- Jun 13, 2013
- 48
- 0
- 10,540
Hello, long-time lurker on this site, finally decided to make an account.
I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to installing new CPU's, and after searching far and wide for answers to questions I've had recently, I thought I might as well just ask directly.
My first question has to do with general heating. My PC is a Dell Inspiron 570 that came with an AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor, and I've since replaced this processor with an AMD Athlon II X4 640. I don't know what kind of temps I was getting with my X2(hadn't heard of Speedfan at the time), but I tend to pull around 45-55C with my X4 when browsing with Chrome or using regular programs, and hover in the low 60's when gaming, then around 44C when idle. Every so often, with certain games, I hit the low 70's. My question is this: Should I be worried about any of these temperatures, or is this something I need to nip in the bud? I should note that I live in Arizona, and this summer has already proven itself to be rather brutal. There's a lot of ambient heat going on, and I've seen my processor hitting the high 60's and low 70's when playing something as old as Half-Life 2. I'm just wondering if I made a mistake in swapping to a quad-core CPU. I should point out that I also recently bought a new PSU that had... let's say a few more wires than I was expecting. I've managed to bundle these wires and keep them out of the way inside the case for the most part, but would this abundance of wires(compared to my old PSU) make that much of a difference in terms of heat?
My second question has to do with heatsinks. The Athlon X4 came with a stock heatsink that was noticeably smaller(in terms of both the heatsink itself and its fan) than the stock heatsink that came with my PC, which was first affixed to the Athlon X2. On top of this, the new heatsink is a clip-on type, while the older stock sink seems to only have four screw-on posts. Is there some way of using the clip-on heatsink that I'm missing? Some part I can install? Or is it simply not compatible with my motherboard? Also, even though the older heatsink is larger, is it safe to use it with a quad-core, even thought it was originally installed atop a dual-core?
My apologies for the abundance of noob-ish questions, but I'm sort of at the end of my rope here. Any information or advice would be most appreciated.
I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to installing new CPU's, and after searching far and wide for answers to questions I've had recently, I thought I might as well just ask directly.
My first question has to do with general heating. My PC is a Dell Inspiron 570 that came with an AMD Athlon II X2 250 processor, and I've since replaced this processor with an AMD Athlon II X4 640. I don't know what kind of temps I was getting with my X2(hadn't heard of Speedfan at the time), but I tend to pull around 45-55C with my X4 when browsing with Chrome or using regular programs, and hover in the low 60's when gaming, then around 44C when idle. Every so often, with certain games, I hit the low 70's. My question is this: Should I be worried about any of these temperatures, or is this something I need to nip in the bud? I should note that I live in Arizona, and this summer has already proven itself to be rather brutal. There's a lot of ambient heat going on, and I've seen my processor hitting the high 60's and low 70's when playing something as old as Half-Life 2. I'm just wondering if I made a mistake in swapping to a quad-core CPU. I should point out that I also recently bought a new PSU that had... let's say a few more wires than I was expecting. I've managed to bundle these wires and keep them out of the way inside the case for the most part, but would this abundance of wires(compared to my old PSU) make that much of a difference in terms of heat?
My second question has to do with heatsinks. The Athlon X4 came with a stock heatsink that was noticeably smaller(in terms of both the heatsink itself and its fan) than the stock heatsink that came with my PC, which was first affixed to the Athlon X2. On top of this, the new heatsink is a clip-on type, while the older stock sink seems to only have four screw-on posts. Is there some way of using the clip-on heatsink that I'm missing? Some part I can install? Or is it simply not compatible with my motherboard? Also, even though the older heatsink is larger, is it safe to use it with a quad-core, even thought it was originally installed atop a dual-core?
My apologies for the abundance of noob-ish questions, but I'm sort of at the end of my rope here. Any information or advice would be most appreciated.
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