860 running hooooot!!!

[Kenmitch]

Unless you disable speedstep in bios your multiplier will fluctuate with load. If C1E is enabled the voltages will also fluctuate with the multiplier. This is a good thing and not something to worry about. If your gonna run stock speeds I'd look in the bios and see if C1E is enabled or not. If disabled I'd enable it.

As far as the temps go they are high. The only way to know if the stock cooler is correctly installed is to look at the push pins from the underside of the motherboard to make sure they are fully snapped in place.

The hotter your ambients temp(your room) the hotter your cpu will run. What kind of case do you have? Does it have good airflow? But even if you do have good airflow if your room is 90+ then your gonna run hot pretty much no matter what.

Depending on what motherboard you have and what bios settings you use it is possible that it is also feeding too much vcore to your chip. This will cause high temps at load and idle. This is also what you need to look at once you start playing around with overclocking your chip. Alot of motherboards will increase the vcore once you touch what you call the fsb. You should be able to monitor voltages in your bios to see what the MB feeds your chip at stock settings. Write them down. Then do your little overclock and go back and see what they are....Let us know maybe it would help somewhat.

Oh and your picture is kinda to fuzzy to even read maybe higher res would also help.

 

[nickstar]

I have a similar question but with a e7200. what temps can i get to and not worry? right now it loads at 60c

60c is okay @ load temps. Keep it under 80c

 

[Jenslyn87]

Hmm ok....

I tried taking the cooler off. It seemed secure in place. Also the screws on the back seemed tightened and good. The company I bought the rig from usually do a good job.

So I put the cooler back on and now idle temps are 60+, lol. That's horrible. I'll try again. But I posted a zalman cooler in my last answer. Do you guys think that would be a good choice?

 

[Jenslyn87]

Ok reinstalled cooler and it's back to normal. Phew. But should I get that Zalman? Please bear with me for a while longer so I can get this solved!

Kenmitch: Thanks a lot for your reply. It seems everything is normal then, eh? I just don't understand why it's rock solid 2.8 when I'm stressing all 4 cores and it's fluctuation between 3.2 and 3.5 when I'm just sitting idle. Can you perhaps explain? It seems odd

 

[EJ257]

If you just want it to run cooler or have some fun with mild OC I'd go with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835233029

If you leave everything stock the one core could go into turbo mode anytime there is work to do and there is thermal headroom. That's probably why your seeing the one core go to 3.2 or even 3.5 during idle, maybe some housekeeping chore in the background is triggering the turbo?

 

[Kenmitch]

Ok reinstalled cooler and it's back to normal. Phew. But should I get that Zalman? Please bear with me for a while longer so I can get this solved!

Kenmitch: Thanks a lot for your reply. It seems everything is normal then, eh? I just don't understand why it's rock solid 2.8 when I'm stressing all 4 cores and it's fluctuation between 3.2 and 3.5 when I'm just sitting idle. Can you perhaps explain? It seems odd

Most likely something is loading the core. Alot of things happen in windows when you aren't doing anything. If you watch the hard drive led most likely you will see activity. Background task's such as virus scanners, etc will also do it.

 

[Termie]

Ok reinstalled cooler and it's back to normal. Phew. But should I get that Zalman? Please bear with me for a while longer so I can get this solved!

Kenmitch: Thanks a lot for your reply. It seems everything is normal then, eh? I just don't understand why it's rock solid 2.8 when I'm stressing all 4 cores and it's fluctuation between 3.2 and 3.5 when I'm just sitting idle. Can you perhaps explain? It seems odd

The Zalman is a fine cooler. If that's all you can get in your country, then get it.

But let me repeat, if your CPU is at 2.8 when loaded, it is going into thermal overload. It should be able to turbo up to 2.93 at load under normal operating temperatures. Also, if at idle the machine is constantly at 3.2 to 3.5 and never at 1.2, which is the power saving idle mode, then something is loading the machine and/or your power saving C1E settings are not correct in the bios. You should run a CPU monitor, for instance the one available in the task manager via control-alt-delete, to see what's going on. It could be a bad program or process that you should uninstall or disable.

 

[Jenslyn87]

The Zalman is a fine cooler. If that's all you can get in your country, then get it.

But let me repeat, if your CPU is at 2.8 when loaded, it is going into thermal overload. It should be able to turbo up to 2.93 at load under normal operating temperatures. Also, if at idle the machine is constantly at 3.2 to 3.5 and never at 1.2, which is the power saving idle mode, then something is loading the machine and/or your power saving C1E settings are not correct in the bios. You should run a CPU monitor, for instance the one available in the task manager via control-alt-delete, to see what's going on. It could be a bad program or process that you should uninstall or disable.

The only thing that seems to use cpu power is 'system idle process' in which the number below cpu says 99. The description says: "percentage of time the computer is idle". Oh, and actually, realtemp does report my multiplier as going 9.5 to 11 when idle. But it's more like 25 in cpu-z :\

But I guess you're right about it not utilising the turbo function. This sucks! I guess I will try to buy the Zalman cooler today.

 

[DominionSeraph]

My 5200+ idles at 31.5C in an 82F room. 34C with C&Q disabled. Stock dell heat sink which is ice cold.
50C idle seems waaay high. Check your heat sink. Is it even warm? If not I'd say you have bad contact.

 

[Jenslyn87]

Thanks guys. I bought and installed the Zalman cooler, and it helped a lot. Stock and load temps are way lower now. I'm still puzzles about the turbo function though. Even when I chose to only run one thread (with hyperthreading disabled) the multiplier will only reach 25 instead of 26 which it is supposed to. Is this because it 'thinks' I'm running on two cores? What might be done about it? I'd like to get full bang for the buck on just one core since I play a lot of SC2 that only utilizes one (as far as I know).

 

[Termie]

The only thing that seems to use cpu power is 'system idle process' in which the number below cpu says 99. The description says: "percentage of time the computer is idle". Oh, and actually, realtemp does report my multiplier as going 9.5 to 11 when idle. But it's more like 25 in cpu-z :\

But I guess you're right about it not utilising the turbo function. This sucks! I guess I will try to buy the Zalman cooler today.

System Idle Process is actually CPU idle time, so it's not loading your CPU. CPU-z should report your CPU going into a low-speed mode when idle, around 1200MHz. Make sure your Bios settings are correctly set for power savings. There are at least two pages in the Bios that have relevant settings, usually, including Turbo Boost, C1E state, C-state tech, and EIST (Speedstepping).

Glad you got the Zalman. What are your temps now?

You will almost never see the 26x multiplier. There is usually at least one process going on in the background that will take up CPU time. Don't worry about that. Also, did you intentionally disable hyperthreading for some reason? It's really a pretty good feature.

 

[Jenslyn87]

System Idle Process is actually CPU idle time, so it's not loading your CPU. CPU-z should report your CPU going into a low-speed mode when idle, around 1200MHz. Make sure your Bios settings are correctly set for power savings. There are at least two pages in the Bios that have relevant settings, usually, including Turbo Boost, C1E state, C-state tech, and EIST (Speedstepping).

Glad you got the Zalman. What are your temps now?

You will almost never see the 26x multiplier. There is usually at least one process going on in the background that will take up CPU time. Don't worry about that. Also, did you intentionally disable hyperthreading for some reason? It's really a pretty good feature.

Cool man, you're being extremely helpful! Thanks a lot!

My temps are now low 30s to around 60 during load, and I'm in a very hot room so I think that's ok. It's a LOT better than with the stock cooler!

You were right about the settings. It runs fine now with lower clocks in windows.

For the hell of it I tried to overclock it from 133 FSB to 140, just to see if it'd work. I got a blue screen pretty fast. I have had it at 140 and even 145 before, but maybe it didn't actually run at high speeds due to the bad cooling, I dunno... could only 7 mhz FSB overclock really make it unstable? I know the intel mobo I have is not exactly made for overclocking, but still...Just a small overclock would be nice - I would've accomplished someething

Edit: Oh, just noticed I had 2 keyboards plugged in. I need one to boot my BIOS with. Could that be the reason for my blue screen? Some sort of hardware conflict?

 

[Jenslyn87]

Oh and about disabling hyperthreading: I did it for a couple of reasons. I heard that, if anything, it would actually make games run a tad slower. I only really use my computer's performance for Starcraft 2 and Bad company 2, so I don't need to run a lot of threads. Also, I heard it makes your temps go up significantly.

Basically, I figured since I don't really need the extra threads, it wouldn't be a problem to turn to feature off

 

[Termie]

Cool man, you're being extremely helpful! Thanks a lot!

My temps are now low 30s to around 60 during load, and I'm in a very hot room so I think that's ok. It's a LOT better than with the stock cooler!

You were right about the settings. It runs fine now with lower clocks in windows.

For the hell of it I tried to overclock it from 133 FSB to 140, just to see if it'd work. I got a blue screen pretty fast. I have had it at 140 and even 145 before, but maybe it didn't actually run at high speeds due to the bad cooling, I dunno... could only 7 mhz FSB overclock really make it unstable? I know the intel mobo I have is not exactly made for overclocking, but still...Just a small overclock would be nice - I would've accomplished someething

Edit: Oh, just noticed I had 2 keyboards plugged in. I need one to boot my BIOS with. Could that be the reason for my blue screen? Some sort of hardware conflict?

Great news on those temps. What a difference! Idling in the 30s and loading at 60 sounds much more reasonable. As for the overclock...well, you should be able to hit 140 without a voltage bump, but better leave it stock for now. Don't know about your keyboard situation...doesn't seem likely that would cause a blue screen. I'm betting that you somehow had your voltages set very high previously, which allowed the overclock but also caused high temps. Again, just use the computer a while at stock and monitor temps, voltage, and CPU use for a while to make sure everything is properly set.

Oh and about disabling hyperthreading: I did it for a couple of reasons. I heard that, if anything, it would actually make games run a tad slower. I only really use my computer's performance for Starcraft 2 and Bad company 2, so I don't need to run a lot of threads. Also, I heard it makes your temps go up significantly.

Basically, I figured since I don't really need the extra threads, it wouldn't be a problem to turn to feature off

It's true that hyperthreading increases power use, and may not help in games. It's helpful in general operating system functions and multitasking, but it sounds like you're not doing much of that.

 

[GLeeM]

I didn't increase voltage at all though.

If you didn't set this voltage in BIOS the mobo automatically raised it when you overclocked it.
It is always recommended, when OCing, to set it in BIOS so this doesn't happen.

Many people here are overclocking and under-volting with success.

Temp won't damage that CPU in the short term, it will protect itself by lowering speed when it reaches 100C.

To give you an idea of what these CPUs are capable of:
My i7 920 D0 at 3.99 Ghz at 1.264v (HT on, of course) has been running full load (folding at home) for over a year. The average temp over the year has been about 74C.
Today, Real Temp is showing it has been up for 475 hours, the Max is showing 89C (from a very hot day last week) and the Min is 34C (from a cool morning this week between work units).

 

[fuzzymath10]

Did you try reinstalling your current hsf? The first time I installed my Q6600 I thought I had it right but temps were 70+ at idle. I redid it, and they dropped to normal temps.

It's important to not be overly-generous with the thermal paste.

 

[konakona]

Oh and about disabling hyperthreading: I did it for a couple of reasons. I heard that, if anything, it would actually make games run a tad slower. I only really use my computer's performance for Starcraft 2 and Bad company 2, so I don't need to run a lot of threads. Also, I heard it makes your temps go up significantly.

Basically, I figured since I don't really need the extra threads, it wouldn't be a problem to turn to feature off

A bit OT, but I happened to have googled some benches for HT on vs off with games. Looked like a split depending on which game you are looking at, and the spread wasn't too big. What did stand out though was higher thermal load with it on, so it makes sense to disable HT and run it cooler or at a higher clock (thanks to lowered heat).

 

[Jenslyn87]

I don't know about that blue screen problem... if it does happen again, can I adjust so that the computer doesn't just reboot itself? That way, I can't check out the details of the problem...

About the voltage: I'm pretty sure that my mobo only allows for two increments of voltage increase, so I don't think it will up it automatically when I overclock! It's a DP55WB from Intel

 

[Oscar Meyer]

I just got an i7 860 like the OP and am using my old Zalman 9700 heatsink. At stock settings in bios, temps are 29C idle and 55C load (one hour prime95). Room temp is 25C. I'm an OC junkie, so i got it running at 4ghz (200blck *20x) with HT enabled. Had to bump up voltages to 1.33vcore and 1.33vtt. vdimm is 1.65. Load Line Calibration on. All other voltages are at auto. All the energy saving stuff is also disabled. Idle temps are 45C but after 10 minutes of prime 95, the temps are 90c to 100C. WTF???

I thought maybe my Zalman 9700 was broke so i installed my old Zalman 9500 spare. The results were the same, in the high 90c's on full load. Is this normal for the old Zalman heatsinks when used with overclocked i7's??? Anyone else on the same setup? Just trying to figure out if the Zalman orb heatsinks are not efficient to cool highly overclocked i7's.

System Specs:
MSI GD80, i7-860
2*2Gb OCZ Reaper pc-16000 9-9-9-27 @2000mhz
Asus 5850 @ 950/1150
Lancool Dragonlord k62
Seventeam 850w modular

 

[konakona]

They are too small to compete with the modern heatpipe towers. Even a cheapish hyper 212 plus would walk all over those archaic zalmans. Zalman does make some decent heatpipe towers of their own, but there are some competitors generally preferred to those (megahalems suggested in the first page, for one).

 

[Jenslyn87]

Happy my temps are doing great! I just hope these blue screen won't show again. If anybody knows how I can keep the blue screen on display that would be appreciated. This would mean that I could write down the details so I could figure out the cause... I seem to remember that there's some way to make your computer not restart when getting a BSOD

 

[cubeless]

what the bsod says doesn't matter... when you die from an oc it can be in any routine... the good news is that, usually, nothing dies from a cpu oc failure... it's memory oc failures that wipe your hd...

and an 860 runs a lot hotter as soon as you start to oc it... they oc ok, but they seem to leak like crazy as you up the voltage, and are a bunch hotter with ht turned on... i have one under a sunbeam ccf with a medium fast fan and it gets up to 80c transcoding @ 3.9 with ht... these are big, hot chips...