temperature concern

[procrastinator]

Hey guys, I thought I'd ask a question of cooling pros as opposed to googling this question into eternity...

My concern is that my X2 4800+ sk939 is overheating for no reason that I can deduce. I am using an Evo 120 (120mm fan setup with a heatsink in an L-shape) and at the stock 1.35 volts, with a fairly small overclock (from 2.4 to 2.58), I'm getting 41 C idle and up to 60-63C when playing games. This seems quite abnormal to me as the AMD-certified max temperature is just 65C. I have removed the heatsink, reapplied the thermal paste (I couldn't get my hands on Arctic Silver so I used some no-name stuff sold in my local computer store) etc. several times, with no improvements. What's particularly weird is that I could swear that my old HSF, a low end Arctic 64, managed the cooling better than the Evo, which is supposed to be top notch. In any case, I was hoping you could give me a few tips as to where my problem might be..

--Could it be bad application of thermal paste or its quality? I only use a grain-sized bit of paste and spread it with a razor..
--Is my heatsink/fan lacking? I did notice that it doesn't have the larger heatsink that the Arctic 64 had, could this be it?
--Could it do something with the airflow? My MB temperature reads as 39C. I've kept my case open since installing the new CPU a few days ago--could this cause a problem with airflow etc?
--Is it safe to keep my CPU at 60-65 under load? How much would it decrease its lifetime?


Anyway, thanks in advance for the help--this is quite confusing and frustrating, and I spent far too much time already trying to figure this out instead of doing something productive!

 

[procrastinator]

The temperature benchmarks I looked at prior to buying this cooler showed it as being moderately quiet but also very effective, as I really don't care about noise levels much....

I have it oriented with the fan facing the HD bays--which is what was shown on the manual pictures. I was confused about why this would be done this way, too, but I figured the engineers who wrote the manual would know better...

Is there a cooler that you can recommend that would have the best performance, no matter the noise levels?

Also, as an additional detail, my temperature is now 45 C idle, which is confusing as hell as I decreased my voltage to normal values and removed all overclocking.... On further note, the system seems to start at an elevated temperature of about 55 (when windows starts and aSUS Probe reports the temp) and then drops to the 45C value...I don't get what cpu load during the startup process could cause this?



---Also, if I switch the direction of the HSF, it will end up blowing air at the case-fan that I have installed just above the PCI slots--they'd be blowing air at one another, which I imagine isn't that effective. Should I get rid of the case fan then?

 

[procrastinator]

Alright, so I changed the cooler configuration by rotating the cpu fan 180* and removing the obstructing 2 case fans. I also tightened the screws as far as I could manage...The result is 36* idle CPU, which is a great improvement indeed (about 10*). I'm going to try and run a game to see how it goes under load.

I'll report back shortly

 

[Mondoman]

The design doesn't look that great to me, with only 3 heatpipes and the distance from heat pickup to heat release pretty long. Add in the small/thin heatsink and I think you'd be better off with a Freezer 64 Pro or similar.

 

[procrastinator]

Alright, thanks for the advice, although it's a real pity that this heatsink/fan isn't as good as the reviews said. Do you have any recommendations for a higher-end fan than the Freezer, perhaps one of the 120mm zalmans?

 

[Mondoman]

I would think that just about anything that has a lot of heat pipes, minimizes the distance from heat pickup to heat release along those heat pipes, and has good airflow should work fine. The Freezer 7/64 Pro has (effectively) 6 heatpipes, short distance to radiator, nice dense set of fins, and a very quiet fan. I just mention it because it works great for my (thermal furnace!) OC'd 805 D. Sorry, but I don't have personal experience with the other "big ones".

It's also worthwhile considering the mounting job, as an improper one can easily boost temps 5-10C or more (this is a bigger problem with the LGA775 Intel-style 4-pin mount).

 

[procrastinator]

Well, one way or another, this isn't going to be a problem anymore as I just got a new fx60 with a Tuniq Tower---if I'll be dishing out more money for cooling, I might as well go as far as air cooling allows!

I do have one last question for the future--in Core Temp software, the cores rise to different temperatues--so in making sure that I don't go too high (over 55-60 I imagine), can I just look at their average or should I watch out for the individual scores?

Thanks