CPU cooling

[Philip2001]

I have a Asus motherboard P5WD2 Premium. My CPU is a dual core CPU. The normal CPU speed is 3G. Memoryis runing at 800Mhz. Asus provided a software utility called AI. It reports the temperature from 47 to 57 degees C. This software is realy starnge in behavior. I went into the bios and found the temp to be at a nominal 54 degrees C. I have spent allot of money to keep the CPU cool. The water cooled system by Thermaltake worked greate. It ran around 30 degrees. But this system is messy and prone to kinks in the tubing. I have heard of a system made by MAS. It is a cooling system and a thermoelectric system. It is expensive. My question is it this system realy a good solution? I hate water cooled systems. It cost around $150.

The cooling problem should have been resolved by the CPU manufactures.

What is the best way to cool a 3G intel CPU. I hate the water cooled sytem. This sytem needs allot of work.

Thanks

Philip

 

[Mondoman]

The stock Intel hsf usually works quite well. Exactly which model CPU do you have? Is it/will it be overclocked?

 

[nvalhalla]

If you're not overclocking than the stock coller should be fine. If you must keep it cooler or you are overclocking than a good tower cooler can bring temps close to a TEC without all the hassle/cost/power drain. Check out the Tuniq Tower. It's being talked about a lot.

 

[Mondoman]

Since your message says your Pentium D CPU has 2x 2GB cache and runs at 3GHz, it should be either the Pentium D 925 or Pentium D 930. Compared to the Pentium D 8xx series, both should run substantially cooler.
The stock Intel heatsink/fan should be fine for your situation, although the 4-pin mounting method is notoriously easy to not-quite-fully install, which leads to abnormally high temps (such as yours). A few things to remember:
1) Make sure the CPU doesn't have any old thermal compound on it. You can use anhydrous isopropyl alcohol from the supermarket for this.
2) If the heatsink/fan has been previously mounted, clean off the old thermal compound from it.
3) Remove the motherboard from the case to mount the hsf, so you can support the back as you push through the pins.
4) For installation, turn each of the 4 mounting pins all the way in the direction *opposite* the arrow on top (the arrow is for releasing the mount).
5) If the hsf does not have fresh thermal compound on it now, apply a rice-grain-sized dab of fresh thermal compound to the *center of the CPU*.
6) Mount the hsf on the board (it will squish the thermal compound, spreading it). Press down on the pins in an "X" pattern, doing first one diagonal, then the other. Make sure the pins are all the way through.

Note: the stock Intel hsf is normally set to prefer quietness over cooling. If you want, you should be able to change that by using the fan-control settings in your BIOS.