Computers nowadays run WAY TOO HOT!!! Anandtech should put more info about thermal output in reviews...

[brxndxn]

Twelve years ago, most processors just had a heatsink. The only fans in most computers were the power supply fans..

Six years ago, every processor has a fan and larger heat sink. Graphics cards started having active cooling along with chipsets. The power supplies started adding dual fans.

Nowadays, computers have huge processor fans with huge heat sinks, heat sinks on the memory, heat sinks with active cooling on the chipsets, dual power supply fans, case fans in the front and back, hard drive fans.. The graphics cards come with insanely large fans and heatsinks.. and people often put 2 of them in the same computer.

Then, it seems to me that the people with these crazy hot computers seem to be completely ignorant about how much heat their computers are putting out. Pretty much everyone (on these forums at least) leaves their computers on 24/7..

Is it just me or is the trend of ignoring heat output on new hardware pretty alarming? I mean.. graphics cards get great reviews even if they put out more heat than a human body. Reviews seem to ignore how hot memory runs.. or how hot chipsets run. Also, processors are getting pretty nuts.. 100W of heat output now? Wasn't the average in 1995 like 25W? I'd really like to see more ratings that show how much heat components put out.

I'm sick of being told things like 'this 300GB hard drive runs really cool' and finding out that it runs hot.. just that todays' cool is yesterdays' 'fry an egg on it.'

I live in FL.. when I run my linux box (old 900mhz Athlon), there is no noticeable change in my room temperature. But, when I run my Windows box (2500+ Barton, Radeon 9500 modded to 9700), my room gets about 3-5 degrees warmer. The next computer I build, I'd like to be able to run it 24/7 without it causing me to have to run my AC all the time just to offset the amount of heat it puts out..

My roommates' computers are even more nuts than mine.. and they're nothing by todays' standards (9800 Pros, 3000+ Athlons).

Please, Mr. Anand, put a 'thermal output' category in the reviews/ratings of new hardware.

CLIFF NOTES:
- Computers are too hot
- You need to read more

 

[Markbnj]

Then, it seems to me that the people with these crazy hot computers seem to be completely ignorant about how much heat their computers are putting out.

Leaving aside whether Anand talks about heat enough, I don't know why you would assume people are ignorant. Most of those huge heatsinks you refer to are aftermarket devices, placed in those systems by owners who are very aware of how much heat is being generated and what is needed to dissipate it.

Look, more power consumption == more waste heat as a byproduct. It's not earth-shattering news, and I highly doubt a large number of people are unaware of it. My refrigerator puts out a lot of waste heat too, as does my A/C compressor, lamps, television, and strangely enough, just about everything else that uses power in my home.

 

[MechaSheeba]

We have a Dell upstairs that runs its fans at <50% whenever temps are under 70C, and almost all of the time it's in the high 60s and dead silent. You'd think temps like that are dangerous, but it's run for several years with no issues. The fact of the matter is, heat isn't as big of an issue as most people here would make it out to be.

Retail heatsinks are still made of cheap aluminum and still often use 60-70mm fans. The highest end GPUs today are coming close to the power consumption/heat output level of CPUs, and though the heatsinks may look monstrous, in terms of real estate, they're actually still smaller than CPU heatsinks, they only look larger because of the unique design they need to accommodate other perhiperals.

There are other review sites that cater specifically to temperatures and heatsinks. Every component that requires a fan comes with one that's designed to keep it within operating temperatures, so why should AT pay any special attention to thermal output?

 

[NanoStuff]

The power consumption/heat output issue was getting out of hand, but with the 7900s and Conroe I have hope that finally they're starting to pay serious attention to the problem. Even so, despite the ability to cut down on power consumption they still manage to make the hardware run exceptionally fast per watt or otherwise, it shows they're really trying.

For the time being, I'm running a Prescott at around 80C+ with 50% fan speed (stock cooling). It's a half-ass processor, but it runs AOE2 just fine even at those temps

 

[rbV5]

The next computer I build, I'd like to be able to run it 24/7 without it causing me to have to run my AC all the time just to offset the amount of heat it puts out..

How about targeting your hardware components for low thermal output? The variety of components is far greater today than it has been making it easier to build your PC for your purpose. HTPC's are generally built for low noise, a little imagination, and they could certainly provide a low thermal output.

 

[RussianSensation]

AM-2 X2 3800+ with 35W output. I think Conroe chips have 65W maximum thermal envelope. But in the future it'll still climb further, just better transistor switches to turn gates off etc will be implemented to save power. I wouldn't surprised if water cooling becomes mainstream in 10 years, if not earlier. Look at cars, hp keeps climbing, but fuel consumption is not improving as fast. To elaborate, old ferrari had like 300 hp and got 13mpg. New ferrari will get 660hp and still consume 13mpg, which is amazing. Can't have both worlds...It's hard to get X2 10000+ processor at 35W regardless of how much money you'd pay for it since technology isnt evolving that fast.

 

[Looney]

Stupid thread, stupid suggestion.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: MechaSheeba
We have a Dell upstairs that runs its fans at <50% whenever temps are under 70C, and almost all of the time it's in the high 60s and dead silent. You'd think temps like that are dangerous, but it's run for several years with no issues. The fact of the matter is, heat isn't as big of an issue as most people here would make it out to be.

Retail heatsinks are still made of cheap aluminum and still often use 60-70mm fans. The highest end GPUs today are coming close to the power consumption/heat output level of CPUs, and though the heatsinks may look monstrous, in terms of real estate, they're actually still smaller than CPU heatsinks, they only look larger because of the unique design they need to accommodate other perhiperals.

There are other review sites that cater specifically to temperatures and heatsinks. Every component that requires a fan comes with one that's designed to keep it within operating temperatures, so why should AT pay any special attention to thermal output?

True. If you have ever touched a DELL Heatsink, they get very hot and sometimes they are so hot you cannot touch them. Most CPU's from AMD or Intel have very high tolerances for heat. Many can get as hot as 175-200° F.

 

[zephyrprime]

It can't be helped. It's just the laws of physics. Heat output is bad and getting worse and there is nothing to be done about the problem.

Use ATITool to reduce power output from your Radeon if you want to.

 

[rise]

Originally posted by: Looney
Stupid thread.

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
I wouldn't surprised if water cooling becomes mainstream in 10 years

I find it hard to believe that we will still have silicon chips that require active cooling 10 years from now.

 

[obeseotron]

If you don't like how much power a high end CPU uses, you're welcome to use something like a low end pentium M, which won't produce any more heat than that athlon 900 fo yours. If you don't like the heat 7200RPM drives produce, by all means use a 5400RPM drive. If you don't want a graphics card that produces much heat, look into an x1300 or 7300. If you want an entire system that won't produce much heat in general, buy a laptop (a real laptop, not a "luggable") and hook it up to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.

If you haven't figured it out by now, my point is that there are plenty of options that don't put out a ton of heat, they are just a whole lot slower than the stuff that does produce a lot of heat. If you wanna play modern games you have to put up with heat, period. Higher clockrates and bigger transistor counts mean more heat.

 

[Operandi]

I agree it's a problem; just ask Intel.

I think things are starting to change however; check out the 80 Plus group.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
For the time being, I'm running a Prescott at around 80C+ with 50% fan speed (stock cooling). It's a half-ass processor, but it runs AOE2 just fine even at those temps

More like a 1/3 of a cpu, if it's really running at 80c+ you are throttling, and losing at least 33% of your cpu's performance. At those temps, more likey it's at 66% throttling.

 

[Operandi]

Originally posted by: obeseotron
If you don't like how much power a high end CPU uses, you're welcome to use something like a low end pentium M, which won't produce any more heat than that athlon 900 fo yours. If you don't like the heat 7200RPM drives produce, by all means use a 5400RPM drive. If you don't want a graphics card that produces much heat, look into an x1300 or 7300. If you want an entire system that won't produce much heat in general, buy a laptop (a real laptop, not a "luggable") and hook it up to an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.

If you haven't figured it out by now, my point is that there are plenty of options that don't put out a ton of heat, they are just a whole lot slower than the stuff that does produce a lot of heat. If you wanna play modern games you have to put up with heat, period. Higher clockrates and bigger transistor counts mean more heat.

But it doesn?t have to be that way. Just look at Conroe vs. P4; there are all kinds of way to cut power draw especially at idle.

 

[obeseotron]

I didn't say that there weren't ways to reduce power consumption, I said high end parts are going to generate heat, and you have to compromise to reduce it. 7600GT uses a lot less power than a 6800GT and I think it performs better too. Conroe is going to be a major improvment, but it's still 65W TDP, a lot more than an Athlon 900 IIRC, and nearly a 3 fold increase over the 25W of 10 years ago (not sure about that figure, just going based on the first post). At this point it just seems like if you are capable of producing a product with very low heat, you are almost by default able to produce a faster product that does produce a fair amount of heat. Companies are probably going to continue offering the fastest product they can that can still be cooled relatively easily with air cooling.

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: NanoStuff

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
I wouldn't surprised if water cooling becomes mainstream in 10 years

I find it hard to believe that we will still have silicon chips that require active cooling 10 years from now.

That's right. We'll be using galium arsenide chips that require active cooling.

 

[OSX]

But how will that Conroe bench against the Athlon 900? My PII linux box runs at a very low temprature, everything is passively cooled, besides the processor. But then again, I'd rather have 65W of heat, with excellent performance, than low heat, with low performance. Do you really want to use a VIA processor?

 

[NanoStuff]

Originally posted by: stevty2889

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
For the time being, I'm running a Prescott at around 80C+ with 50% fan speed (stock cooling). It's a half-ass processor, but it runs AOE2 just fine even at those temps

More like a 1/3 of a cpu, if it's really running at 80c+ you are throttling, and losing at least 33% of your cpu's performance. At those temps, more likey it's at 66% throttling.

Like I said, runs AOE2 just fine

 

[SparkyJJO]

My CPU (athlon 64 3700+) idles in the mid 30s C, load is closer to 40 degrees C, running a Zalman cooler on it. My video card tho (X1900XT) heats up to 70+ degrees C, I'm looking at a custom cooler for it to keep the temps down (and hopefully noise).

With more speed comes more power dissipation and heat. Gotta love it. I don't know when they'll hit a wall where they can't go any faster due to heat issues. Hmm, will we get to the point where water cooling systems or chillers are needed to keep stuff from getting over 70 C?

 

[xtknight]

My PC doesn't run hot at all. 30C on CPU/idle and 40C/idle on video card, not much higher on load IIRC. (Shameless plug.)

Originally posted by: brxndxn
Wasn't the average in 1995 like 25W? I'd really like to see more ratings that show how much heat components put out.

Not surprisingly, the average time it takes to start WinXP on that same CPU is also probably near 5 minutes. Why don't you just get a decent water-cooling system? You won't have to worry about heat ever again for quite a while, nor noise. Me, I can't hear the fan noise when I have my headphones on, which is about 90% of the time I'm using my PC. At 2D it's barely audible period due to the automatic fan slow-down, and in 3D you're almost always playing games and have sound blasting anyway. Is 5 degrees that big of a deal? Such is the trade-off with 300 million transistors in one small space.

 

[kami333]

Originally posted by: OSX
But how will that Conroe bench against the Athlon 900? My PII linux box runs at a very low temprature, everything is passively cooled, besides the processor. But then again, I'd rather have 65W of heat, with excellent performance, than low heat, with low performance. Do you really want to use a VIA processor?

I have a couple passively cooled Epia boxes, fine for Office and neffing on ATOT

 

[TrevorRC]

I happen to like my room toasty, thank you very much.

Also, it's ENERGY in heat that matters, not the temperature.

Sparklers [4th of July] burn at 1000C+, but you don't get burned. Why? Energy. Almost no energy behind that 1k. Anyway, though I'd point that out. So mention energy output, not heat.

Also, if it concerns you this much, buy a low power [45W<] Opteron.
Don't use a video card.
Use DDR RAM, and unclock it.
Use a low wattage/high efficiency PSU. [80+]

Problem solved.

Edit: A thought.

Stick your computer outside. Global Warming

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: TrevorRC


Sparklers [4th of July] burn at 1000C+, but you don't get burned. Why? Energy. Almost no energy behind that 1k. Anyway, though I'd point that out. So mention energy output, not heat.

Oh they most certainly will burn you if you touch that glowing wire!

Computers DO throw out a ridiculous amount of heat. I could probably fire up rthdribl and use the "blast furnace" air coming out of my X1900XTX to shrink wrap wires should I misplace my heat gun. Seriously, it is freaking ridiculous!

 

[secretanchitman]

obviously todays CPU's and GPU's run much hotter. technology has increased to the point where we need extra cooling. think about it. so what if it makes a little heat. thats what fans are for. and 2-5 degrees hotter in your room doesnt make much difference. 70 degrees to 75 degrees is not that noticeable.