Temp Advice? (First Heatsink Install)

[Kimberling]

I just recently purchased my first desktop and I'm currently in the process of upgrading pieces of it. Previous to this I had never worked with installing computer hardware myself so I'm hoping someone would lend me a second pair of eyes .

I just upgraded my AMD FX-6300's stock fan to a Cool Master Hyper 212 Evo. I am super nervous that I didn't install it correctly as this is my first install. I know that one is suppose to apply a very specific amount of thermal paste. Additionally, I was worried about whether the heat sink was on too tight/too loose. Also I was considering trying to overclock my CPU in the near future and know its definitely a bad idea to try OC'ing with a faulty heatsink install.

Currently my AMD-FX6300 is set to stock clock speed with Turbo enabled.
My idle core temps are ~15 C (+/- 2 C)
My temps under full load are ~30 C (+/- 2 C) {Tested with Prime95 Torture Test Small FFT for ~45 minutes}

Are these temps Good? Bad? Average?
Is there room for Overclocking?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[samuspunk]

what´s your room temperature? that temps seems too low to me.

 

[Barty1884]

What are you using to measure your temperatures?

With AMD, you're more interested in "Thermal Margin", which essentially works backwards. You can monitor via AMD Overdrive.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2122665/understanding-temperature-amd-cpus-apus.html

What you should have (via AMD OD) is "degrees to zero". The higher the thermal margin, the cooler your CPU (70'C is the max, as in 70'C until you have a problem - AMD OD doesn't recognize any better than that).

Throttling can kick in anywhere between 0-10'C and on rare occassions, slightly higher in the double-digits.

 

[samuspunk]

That obviously is not degrees to zero, because it´s impossible that the cpu is cooler when stressing it.

 

[Barty1884]

Exactly what I'm getting at. Idle 15'C and load 30'C seems really strange, they're not correct.

Trying to capture temps for an AMD CPU or APU through traditional method (some software, and BIOS) give clearly faulty results. The only true way to measure temps for AMD CPUs is via AMD Overdrive, measuring the Thermal Margin.

 

[Kimberling]

what´s your room temperature? that temps seems too low to me.

68-72 F (20-22 C)

 

[Kimberling]

What are you using to measure your temperatures?

With AMD, you're more interested in "Thermal Margin", which essentially works backwards. You can monitor via AMD Overdrive.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2122665/understanding-temperature-amd-cpus-apus.html

What you have, is "degrees to zero". The higher the thermal margin, the cooler your CPU (70'C is the max, as in 70'C until you have a problem - AMD OD doesn't recognize any better than that).

Throttling can kick in anywhere between 0-10'C and on rare occassions, slightly higher in the double-digits.

I have been using software from both:
http://www.cpuid.com/
and
http://openhardwaremonitor.org/

 

[Barty1884]

That's your problem. For AMD CPU/APU's CPUID or HWM are not accurate. Not their fault, but AMD do have to be different (although it makes logical sense).

Try out AMD Overdrive - see what's reported for Thermal Margin for your CPU. I'd suspect, with those ambient temps, the FX + 212EVO, you should see it reporting high 60's to steady 70 at Idle. Hopefully no lower than 35-40 at load. If that's the case, you've got room to OC.

 

[samuspunk]

That's your problem. For AMD CPU/APU's CPUID or HWM are not accurate. Not their fault, but AMD do have to be different (although it makes logical sense).

Try out AMD Overdrive - see what's reported for Thermal Margin for your CPU. I'd suspect, with those ambient temps, the FX + 212EVO, you should see it reporting high 60's to steady 70 at Idle. Hopefully no lower than 35-40 at load. If that's the case, you've got room to OC.

You are right.

 

[Kimberling]

That's your problem. For AMD CPU/APU's CPUID or HWM are not accurate. Not their fault, but AMD do have to be different (although it makes logical sense).

Try out AMD Overdrive - see what's reported for Thermal Margin for your CPU. I'd suspect, with those ambient temps, the FX + 212EVO, you should see it reporting high 60's to steady 70 at Idle. Hopefully no lower than 35-40 at load. If that's the case, you've got room to OC.

Alright, I installed AMD Overdrive.

I'm idling around 54 C Thermal Margin
And Under Load around 38 C Thermal Margin. (only ran 20 minutes on prime95)

Does that mean my heatsink is on faulty? 54 seems far below your estimation for idle.

 

[Barty1884]

Not necessarily, if it was idling in the 40's I'd say you have an issue, but mid-50's, not so much. Even OD is not perfect, especially idle. Load temps, it's pretty much 100% accurate. Idle temps don't really matter too much, unless you idle at a really low thermal margin, then it wouldn't leave anywhere to go at load.

Load temps are what you're interested in, and you're right in the range I estimated 35-40'C. That definitely leaves you some headroom to OC - exactly what you can get & at what voltage etc is luck of the draw, but you have some safe headroom to play around with it.