Problem
Brand new 13th gen CPU i9-13900K temperatures on high load balance between 90-100°C even with decent water cooling system.
Diagnosis
Some people say it's the new norm but it turns out that some motherboards like MSI Z690 (needs BIOS update to support that CPU) have no power and core ratio limits by default. This makes CPU overclocked by default. P-cores speed up to 5.8GHz and power to over 300W! While CPU seems to work fine with this temperatures it's hard to tell long term consequences for it and for the motherboard, so it's a good idea to set some limits…
Solution
If you are not into boiling water on your CPU or using it as a heater in coming winter, enter BIOS and set power limit to 125W. On MSI BIOS go into Advanced Mode → OC and set:
Enhanced Turbo: Disabled
Long duration power limit (W): 125
Long duration Maintained (s): 1
Short) duration power limit (W): 125
You can also set P-Core and E-Core ratio to Manual and type in the default values that is visible next to each core.
After this CPU should keep temperatures between 60-70°C when under stress which is a huge difference. P-cores should speed up to 4.6 GHz max and E-cores to 3.5GHz max which should be enough.
If you want to get more from your CPU then change power limit to 253W (it's the official limit), play with cores ratios and thermal curves to keep the temperature on a rational level. You can also check out an article by Sebastian Peak on Intel Core i9-13900K power scaling performance.
Top comments (1)
I would recommend running a stress test after every voltage change you make with 3Dmark, just to make sure you don't get any BSOD.