I recently purchased an Intel e6600 CPU and I'n expirencing a bit of troubles. I had a friend which I thought had more hardware installation then me (I still believe he does) recently install my new cpu for me. It looks like he made a mistake when installing the CPU stock fan and it reached to around 80C in temp. I took it apart and put it on better. It now reads on Intels TAT 55C idle. Intel stated that I make sure the thermal gel is not damaged while installing but my sleeve hit it while I was taking it off the first time. Theres still a large amount on there but after wiping it with my sleeve I decided to make an even coat with it.
My questions are:
1. Is the CPU damaged after reaching that high of a temp(it seems to be running fine)
2. Is 55C to high for idle with the stock fan?
3. Should I buy a different thermal gel now that I've had to change how the original Intel gel was placed on there?
4.If I should have to buy a new fan, what is the best air cooler for the E6600?
55C to start is what you will get with a stock fan.
Temps will drop after the thermal paste sets in properly.
1. No. It can handle very high temps before any physical damage is done.
2. You shouldn't worry. Run dual Prime 95, and see how high the temps get under 100% load.
3. Get Arctic Silver 5. Good paste, but will need some time to set it.
4. If you're running stock, there's absolutely no need for an aftermarket cooler.
I've never used the Prime 95 program before so here is what I tried:
Running two Small FTT tests at once. results where about 79C in three minutes, possibly could've gone higher.
Running two blend tests at once. It looked like it was going to stay between 65-69C.
3-4 different people with probably be using this computer 18+ hours a day for higher end gaming. Do you think It's a wise choice to invest in a good aftermarket cooler or Is the stock still sufficient amount of cooling for that?
My advice is to re-apply the thermal "gel". You will want to clean both surfaces thoroughly with pure rubbing alcohol or what I recommend is the AS prep solutions. Those temps are high, 80 celcius is very close to safety shutoff temps so you will want to change the thermal layer on your heat sink. I recommend the Arctic silver 5. As far as getting a new air cooler the trouble isn't worth the effort as the stock is very much capable of handling load temps at a constant rate even up to some pretty high overclocking. Don't forget all the trouble you'll have to go through adding a backplate and so on (this includes removing the mobo from the case).
I just built a new computer using the E6600 Core 2 Duo and while I'm not very experienced with it, I would say your temps are pretty high. I bought my proc OEM so I had to get my own cooler and I settled on the Zalman 9500.
I'm getting about 25 degrees C idle and low 30s under load. I haven't pushed it very hard yet but I'm doubting it will get hotter than about 40 even under load. Other people I've talked to have said that for the Core 2 Duo anything above 60 degrees C is too hot. Not sure if thats true or not. I've read other threads about the 6600 hitting as high as 80 degrees C with stock cooling. Don't know how in the world it could get that high.
Anyways, I would highly suggest getting some other type of cooler. The Zalman 9500 is a great cooler but it is about 50 bucks. Not sure if you want to spend that much. But there are plenty of other good coolers out there that will do a good job. I hope this has helped.
