High Temps?

[kdogg]

Hello all, this is my first post here although I have been lurking for a while

Well I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to a decent system. I went with the asus k7v 133a mobo and a T-bird 900. I went ahead and got everything up and running and am now playing with some overclocking. I have not performed the L1 connection yet and have limited my overclocking to changing the fsb. So far I am running stable at 120mhz @1080, with no problems running anything so far at this speed. MBM 5 reports the cpu temp at a steady 47-48C, all the time, no matter if its at full load or idle. I let the computer run all night (idle) just to see if the temp would creep up, but it stayed at 48C. I have a TornadoII and some case fans to keep things moving, and when I touch the processor it just feels warm. Is that temperature acceptable to run my cpu at? the motherboard is reporting a bit lower temp (36-37C) which is good i guess. I have also read about the BIOS flashes which are reported to lower temps at idle, has anyone had any luck with flashing the a7v and effectivly lowering temps? Also, which method of o'clocking (fsb or multiplier) is more efficient for cooling purposes? I guess what I am asking is if I will do any harm running the system at this temp for extended periods of time? Thanks for the response in advance.

 

[peteb]

Ok, in no particular order.

1. The only overclocking method that will lower your temps is to not overclock. Doing either multiplier or FSB will evenly increase your temps. Usually you need to raise your core voltage which is what really raises the temps!!!

2. Your mobo is 5-10 degrees too hot. It should really be no more than 5-10 degrees over your room ambient temperature, which for most people will be 30 degrees max (mobo temp, not the room). Getting that down by 10 degrees (put more air through your case) will enable you to get above 120FSB. You should get 133 on that board easily (it's designed for it) and you wont be overclocking your memory or PCI/AGP bus doing it.

3. How the hell can you touch your processor? There should be a large chunk of aluminium or copper over it!

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[kdogg]

Thanks for the reply, I, m going to work on the airflow on the case to get the mobo temp down, and see if I can get the fsb up a little more, I would like to break through 1.1 gigs with it, im getting pretty close @1080....

As far as the processor is concerned, I am assuming it will be ok at 48-49C?? i looked over at the AMD site for some white paper on optimal operating temps, but I could not find any.

ohh by the way...there is a large chunk of aluminum over the processor, I was feeling the base of the heat sink and sides of the actual processor... probably not the most reliable way to measure temps..... 😱

 

[peteb]

Ahh - common misconception. You are not feeling the side of the processor, but a lump of ceramic that the processor sits in.

The little rectangle in the center of your AMD chip is the WHOLE processor! The ceramic around the edge allows for the required space to place pins and resistors and the famous bridges. Scary huh?? 😱)

BTW 47-48 degrees under load is fine, but if you are rolling over 50 constantly (i.e. 24x7 at 55-60 degrees) then your cpu life will be shorter. No-one can really say how short, but I'd figure somewhere between 2-5 years tops. If that doesn't worry you - then don't sweat it. You won't have any head room for further overclocking though and getting it down a mite might help you heading for the 1.1!

Also, if you aren't already - get the speed by FSB, not mutliplier. FSB has greater perfomance impact due to increase in memory bandwidth.

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[kdogg]

Thanks!! I'll see about some better cooling and let you know how it goes!!

 

[kdogg]

Well after pulling off my hsf and polishich the bottom with sctchbright and adding a blowhole I lowered temps to about 42c at idle and 45 at 1107mhz !!! Im at 123 fsb and windows is running comletly stable as far as i can tell. I still am having motherboard temps up a little, after 45 mins of some Unreal I was runnin at 45c on the cpu and 35c on the board. I am happy about the cpu temps but need some advice on keeping the mobo cool. any suggestions? Also my voodoo3 is getting hotter than hell, after Unreal it actually burned me, can anyone recommend a heat sink or somthing to cool it?

 

[peteb]

What I'd try is this.

Up your FSB to 133. Your board will setup so that all PCI devices and memory wil be at their correct bus speeds.

Your CPU may not post at this speed - unlock it and lower your multiplier to 8 or 8.5 , work your FSB up from there again to increase cpu speed. If you have good PC133 memory you should get at least a 140FSB and at 8 multiplier will give you a 1120Mhz Cpu with loads of memory bandwidth.

Mobo temp basically = case temp, if your case temperatures are high, so will your motherboard. Look at the airflow through your case. Is it cluttered with cables? Can you bundle the cables together to create less air resistance front to back? Consider rolling, or buying round IDE cables etc. Best way to help get the vid card cool is don't crowd it. Hopefully you don't have anything in your top PCI slot as it will end up sharing an IRQ with the vid card? If you have space, shuffle everything down and leave the vid card on it's own for better air circulation. After that, consider a fan over the GPU (may already have one? and better heatsinks.

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[kdogg]

Wow by looking at my earlier post it is apparent i need the help of a spellchecker!!! 😱



My cpu will not post at 133 mhz, so i am going to have to unlock the processor, I'll probably do this tonight. as far as the video card I did clear out the 2 pci slots below it to give it some breathing room. As far as IDE and wires, its no tooo bad now, although there is some congestion up arond the cdrom and cd-rw drives, but i have some ideas to clear some things up out of the way and possibly increase airflow. again thanks for the info and ill let you know how it goes!

 

[Guest]

Dog Dude: To lower my case temps I installed a fan at the front of my case blowing in and two at the back flowing out. Also I have a slot fan (that is a squirle cage type) sucking air from my video card. I use the PCI slot just below the vid card. This seems to help.

I would aslo make sure your power supply fan is exhasting air out instead of pushing air into the case. I turned my PS fan around and got 2 to 3 C cooler case temps. I hope this is of help.

Good luck.

 

[kdogg]

Alright heres where im at.. The athlon is running @1105, After I unlocked the processor, I brought the multiplier down to 8 and set the fsb to 138, I attempted to run it up to 140, but it wouldnt load windows, so I backed off to 138. I immidiatly noticed that the voodoo3 was running cooler with the fsb up higher? Care to explain that one peteb At this speed i am noticing NO unstability and I think it just plain runs better with the fsb up and the multiplier down. This is my desktop system and I use it for work mostly, (NetAdmin) and after working on it the added speed is awesome (my last pc was a 650) Although i actually never ran the cpu at the intended 900mhz it is blazing at 1.1ghz !!

As far as the cooling goes, 46cpu/35mb is hot but from what I have read its not going to hurt anything. I have bundled things up and increased airflow alot. I also checked my PS fan and it is sucking from the tower and exhausting out the back, so that is good (thanks for the tip) I think the major problem is that I have a desk and it has the rectagle space for the cpu to sit, with the door closed it does not get the best circulation, when i take it out it runs about 2-3C cooler on both the processor and the mobo. Anyways I am happy as hell that I am running a 1.1 gig processor!! thanks again for all your help!!!!!

 

[peteb]

Sure, at 120FSB, you're running 20% out of specification. At 138FSB your running 4% out of specification on your PCI and AGP. ;o)

I'm really glad that your efforts have given you a faster, stable PC. That you are happy with is is absolutely the main thing, and it's all your own work. Sure heading down to the store and buying a new fast Dell is good - but I don't feel it is as satisfying as building your own.

Pete.

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