So, I don't believe I'll be wasting my time, my money maybe as I won't be able to return my Asus board and will take a hit in my wallet region by selling it second hand, but you have to do what you have to do.

Prey tell me this. Why in all it's wisdom did Asus, knowing the chipset gave of excessive heat did they stick a tiny bit of aluminium on there and then cover it with a plastic shroud. A recipe for disaster wouldn't you think. They should have doubled down on the heatsink, not reduce it.