HEAT! Any and all suggestions, please

[Syrillian]

Greetings,

I need some help with the heat that my new rig is generating.
Here are the hardware specs, followed by the temps that are returned:

Antec SLK2650-BQE case
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe Mobo
AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ (OC to 2200MHz)
Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU HSF
EVGA Nvidia 7600GT (OC to 618/835)
Zalman VF7000 CPU cooler
WD 250GB HDD
Generic 2-fan HDD cooler
Antec TruPower 430W PSU
2- 80mm intake fans (front/side)
1-120mm exhaust fan

I used Arctic Silver 5 as the TIC and viewed some pics online to ensure that my application was correct (full coverage with a smooth and thin coating. The CPU cooler is fully seated per the installation instructions.

Readings:

CPU 47C/56C (Idle/Load)
MoBo 40C (negligable variance)
HDD 54C/62C (Idle/Load)
GPU 41C/48C (Idle/Load)

These reading are from a combination of SpeedFan (Awesome utility!) BIOS, NForce display and SIW.

I have given attention to cable management to ensure that there is adequate airlfow.

These temps seem high. What else can I do? The system is stable.

Thanks for your time and valued comments and input.

[Trifid]

It is not a thin covering, it is a half a pea sized blob in the middle, and then apply the heatsink. Do not then left the heatsink after making contact with the paste.

What is ambient temperature? What heatsink do you have? A good one will take around 6*C off and bring load closer to idle.

[Nubius]

A couple things here.

1. There is no such thing as an accurate temp sensor on any of these AMD64 boards.

2. The dual cores run a bit hotter than a single core CPU

3. Like Trifid said, on the CPU's with heatspreaders you don't spread on a thin coat (although I've seen some sites say otherwise) you just need to put a small blob in the middle and the weight of the heatsink will spread it for you.

4. Speedfan sucks and is actually probably one of the most inaccurate monitors out there. However, if it happens to be displaying the same results as your BIOS and other software then it appears it's actually in sync with your sensors.


Chances are your temps are probably cooler than you think, although I suppose theres always the adverse of that and they are hotter than you think. Main point is, me for example, I'm on watercooling with a dual core CPU. It says like 38C idle and 44C full load or so. I could go to any website right now and find someone with the same motherboard and CPU as me, but they have stock cooler and they'll report temps like 30C idle and 38C full load.

Obviously a stock cooler is not going to be cooler than water cooling. Merely making the point that the CPU sensors SUCK.

Your GPU is probably fairly accurate though.

So now I know you're asking "well, if they are inaccurate, what do I do!?"

Well, there really isn't a whole lot aside from getting your own temperature probe. The stock coolers aren't that great though, and especially since you're overclocking it'd be beneficial for you and your CPU to look into some after market cooling.

[magouster]

I'm pretty sure he said he's using a Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU cooler. If it's as hot in his room as it is in mine, I can understand his temps! My XP 2800 is reaching almost 70 under load, but ambient temp in my room is 28C.

[Nubius]

I'm pretty sure he said he's using a Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU cooler.

Yup......you're right. Sorry......it's 6:30am and I should be asleep right now. School ended last week and I guess my body is still on school schedule I got in bed at 4:30 and just rolled around until I got up at 6:30am so I'm working off of zero sleep lol.......can't believe I completely missed that.

Magouster - my rooms temps are about the same if not hotter on some days. Sadly enough the socket A boards general had more accurate sensors than these AMD64 boards seem to have.

The socket A had a little diode in the gap in the socket, the ones are these are supposed to be in the CPU I believe and they are just horrid.

I can't believe your barton is getting that hot though dude. My 2400+ XP got up to 60-65C at full load back in the day when I didn't know about comps and had basically zero cooling and my room was as hot as yours, but the thoroughbred cores run hotter than bartons. Yours should be running fairly cool, guess not lol.

[charles_scott]

You know, at one time the AS5 site DID in fact say that you should spread it out on the IHS...

[Nubius]

yeah I know, I remember that, I believe it was on the old Intel IHS's if I recall correctly.

As far as I remember though, for the AMD64 instructions it was to plop a dot.

I bet it's because too many people were putting on too much and it seeped over the side of their CPU or something. So now they dont instruct that way.

[charles_scott]

Meh, I still spread mine out... rather thick though... I never had issues with it seeping out over the edge...

[magouster]

Well, to keep my overclock stable, I have to run 1.7V up from 1.65. I think that's causing some of the heat problems. Till this day, I'm not sure if it's the CPU or the mobo which sucks at overclocking, I can't get that Barton past 2150MHz, even with the full 1.8V my mobo allows. Sorry guys, ignore this post, a bit off topic, and a hijack as well.

[Nubius]

I'm gonna blame ASUS

I don't think I've ever seen a barton core NOT hit atleast 2.2GHz.

It took 1.975v to get 2.7GHz stable on my XP-M days. Those were the good ole days when you COULD pump that much voltage through them and as long as it was cool you were fine. Now-a-days you run the risk of frying the memory controller.

I ran my XP-M at 2.5 or 2.6GHz 24/7, depending on how hot it was cause it took like 1.825 to keep 2.5GHz stable and 1.875v to keep 2.6GHz stable and it'd get pretty warm.

Meh, I still spread mine out... rather thick though... I never had issues with it seeping out over the edge...

You're basically just wasting your stuff then. If it's cheap crap that's fine, but when it's AS5 and the pricing is kind of high for such a small quantity I make sure to use it as much as possible.