Z2 G9 Tower Running Hot

[_Martin]

Hi all,

My Z2 G9 is now complete after installing the HP RTX 3080 card and the PCI-E support bracket complete with a blower fan from the G4 tower which I ended up powering using a Noctua Y-splitter cable after trimming off one of the locating lugs from the connector so that it could be fitted to the HP motherboards rear chassis 4 pin header. I also upped the RAM to 32GB with a couple of Crucial sticks and fitted a 2TB m.2 SSD, again Crucial, in place of the standard 512GB card.

I've now been noticing some pretty high temperatures on the i7 13700 during gameplay which sees core temperatures reaching 100 degrees C. The processor is already cooled by the larger heatsink that would otherwise be used for the unlocked K chip so I'm kind of scratching my head as to why the BIOs is letting the chip get so hot. I already have selected the High Performance mode in the HP BIOs which should allow the fans to fully power up as it doesn't care for acoustics which I have to say do get pretty loud.

Is there anything I could do to lower these temps at all? I'm open to replacing the standard thermal paste on the CPU but unsure if this will make much difference on a brand new system and I haven't actually done it before... Otherwise because it is a locked chip I believe undervolting isn't possible as I've read that is something people do on the K chip to get the temperature down.

Anyway here is some pictures of the 'build', the system as a whole is a big upgrade for me coming from a i7 4770 and GTX 1050ti so I'm keen to get it running smoothly and hopefully get many hours of happy gaming and browsing from it much like my last PC.