The over heating is probably normal on that model, there is a massive thread about making the thermals better (Dell community, XPS 8940, Better 3rd party cooler. or something like that). There are many stories of the CPU over heating within seconds. Also, I suggest looking up some you tube videos. There are a few aftermarket coolers that make the PC fairly useable and there is also the Dell premium cooler that came on the 8940 with the K series CPU. I know people that have this PC with the 11900 and they had the same problem.

Thanks kras1, yes I've gone over many of the youtube videos, it's one of the reasons I was further concerned as my score seemed vastly lower than another 8940 reviewed on youtube

not sure if I'm allowed to link it here, if so -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry2y19Kjj8A&t=407s
The same CPU gets 10,379 whereas mine is just shy of half that score.

The one in the video is a micro center XPS 8940. Dell doesn't use four 8 Gb in any 8940 as they list it as a non tested configuration. What video card do you have? 30% short on a bench mark could definitely be caused thermal throttling. I would try a simple CPU-Z bench mark and then you can compare it to other 11700 CPUs

GPU is a 3070

CPU-Z benchmark runs fine, but the stress test throttles within one minute and the score drops about 20% (5800 score drops gradually down to 4700) after the CPU hits 100 degrees.

Definitely sounds like you are the victim of the poor thermals of the 8940 but hopefully one of the members that is more knowledgeable than me will give some feedback on your issue.

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@Remmus wrote:

for example in the Time Spy benchmark in 3DMark it scores 5700 for the CPU test, whereas an 11 700 generally should score somewhere around 10-11k.

 

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While it might be called CPU-Test, it is still heavily influenced by your video-card, as it is Time-Spy 3DMark .

What GPU are you running?

I've got a GTX3070 in it. The GPU scores seem to indicate it's performing as well as it should.

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@Remmus wrote:

I've got a GTX3070 in it. The GPU scores seem to indicate it's performing as well as it should.

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Good.

If you think CPU is thermal throttling, CPUID's HW-Monitor would reveal it.

One reviewer noticed that when he uninstalled certain Dell software, then rebooted, the benchmarks were better. I cannot go into details but users out here can expand on the listings for Dell in the Services app.