Motherboard Overheating (Asus P6T) - Require Assitance

Alright... just finished building my new system, but I noticed I have heat problems. Significant heat problems and NOT of the processor variety (those I can control pretty accurately by tweaking voltage). The motherboard is reporting a temperature of 51 degrees celsius when idle (ok not bad, but not great either), but when I fire up the video card for gaming it shoots up to 60 degrees quickly and stays there. I find that very worrisome.


System Specs:
Intel i7 920 (running at 3.4Ghz, 1.1375v, 68 degrees celsius)
6Gb DDR3-2000 Ozs Reaper (running at lowest values, auto voltage)
Asus P6T Deluxe v2 mobo
CoolerMaster ATCS 840 case (with the optional 120mm mid-case fans installed)
Radeon 4870x2 video card
SB X-Fi XtremeMusic PCI
Corsair 1000w power source
Zalman CNPS9900 CPU heatsink/fan

I'm using Asus PC Probe II to read the motherboard temperature, btw.

Things I have tried to improve temperature:
A) Moved the video card from PCIE slot 1 to PCIE slot 2 (away from the southbridge) - marginally worse heat problem
B) Reversed the top front 230mm fan from exaust to intake. - no change on mobo temp, but improved CPU temp about 5 degrees.
C) Moved a 120mm case fan from the bottom, which I initially used as an intake to midcase because I thought it might be blowing hot air up from the power source and video card. No effect and possibly very very mildly worse.
D) I have a couple of variable speed fans. I tried increasing them all the way up to the 2000 RPM level. No effect.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

The only other thing I can think of is to remove the SoundBlaster from the PCI slot and forgo using it, to improve air circulation around the video card. Not convinced it'll make a significant difference though.

(Additionally I'm not submerging this thing in a vat of oil, I'm not going watercooling because I can't afford it, and I'm not cutting up or drilling holes in my new case... as everyone RL has suggest to me so far).

Nah. The overclock doesn't make any difference at all to the case temp. It's all from the GPU (I can actually go in and adjust the video card fan, cool it off and the case temp will drop 15 degrees).

I'm just nervous about having such a high case temp.

Edit: And off topic, if the CPU isn't overclocked the CPU runs at about 60 degrees when stress tested.

The case temp shows as 50 degrees both open and closed at idle. It doesn't make a difference (I thought it would too because this case doesn't have have any ventialtion in the sides, but it makes no difference).

I've tried putting a fan in the bottom. But that didn't do anything. I tried putting a couple of mid-case fans in behind the harddrives but that didn't affect anything. I also tried reversing one of my top exaust fans, but that just improved cooling across the top of the board, not near the southbridge and the GPU where I'm most concerned.

The internal GPU temperature at idle is a constant 66 degrees, recardless of case condition. When running it goes up to 77 degrees. Temperatures that are on low end for the video card itself, but run the interal case temp up significantly.

I can actually hand tune the GPU fan but it's noisey as all heck. It's the only thing I've tried so far that makes any difference at all.

On my P6T deluxe, speedfan shows the system temp as 58c when not doing much. Touching a finger to the nb cooler shows it to be very hot.
I don't know how much of a problem it is. I suspect that it just plain runs hot.

If you open up the case and direct a house fan at the innards, you will eliminate any case cooling issues, but I suspect that you will not find the problem there.

Is it possible that the mobo coolers need to be removed, and reinstalled with a good thermal material?

Does your cpu cooler send a good stream of air over the nb heatpipe cooling fins?

I'm having almost identical issues with my i7 920/P6T/EVGA GTX 285 system. I have an NZXT blackline case/Dark Knight CPU cooler and am getting nearly identical temps at idle and load. I haven't overclocked anything and still get relatively high temps.

During Cryostasis the MB temps jump above 60c, setting off the Asus PC probe alarm. If I set the threshold higher it will eventually lock the system. The GPU temps seem to be about 50c idle and jump to about 72 with load. GPU is also stock settings with no overclock.

My GPU runs alot hotter then that. I have managed to get my motherboard temperatures where I'm relatively comfortable with them.

All the same I fired off a number of e-mails to Asus Technical support, because I've heard so many varying things about what temperature the motherboard should show (the only consistant answer was that anything over 70 wasn't safe).

The reply states, and I quote:

"You'll find that while it does hit at or just above 60C, you won't see much variation under load above that. Normal board temps will range from 45-60C, and the chipsets can run a few degrees hotter than that."

If it makes you feel any better my Radeon 4870x2 runs at 88 degrees stock on load. That's it's midrange temperature. Idling it;s usually around 65 degrees.

73 is excessive. I'd be talking with Asus about that one. Their customer service has been quite good. They even have some guides posted for removing your heatsink/pipe and replacing the thermal paste.

I didn't make it clear enough perhaps. I'm getting about 60 or so on the motherboard sensors (log only shows "MB abnormal at 60c" Then MB returned to normal at..." ) as far as I know. I don't know if it went higher and Asus Probe didn't not the higher temp.

The 73c was the EVGA GTX 285 video card. I haven't found the stats for the PC version that mention max heat, but the Mac version states 105c. I doubt that it would be that much different, so 70s should be well within acceptable range.