Bad Phenom II 940 temps, no matter what I do :(

I have tried everything to get my Phenom II 940 down in temperatures. Right now it's at 3.5ghz @ stock voltage, bumping it down to stock speed does nothing for the temperature. Depending on ambient if I do a Everest stress quest it will move up to 59c, and at times 60c. I am now using the Arctic Cooling Xtreme Freezer, which seems to be fantastic, best mounting system I've seen for AM2+ as well, but the temperatures are hardly different.

At first I used the orignal Arctic Cooling compound that was pre-applied, MX-2 I think, since with the new cooler I was around 43c idle, 55-58c load. Now I applied Arctic Silver 5, and idle around 45c again, and if loaded, will more than likely go past safe temperature, and I highly doubt after break-in of AS-5 it will be much safer. I'm reading about people with the STOCK heatsinks getting 33c idle, how is this possible? I used the grain of rice method as AS-5 says to use on AMD-Quad, and there is just no way it's going below 45c idle. Do I have a bad processor? Temps were taken with Everest, and Speedfan, bios report the same.

Specs are
Asus M3A79-T Deluxe (flashed with most recent bios)
Phenom II 940 @ 3.4ghz
4GB OCZ 1066 Reaper Ram
Vista Ultimate 32-Bit
Corsair 750w PSU
Dual Radeon 4870 1GB in Crossfire

I'll include a pic to verify proper airflow and organization for flow, ect.


Thanks in advance for your help, as I'm out of ideas, unless the bios are magically sending out bad temperature reports to Everest and the other programs...

I thought the Phenom II 940 had a maximum safe core temp of 62c...?
Edit* Tried the stock heatsink, around the same temperatures...at this point I find it unbelivable that people are running their Phenom IIs anywhere near 33c idle...

I just got a AMD X3 720 a few days ago. Its on an ASUS M3N-HT. So far its running at 3.75ghz, and its been stable. 3.8ghz @ 1.525v gets crashes, but 3.7ghz @ 1.45v has been solid. (18.5x , 200, auto). So far temps are 33c in Firefox, and 44'c gaming/benchmarking. I'm trying out a CoolerMaster V8. I was planning on liquid cooling a AMD 940, but I impulsively bought this setup instead after reading about unlocking the fourth core. I think your cooling fan has a 120mm fan too I'm not sure why your temps are that high. Have you tried the Utils on the Asus DVD? I have a AI Suite program that was included that shows speed, and temps, but also includes a fan controller. Have you tried upping the CPU fan to performance mode? The cooler you have should work better than 60'c. Have you tried mounting your case cooling fans to blow in thru the front, and out the back. I got better results when I stopped cross directing the airflow.
Maybe mine is lower because my 720 X3 has one less core.

I've been playing with Riva Tuner v2.4 for my video card, with much better results when I put the cooling fans at >85%. 100% seems to make more noise than cool. Even at 60% it keeps the the video card cool while GPU overclocking, and no crashes. It took a few tries to learn my way around Riva. In my previous setup, the Nvidia control panel had alot of adjustments. Now I only have a few, even tho it still on 32bit Win XP, and its the same driver version. But no fan adjustment page or temp monitor anymore.

For $40 I'd try one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6835233011

or one of these:
http://www.swiftnets.com/products/h20-120-compact.asp

you will probably find that the temp drops after a bios update

i would go with the temps asus ai is showing

If you pull your hsf again, check and see if the cpu has a crown on it, as sometimes they do, and arent perfectly flat, and dont cool as well as they should, giving a poor seal with the cpu/hsf connection. Have a decent straight edge, go accross the top of the die and hs itself. If so, start lapping

I see nothing wrong with your temps. I've been running those same temps for about 3 years now.

I think part of it is due to your case and setup. I say this because mine is almost Identical.

Phenom II 940
Asus M3A32 Deluxe
8 Gigs G.Skill Ram
Thermaltake 750 watt PSU
Thermaltake Armor+ MX Case
2 Radeon 4850 video cards

The bios temperature tends to be lower because the video cards arent active. As soon as I boot into windows and the video cards are active (I run 3 monitors) because the 4850's run so hot the temp of everything in my case goes up. As the ambient temperature in my room has increased (80 degrees outside this week) my processor temps rose from around 43 idle and 50 load to about 49 idle and 56 load. I've stress tested and it doesnt past 60 yet but I'm still at a range I'm not comfortable with. I think alot of this is that while the Armor MX is a good case, it doesnt seem to move enough air when using 2 video cards like the 4850's which normally run hot (even with the fan cranked to 50% my cards run at atleast 70).

2 fans? Thats it? Christ. Am i crazy for having 7 high speed 100cfm fans?

6 12cm fans on a controller + 1 on a M/B header and I want to replace 5 of the 12's with 14's.

good point, though I wouldn't really call it hot to the touch - warm would be more my thought of 50 to 60 degrees celcius. I've got workin' hands though.
My 940 @ 3.4 is actually pretty cool. Cooler than my Opteron 170 @ 2.6. Case temp is cooler overall as well.

I don't know what some of you have for cases and videocards but my case has way less fans and runs quiet and cool. I'm a server case kind of guy, though.

I'm on a thermaltake V1 and im @ 40C idle @ 3.6ghz.

Was @ 35C idle before my 200mm fan went.

I have this same problem, 47c on my new phenom 2 940be i got yesterday. I have found that all 4 cores are constantly on 75 - 100% load even when its just sitting on desktop doing nothing no programs runing at all, and from what i have read on this fourm and others, other ppl have been having this problem to and its neather the motherboard or cpu. On 1 fourm i was reading this guy had put his phenom 2 into another motherboard and it ran fine then @ 2% load and 33c temps, no crazy 100% loads and he had put a diffrent cpu in the origonal motherboard and it ran fine to. As it would seem some motherboards and cpus "hate each other" . What views do you guys have on this ?

My specs are

Cpu: Phenom 2 940 BE @ stock with watercooling
Mboard: Asus M3N-HT Deluxe "Latest bios update 2101 i think or 2xxx up from the beta 1901"
Ram: 8 gig ddr2 ocz reapers
Grapics: Gainward GTX 275 "I also got yesterday"
HDD: Segate 500gig 32mb cach 7200.10 RPM sata
SU ocz 1010watt
Case: Thermaltake armour LCS "no heat coming out of the case or in it nice and cool"
O/S: Windows vista ultimate 64bit

Or maybe my cpu or motherboard are just fulty. i have taken a picture of my desktop with task manager showing my loads on all 4 cores but i do not no how 2 post it here so you will have to take my word for it.

But as it would seem i have seen another person with same motherboard and cpu and thay had no problems!

Maybe AMD are punishing me for geting a nforce motherboard and not 1 of their own .

Would like to fix this problem then o/c my cpu to 4ghz

Woot problem solved sorta, basicly i unpluged the pc took my watercooling apart and took the cpu out then put it back in then put the stockO fan cooler that came with the cpu.
Load times are between 1%-5% all 4 cores YAY but my temp has gone upto 50c idle and oveclocked it to 3.4ghz same temp 50c idle any sugestions i do live in australia but its winter at the moment 20c room temp right now side of case is open. i might buy some of that zalman thermalgrease cause atm the HSF is very warm so my temps must b on target at 50c 3.4ghz idle .....

fisrt this temp in your case or your cpu if is your case temp that meen your cpu is at 90 min stop your pc now second you take a cpu whit not a fan that doesnt help like a verry good CNPS9700 LED of zalman and to use a non fn cpu cooler you need a very good air flow in your case and normal people when they oc thier cpu put water cooling

Hi, I've been reading the forums around here about Phenom II x4 940 BE. I see a lot of interesting stuff, but one thing i noticed, and I'll provide several screen shots if need be. I have an Asus m3a-32mvp deluxe motherboard running the 940, but I am able to hit 3711 megahertz with the cpu multiplier at 1.4125, the front side bus speed is at 200, and the ram i have is mushkin 4028 gigabytes of it at ddr2 1066. I'm also running windows xp 32 bit, so it yes it only utilizes 3.25 gigabytes of the memory... the question is, would it be worthwhile to increase the fsb and decrease the cpu multiplier? (right now I've got the fsb at 200 with multiplier set at 18.5 and it runs stable all cores maxed at 100% with 53 degrees Celcius, using Zalman 9700 led cooling fan with artic silver 5 thermal compound grease, the fan is about 120mm while the entire thing is 150 mm just incase any of you are interested.) Sometimes I feel like my boot up is slow, and im wondering if its because my ratio is 3:8 aka fsb:ram? If i get the ratio to about 1:1 will that increase performance exponentially, or should i just leave my stuff alone in the bios? (i'm quite aware that raising fsb also raises cpu and ram speed etc.) I'm sort of experienced with overclocking but I want to know more to maximize my knowledge and performance without obliteration of the mosfet, voltage regulator, transistors etc.

All I know is that each board and chip are different, but I had stability issues into I did some benchmarks with AMD overdrive, and for about 30 min to an hour i was able to be stable at 1.4125 volts with 200 fsb with multiplier at 18.5x