Need help with phenom II 940 temps

[dezerteagle323]

Well i have a phenom II X4 940 @ 3.4 ghz and AMD overdrive is reading idle temps on average of 48 C. I just dont get why its this high. At first I had it with the stock heatsink and now I have an Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 pro with arctic silver 5 ... and its still giving the same temps. Any suggestions? or is this normal?

I have an Antec 1200 case (air cooled, all fans running on low speed) with great cable management, and my ambient room temps are around 27 C.

I know AS5 takes 200 hours to settle or whatever, but i still dont think the temps should be this high to start off with. I know this is one of those billion-times-asked-generic-questions, but any help is greatly appreciated.



Full specs:
Antec 1200 case (with both optional 120mm fans)
Phenom II 940 @3.4 ghz w/ AC freezer 64 pro hsf
Visiontec radeon 4870 512mb
2x WD caviar black 640 GB (raid 0)
Antec CP-850 power supply
Gigabyte ga-ma790x-ud4p
4GB (2x2GB) G.skill ddr2 800 @ 1.9v 4-4-4-12
Windows 7 build 7100

 

[dezerteagle323]

thx .. good point, i guess i'll do some stress tests and see what temps i'm getting

 

[jennyh]

48C idle is a bit on the high side but with 27C room temps that's probably about right. At that I'd expect your stress testing to go to 64/65C. Remember though, nothing else is gonna push your temps that high.

Also zipzoom, I think the max recommended temp on the Phenom II is 61C. Of course you'll be fine with 62C and a little bit more, but 70C could maybe be pushing it a bit.

 

[_orbital_]

hmmmm

 

[pauldh]

48 idle is quite high. What do your load temps hit while running prime 95? Is it stable?

Key to OC'in Phenom II's is keeping them cool. If anyone has an OC'ed PII that is prime 95 stable near 60C I'd like to know about it.

Personally I have never had a completely stable PII overclock if load temps go above 55-56C. I have not tried to test this with poor cooling to see if stock (or low OC) could be stable up to 60C. But for me 3.6-3.9GHz have always BSOD'd in prime 95 if temps hit upper 50's.

 

[jennyh]

I just ran prime95 for 10 minutes there at 3.6 and the temps were up at 66C. It's a really hot day too though and I didn't have the cpu fan over 50%.

My 940 is rock solid stable at 3.8ghz but the temps are incredibly high under prime95. I usually just run it at 3.6ghz.

 

[pauldh]

Interesting; 10 minutes isn't long, but it answers the question and shows it can be done. Thanks for sharing. At those temps I wouldn't ask you to run it longer. How high have they gone in the past at 3.8GHz? (Don't fry it for my sake trying again.)

I shoot for a minimum of 30 minutes prime 95 with each OC, 1 hour better yet before settling on the final OC to use in a review. We want to assure stability, and with so many hours of benchmarking, it would be a drag to start over if found the original OC isn't fully stable. It's seems from my testing you can squeeze a bit more out of a PII if temps are down around 50C. Upper 50's I have never passed 30+ minutes prime when trying to dial in a max OC.

 

[AdioKIP]

While the cooler you have isnt bad there are better options. I run a similiar setup:

Antec 1200 Case
Phenom II 940
2x Radeon 4850's (Single Slot design so they generate alot of hot air in my case)
8 Gigs of G.Skill Ram
750 Watt Thermaltake Toughpower Certified PSU
1x WD Black 1x WD Green hard drive
Asus M4A79 Deluxe

With the stock cooling I was idling at 54 celsius and maxing around 66. I switched to a Xigmatek S1283 cooler and my temps dropped to 33 celsius idle and max around 46 (after more then an hour of prime 95). This is in a room with an ambient temp of around 26 but this climbs by more then 10 degrees if I close the door to the room for awhile. When the ambient temp climbs my idle goes up to around 37 but my max doesnt change. I have overclocked it up to 3.6 before with a slight change in temp (still never past the 50's) but right now am running it stock.

 

[jennyh]

15 mins on maximum heat stress.

No change after 30 mins.

Since putting the aircon on 10 minutes ago, it has dropped to 62C still on full heat stress. I have to say, I don't think I put the heatsink on brilliantly, am not even using Artic Silver and it's 'only' an old Zalman 9500 on it. With better circumstances I could probably shed 10 Celcius from that.

 

[jennyh]

Also, it's idling at 34C right now.

 

[dezerteagle323]

thanks for the help guys ... well i ran prime 95 at 3.4ghz for about 20 mins at max stress and im getting 65 C ... i guess i could live with this ... and more than anything its probably my hsf ...

 

[B-Unit]

Yea, I started with an AF64 Pro when I got my 940BE, but I quickly decided it wasn't good enuf to keep up with the quad core lovin'. I went all the way and got the Xiggy HDT-1284, and it keeps idle temps in the mid 30s and load around 55C.

I definitely recommend a different CPU cooler. The Freezer64 is a great dual-core HSF, but it just doesnt quite have the umpf to keep up with an OCed quad.

 

[redgarl]

Well, I got a totally other problem, my core temps are extremely low in comparaison with my cpu temp reading from my motherboard sensor... what the hell does it mean?

 

[sid_nag17]

i have a ocz vendetta 2 and have temps of 43c idle and 55c max in a 30c room. its with the stock paste.