P4 3.0ghz RUNNING too hot?

prescott or northwood?

That is pretty warm, but it depends on the temperature of your room too. Did you apply a lot of thermal grease?... because you're only supposed to use a little bit. I know the Volcano 11+ is supposed to have been very capable for its time. Did you make sure that the fins aren't blocked by dust and that the fan is turned up high enough?

-mcg

Working as advertised!

Not sure which version of the P4 you have, but my 3.06GHz P4 idles around 40C and hits about 60C on a warm day at 100% CPU load and hyperthreading. That's with the standard Intel HSF.

So I'd say 56C is high if you have that version.

Prescott ran hot....make sure speed step is on and the power profile is set to laptop. this will cause the CPU to clock down at idle and run cooler....this will not affect load temps for obvious resons....

Psh, works as advertised. 56C isn't TOO hot, especially for space-heating P4's. If it stays under 70C, you're fine.

Are you crazy? If its a Northwood that is too hot for idle with that heatsink. I have a P4 EE @ 3.4GHz with a Zalman CPNS 9700 and it runs at 32c Idle and 50c under load.

Now if it is a Prescott I would expect it to run a bit warmer but not that much. Might want to re apply the HSF and thermal paste.

...you guys are nuts, my P4 runs overclocked to 3GHZ and still doesnt go over 35c no matter wat is ran.

Pff my old P4 2.8 Northwood IDLEs at 50C... I have no idea what load temp is...well I dont even want to know

Heh.. My old P4 3ghz (linux folding) is at 54C right now. If memory serves, it normally idles around 42-44C with room temp of 78-80F (38C if room ambient temp is 69-70F), with Zalman 7700.

Edit: oop.. Mine is a northy.

i suppose i could have better case flow, i have 1 fan blowin in and 1 blowing out and on low, my Zalman 9500 keeps my P4 at the above temps, idle is usually 26-28

Your HSF just sucks  

Well.. gotta remember one thing about the old P4's. You can have the same chip on different MB and get different temps (can range up to 14C in difference). Even my old dad's AMD XP2100+ idles 38-42C depending on the ambient room temp. That is why I feel as though temps in the high 30's to low 40's are pretty adequate, as well as those 2 chips were from the same time era, besides not having a standard for MB chip makers to go by in measuring temps.

It was an Intel stock HSF

Guys, stop saying that's it's normal because P4s are energy chugging processors (haha, we get it ... move on). That is not normal. Those are pretty high temps. I have a 3.2Ghz P4 Prescott (S 478) and a Scythe Mini Ninja (a pretty damned good cooler for its size). I idle 34-36°C and top out about 50°C with the video card and CPU totally loaded and all my case fans (4 - 3x120mm, 1x80mm), CPU (80mm), and GPU (Zalman VF700CuAl) running at 5V.

I would side with the people that say uninstall, clean and reinstall your heatsink.

BTW, a majority of the reason people believe the Prescotts run so hot is that Intel corrected the thermal diode on the processor die to read CORRECTLY. The Northy read a little low (2-3°C). Prescotts use barely more power (5-10%) at the same clock as their Northwood brothers.

[/lecture]

I do remember a test on the old prescotts (478). They were built better to take the heat. And they could run at 105C (this was with the fan off, HS on throttling) and go back to normal operation when the fan was turned back on. The northwood on the other hand, couldn't take the heat and the thermal trip shut it down somewhere 98C.

It was an old article I remember way back then..  

But agreed, simple spring cleaning should help it out, but then getting a replacement system is prolly allot better.  

Edit:

DOH I found the link to the test:  

Testing Thermal Throttling in Pentium 4 CPUs with Northwood and Prescott cores

If it's a Northwood, you are running way too hot!

If it's a Prescott, it's still too hot!

You may have a processor that's on its last leg...or you've got a bad cap on the MB.

That's my experience from having owned both and using a stock HSF. Northwoods will typically run 35 to 40 degrees C, Prescotts 40-45 at idle or low load, 40-45 and 50-55 degrees C respectively under load, with an ambient of around 75 F and a mid-tower case and one or two case fans.