Bad chip?

[Kjensen]

Hey,
I've recently gotten myself a I7 920, which im using with a Noctua NF-P12 for cooling. I'be been hearing how easy and how great this chip runs on OCing, but I'm missing out it seems. For some reason, it seems to run excessively hot. I've tried taking off the cooler multiple times to reapply thermal paste, but no matter what it all amounts to the same thing. Temperature around 40c while idle, and 73-80c depending on the BCLK.

Right now im running with these settings :
CPU
Ratio 19.0
BCLK 169
CPU Voltage 1.2
HT off and Speedstep off
And rest on auto.

It's currently sitting at 74c with full load, on core0, but for some reason my core3 is at 64(It's consitently 10 degrees cooler then core0)? Maybe it's a bad chip or I dont know? Any suggestions?

 

[dokk2]

Can you physically return cpu for testing,or failing that RMA it as unsatistfactory??

 

[Kjensen]

I recon I could, theres a 14 days return policy, not sure if they'd honor it.

 

[richardscott]

if it dont oc then its broken 😀 try to get ure 14day return and say ure not happy with the speed, then ask for refund and buy another one from a diff shop

 

[miket2424]

A chip is supposed to run hotter when OCed. You get absoluelty no real performance benefit when OCing anyway. 99 % of RMA are because of a lack of understanding of the hardware and its setup.

 

[gahleon]

Here is the thing. I have an 920 as well and I noticed that it was extremely concave. I lapped both the heatsink and the cpu and it helped lower the temps about 10c but I still need to do it more. A friend made an interesting observation about the ultra 120 extreme thermalrights. They were made for 775 chips which have a different surface than 1366 chips. Since Thermalright makes the heatsink slightly convex to make up for this trend in the heatsinks on the chip they are off and don't have good contact with the nehalem chips.

I would lap it personally; however, you can possibly RMA it.

 

[Kjensen]

Miket, that is totaly beside the point. This is my toy, and I cant play with it 🙁

Gahleon, i'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say you "lapped" the heatsink and CPU, please elaborate.

 

[gingerbee]

You get absoluelty no real performance benefit when OCing anyway. what and what have you been smoking no real gains like crap you don't
p.s the i7's run hotter seeing temps above 70c at the core are normal and idle temps of 40c with air is about right

 

[Ancient_1]

I have seen a lot of i7's that have the same thing including myself with core 3 running a fair bit cooler than core 0. On mine at idle it is 2~4° and about 8 at load.

 

[Kjensen]

It's a bit odd really, but I dont see why it would be 74 degrees at such a low bclk.

 

[cjl]

You get absoluelty no real performance benefit when OCing anyway. what and what have you been smoking no real gains like crap you don't
p.s the i7's run hotter seeing temps above 70c at the core are normal and idle temps of 40c with air is about right

No real performance benefits?

Just for grins, I tested that. At stock clocks, a MATLAB script that I used for one of my labs here at school takes 3:22 to run (3 minutes, not 3 hours). At my 4GHz overclock, it takes 2:40 to run. That's over 40 seconds shorter. There are definitely real gains in some applications, it just depends on what you are doing.

 

[Kjensen]

So, in a last act of desperation, I went and cleaned the CPU one last time, bought some new thermal paste, and its sitting around 40 degrees idle now, 80 degrees with full load with these settings:

CPU
Ratio 20.0
BCLK 20
DRAM Freq 1603
CPU Voltage 1.33v
HT off
Speedstep on
QPI/DRAM 1.35v
DRAM 1.66v
And rest on auto.

Seems pretty good.

 

[richardscott]

is that then 4ghz? 20x200? your temps seem about right for that tbh.

 

[Kjensen]

Oh, yeah, its 4ghz, 20x200, forgot an 0.