High i7 stock temps

Hi,

I recently built a new rig with an i7 920 in a Antec 902 case. All the cooling is stock, just the stock HSF and case fans. I am just worried that the temps are unusually high. Idle with all the fans on high is about 38 and load after about 45 min of prime95 hits 90. I stopped the test there but it did appear to be leveling off.

Is there a chance that the heat sink just didn't seat right? Or is the stock cooler really that bad?

Thanks,
Alex

which stepping CPU do you have?

because I think the C0's would reach those kind of temps with the stock cooler.

You might have just gotten a really bad batch CPU, or you keep moving the heatsink slightly.

Ive tried reseating it twice now with arctic silver and it seems even worse than before. Within a couple of minutes i stop the test because the temperatures are just climbing without any sign of stopping.

Every online test of heatsinks i find lists the stock HSF of having load temps in the 60s. Are those accurate for my case or is it expected they be this high in a smaller case?

They aren't that bad, on some i7 920 D0's you can hit 3.8GHz with the stock cooler.

Also, the heat sink is definitely warm but i dont have any problem holding my finger on there. I would guess that means i get to try again?

I'm running a Xeon W3520 (workstation version of the i7 920, identical except it also supports ECC DRAM) using an ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard at stock speed (2.66GHz) with all the speeds and voltages set to AUTO in the BIOS, and in the CPUID Hardware Monitor window my CPU VCore is showing as 0.94 (min) to 0.99 (max) volts...

@Crasa
Well as I had posted before, turning down the voltage in the BIOS has helped me. the AI Suite automatically bumps the voltage between .9 and 1.3. So its fairly cool at idle but load is very hot. So far i have got it down to 1.1V in the BIOS and its 70s at load but a bit hotter at idle since it doesnt drop the voltage down so far. Probably could go lower too.

...so I just spent some time running Prime95 to stress the CPU and it's looking like my ASUS motherboard does the same thing - under load it boosts the voltage to about 1.25V and pushes the CPU to 2.8GHz.

The temperatures I'm seeing don't really concern me too much though - the CPU core temps are in the mid 30s at idle and seem to top out in the low 70s under full load. The CPU heat spreader temperature stays under 70, which seems to be the max spec for this CPU.

I'm new to these latest processors and motherboards so I'm still learning. But I downloaded the Intel Core i7 Processor Specification Sheet and picked up on two things from it:

- The i7 920 processor automatically increases the clock multiplier to 21 to yield a 2.8GHz clock speed as long as the heatspreader temperature remains below 70 degrees C.

- The processor has signal lines that requests specific voltages from the motherboard. So it seems to be the the CPU that's sending the voltage up to 1.25V, not the motherboard.

I assume that this is done to maintain stability. Intel tests these chips and has programmed into them the thermal and performance envelopes which they feel will guarantee correct operation of the CPU. It's kind of like the max clock speed - you can exceed it, but you're intruding into the safety margin when you do. There's a substantial safety margin there, to be sure, but the further you stray beyond Intel's "line in the sand" the closer you get to grief.

It really depends on what you use your machine for and what your risk tolerance is as to whether you're willing to override the defaults (up OR down) and to what extent...