Change AMD to Intel?

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shkaa887

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hello!

I currently have a recent custom-built machine that has an AMD FX8350 CPU and a Sabertooth 990FX mobo, but it runs hot....and I mean very hot. I'm a gamer and I'm hitting temps of about 68C/70C sometimes, and I'm a little concerned. I've been thinking about this for a while, and my CPU currently idles with Chrome open at about 37C, sometimes 41/41C as it's quite hot here, even with the new Shadow Rock 2 cooling fan I bought the other day :??:

I've been considering sending back these parts under warranty and switching to Intel. I know I'd have to swap out the motherboard and I was looking at ASRock Z77 mobo and an intel i5 or perhaps i7 if I can stretch the money I get back from trading in the other parts. I've checked all the rest of my parts compatibility and they all work with the new parts no problem.
My questions are:

    Is this a good swap-over?

    How difficult is it to change over from AMD to Intel? As in what would I need to do?
    Is my current setup running too hot in the first place? I know that AMD runs hotter, but how hot?

    Can anyone recommend anything else I can do aside from swapping the parts?

Any help you can give would be much appreciated! Thanks! :)
 
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DHFF
well you have what seems to be a fairly impressive cooler. I have never used it myself but from the design and specs it should be doing a fine Job. I have no idea what the fans are like so all I could do is suggest trying a Noctua fan on the cooler, Noctua is known not only for quiet fans but also fans that have awesome static pressure which is what you want in a cpu cooler fan, especially with a heat sink that massive :)

As to thermal paste, Artic silver is a household name, my preference is MX-2, MX-4 is a notch better but more troublesome to work with. When applying the paste just put a tiny drop in the centerr and let the pressure from the heat sink do the rest. The urge to put more on is great and for years I applied too much...
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I know this might be silly but re-seat your Cooler and when you do check the base plate, make sure there are not any plastic tabs or plastic film over the base plate. I have read that some people overlook that.
 
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I wouldn't go lower than 1.325. Even at 1.325, it'll cause instability.

As for the temperatures, I usually go with the one that's under the FX8350. I have HWMonitor and CoreTemp and they both show the same numbers on one. The other one is more likely to be the socket temperature.
 
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I'm not sure why none of your suggestions are working but it got critical just now. My machine had settled at 40C idle and so I thought I'd see if the problem was rectified, I launched a game and then the temperature peaked at 70C after just 10 minutes before my machine black screened and shut itself down.
I haven't tried turning it on again. I removed the heatsink and cleaned the thermal paste from it and the CPU (which I could feel heat radiating from as I disassembled the machine). I will re-apply some Arctic Cooling paste when it arrives and if that fails I'll take it to a professional repair place - I feel that the issue may be in the BIOS but have found that all of your BIOS solutions either didnt work or I was too inexperienced to change the settings.
I'm a little concerned that I've simply thrown money away on this build or specifically the processor as I'm having real trouble with it's temperature.
I will update the thread when I can give the results of installing new paste.
Thanks for all the theories guys!
 
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How EXACTLY are you putting the thermal paste on?
 
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I've re-applied thermal paste and reset the BIOS and rebooted the machine. It now hangs at about 39C idle and peaks at 45C when starting up the machine. Is this an acceptable temperature? I'm still inclined to switch over to Intel but if this is okay then I'll be happy to stick with it. I'll run some games and see if my machine overheats again.
 
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Well 50 is not terrible. Virus scans put pressure on the CPU, especially if you are running something like Nortons. so if its holding at 50 well under strain you should be ok. the 8350 does run hot. Its a 125W chip so higher temps are to be expected. If it holds at the temps you are reporting now then I think we can work with that. One option is to upgrade the fan on your cooler, Shopping for a fan with more airflow can help. Switching to a liquid cooler might also give you better temps. The closed loops are easy to install and give moderate performance. A custom loop liquid cooler will give you the best performance but they require more work.

Lastly you could throw in the towel and get an Intel, they do run MUCH cooler then AMD. An 1150 socket i7 runs at 69W I believe. my Xeon runs at 80W and even under load I dont know that I have topped 50C. my idil is in the low 30s.
 
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I'm idle at 39C now after the scan finished so I think that's okay. Ran the game that crashed my machine the other day and it peaked at 52C and didn't go any higher, I reckon it's fixed. Thank you all so much for helping! :)
 
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Only issue I can see is that it's taking a while to get down to a nice idle temp, it appears to be at 47C idle but if it wont go any higher than 55C or so whilst under load then I'm happy with that.
 
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Yes a peek of 52C is acceptable. Sounds like the heat sink wasn't making proper contact or perhaps whatever thermal paste you were using before just wasn't doing the job. Either way you can work with 50ish peek temps and like I said you want to go lower still its possible with more complex cooling systems. If you goal is to have the lowest temps possible I suggest researching Custom loop liquid coolers. you can get a decent kit for about $280 and it will do the best job of managing your heat.
 
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Are you looking at the package temp? The socket temp? The core temps? TMPIN0? TMPIN1? TMPIN2? They all are different areas.
 
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I've decided to not return any of the parts, and I just want to make sure this is the right decision.
I am most likely going to buy a better CPU fan now, but these are my current temps: idle is between 35/40C and running Prime95's stress test that gives the most heat I hit a peak of 61C.
Is this all okay? If so I'll buy a Coolermaster 212 and consider this all settled.
Thanks again!
 
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The temps you are recording now are normal. I Idle at around 32C but my CPU is only 80W where as yours is 125W. so Idles of 35-40 are fine. and a prime95 stress test peeking at 61 is fine. prime95 will tax your CPU far more then you ever possibly could in a real world setting. I think your issue is settled.

Honestly I wouldn't bother with replacing the CPU cooler at this point. it sounds like everything is working fine, the issue seems to have been how the Cooler was seated to the chip, once you re-applied the Thermal compound and reseated the cooler everything seems to work normal.

For as much as I love the 212, I wouldn't suggest it as a replacement in this case because from the looks and specs of your current cooler I do not think you would see any difference. what you have seems to be a decent product. If you want lower temps I would suggest getting a Corsair H100i liquid cooler, that might lower your temp by a few more degrees. Beyond that is building a custom water loop. That would give you the best possible cooling solution.
 
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