Background:
I'm currently using a PC I built way back in 2009 with a few changes along the way.
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE with stock cooler
Motherboard: Asus M4A79 Deluxe
Case: Nzxt Guardian 921 (2x 120mm intakes and 1x120mm exhaust)
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-2
GPU: Sapphire RX560
Storage: 1HDD and 1SSD
No OC. Cool n Quiet enabled. A month ago the CPU fan started getting really noisy. So I checked the CPU temp with HWiNFO. It was idling at 61deg. Apparently, that is the cutoff temp for this CPU. So I replaced the thermal paste. This dropped the idle temp to less than 50deg. Surprisingly the 11 year old tube of paste still works fine.
Some crude testing:
Used CPU-Z for stressing the CPU and HWiINFO for monitoring temps and RPM. Ambient temp ~28deg. I tried using different combinations of the Asus Q-Fan option from the BIOS. Here are the results. I didn't take screenshots of the readings. Just noted them down.
(Sorry I couldn't figure out how to make a compact table.)
I'm currently using a PC I built way back in 2009 with a few changes along the way.
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE with stock cooler
Motherboard: Asus M4A79 Deluxe
Case: Nzxt Guardian 921 (2x 120mm intakes and 1x120mm exhaust)
Thermal Paste: Arctic Cooling MX-2
GPU: Sapphire RX560
Storage: 1HDD and 1SSD
No OC. Cool n Quiet enabled. A month ago the CPU fan started getting really noisy. So I checked the CPU temp with HWiNFO. It was idling at 61deg. Apparently, that is the cutoff temp for this CPU. So I replaced the thermal paste. This dropped the idle temp to less than 50deg. Surprisingly the 11 year old tube of paste still works fine.
Some crude testing:
Used CPU-Z for stressing the CPU and HWiINFO for monitoring temps and RPM. Ambient temp ~28deg. I tried using different combinations of the Asus Q-Fan option from the BIOS. Here are the results. I didn't take screenshots of the readings. Just noted them down.
(Sorry I couldn't figure out how to make a compact table.)
CPU Q Fan Mode | CPU Fan RPM | Case Q Fan Mode | Case Fan 1 RPM | Case Fan 2 RPM | CPU Temp | Noise |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Under Load |