Does this seem normal for my specs? with a TRUE 120

[Creebs]

Hey guys

I've recently rebuilt a new rig... and overclocked my i7 920 d0 to 3.6 ghz... I ran Prime95 been running solid for 13 hours.. gonna give it a few more hours... Seems to be perfectly stable.. I would just like to know if my temperatures are normal to you guys.. I was reading a thread on the internet somewhere where people were getting higher temps than expected with the TRUE 120....

Let me know what you think

The Core Voltage I left on auto just for a quick test... so it is running at 1.264v which I find quite good for 3.6ghz.. The Temperatures is what worries me a little bit... although when I come to realize it... they will likely never get that hot in any application or game for that matter..

The Average temperatures are ranging from 64-70.. I saw it peek up to 75 once during the night but when I woke up it was back to the usual constant below 70 or 70 on the dot.

Are these temps fine, or will this shorten the life of the cpu.... Since I'm not quite sure what exactly the thermal limit is... but I was reading somewhere that it was 67 or something around that range..

But as I said... the cpu will likely never reach this temperature in any game or application

I just figured it would be a lot cooler, I thought that I saw some people with 4.0ghz running around these temperatures on a TRUE 120

Thanks in advance
Josh

 

[fpsdominator]

what i would recommend to do:
is to download realtemp, reset the min max temps, then play a game for an hour or 2. then when you exit the game, realtemp will show the minimum and maximum temps that you have hit since you reset it.

This will give you a "realworld" temperature.

 

[spinny]

I'm running a 920 at 4.0 GHz and I peak under an 8 thead small FTT prime 95 load at just about 70 or 71 with a TRUE. But there are always differences between someone else's setup and yours.

For starters, I decided to lap my TRUE right out of the box after checking the contact with the CPU (which was not very good at all). Unfortunately, this means I don't have any reference temps for unlapped. You can find some tests around online with lapped vs unlapped though. Some report very nice improvements of ~5C, other report basically no improvement. YMMV, but I'm convinced that my lapping helped.

Also, my ambient temperature is about 72-73F. If yours is higher, you will have higher temps. It is also important to note that my ambient stays at this temperature even during extended periods of extreme CPU load. Lots of people will having rising ambient temps in their room the longer they run a stress test, sometimes just a little, sometimes very pronounced. If this is the case for you, it's something to take into account (and maybe improve, if possible).

Check your case to make sure you have a good amount of fresh air reaching your heatsink, and that the air leaving the heatsink is exhausted fairly quickly. In my case I have my TRUE mounted vertically, with my fan pushing air into the heatsink towards the back of the case, right into the waiting arms of my exhaust fan a couple of inches away, so very little of the heated air stays in the case during heavy loads. For reference, the case is a CM ATCS 840 with a 240mm intake up front, a 120mm intake on the bottom, a 120mm exhaust on the back, and two 240mm fans up top, the back one is running exhaust, the front one I have off at the time being and may switch it to intake in the future, because having both of them exhaust was stealing my fresh air from my CPU.

You may consider the washer mod or penny mod, which could lower your temps a bit. The implementation varies, but the basic idea is to get the TRUE seated with more pressure on the heatsink, since the pressure is a bit low stock. I have not done this on mine because I've been happy with the temps so far.

Of course, if you are not very concerned about noise, you can just slap a faster fan on that sucker and lower temps too. If noise IS an issue, you can pick up a slightly higher CFM fan at the same noise levels. I use this Noiseblocker, which is rated about 10CFM higher and 1db lower, which I would agree with after testing them both out.

This is all food for thought if you want to try lowering your temperatures. If, on the other hand, you are happy with your current overclock, those temps are fine, as you will basically never have that much load on your CPU in real world use, as you've noted.

 

[Creebs]

Thank you for the great reply spinny.. Much appreciated