cooling quest (socket A)

[lobadobadingdong]

I've been using the big Speeze 80mm falcon rock on my 2500+, my MSI KT4V report the temp to be 52-54C under full load, and latetly has been unstable. I'm running the proc at 166x12.5 stock voltages up to 1.7V all have the same problem, but at 1.7V the temp goes up to 56C under full load. it idle's at 46C but I run Seti@home on this 24x7. I have some zinc oxide thermal compound(TC) I got with a dell laptop hsf replacement on it right now thinking the stock TC wasn't doing a good enough job. I have a 350W Antec psu, 5 2300rpm case fans, my case temp never goes above 86F would a different thermal compound make a big enough change to warrant it? I won't change my hsf because I like my machine to at least somewhat quiet. but don't really want to spend the $10 on arctic silver 5 either since I just bought $18 worth of case fans

I'd be willing to change hsf's if I could find one quieter than the falcon rock, but <22db is hard to beat.

oh yea, I'm running 512MB of pc2700 kingston value ram at spd timings set to ultra(so an fsb oc is out). a radeon 9700 pro, not overclocked. a pci firewire card, and an 80GB WD SE, a 52x cd-rw, and a 2x DVD-R/W.

AS 5 shows to be $5 at svc.

edit: another question is my fan direction. I have 2 fans up front blowing air in, 1 side fan and 2 rear fans blowing out. should I change this in any way?

 

[myocardia]

According to this site, you probably don't have a big enough psu. But, what you really need to do is check your voltages on all of the + rails, while running SETI, or even better, while gaming, if you're a gamer.

 

[jar5tyle]

Is your side fan intake or exhaust?

If you haven't already, (if it's inline with your CPU) make that an intake. That's a good CPU temp dropper.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Originally posted by: myocardia
According to this site, you probably don't have a big enough psu. But, what you really need to do is check your voltages on all of the + rails, while running SETI, or even better, while gaming, if you're a gamer.

It shows 329W minimum, I have a 350W PSU, and the rails are within .1% of what they should be.
the side fan is set as an exaust, I'll change it the other way tomorrow when I get a chance.

 

[myocardia]

Well, I say nothing beats checking your rails under load. BTW, here's what I came up with: Barton-69 watts, 9700 Pro- 54 watts,2 sticks of PC133(the faster the ram, the more power it uses-ALWAYS)- 24 watts, CD-RW+DVD-RW- 45 watts, one hd- 25 watts (7200rpm uses more), modem/nic- 4 watts, 1 add. pci card- 5 watts, usb&firewire devices- 13 watts minimum, and 5 80mm fans- 10 watts minimum. The grand total is 357, not 329. Even good psu's go bad, occasionally. BTW, what temps were you running under load before? You said that it had only become unstable lately, so it was stable before? I've had problem with Palomino's becoming unstable at around 54-55C, and a few people have reported stability problems with Bartons at or below 60C.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: jar5tyle
Is your side fan intake or exhaust?

If you haven't already, (if it's inline with your CPU) make that an intake. That's a good CPU temp dropper.

Great suggestion Also, if you can pry a Thermalright SK-7 from someone's cold dead fingers :evil: they are an awesome heatsink that accepts 80mm fans natively. The copper base spreads the heat away from the CPU core better than a comparable aluminum base, and from the Thoroughbred core onwards, my understanding was that a copper base was strongly suggested by AMD due to the small contact area.

Heh, not a single SK-7 listed in For Sale & Trade Here's a new budget Thermalright that might spark your interest: ALX-800 $23 with free Arctic Alumina, plus S/H. EDIT: hold the presses, I just remembered this one too: special buy on SLK-800 for $23 + S/H too.

 

[MoFunk]

Yep, a nice big copper HS with at least an 80mm fan is a must, intake fan and exhaust fan helps a ton also.

Are you sure that the temp is causing the stability issue? Mine runs 54c full load and I run fine. Yes mobo's report differently, but you might want to experiment a little. Try taking the side case off and pointing a fan in the case to see if your stability issues clear. If it does, then work on cooling and HS, if it still remains then you have some tracking down to do.

 

[Sheriff]

Change the side Fan to Blow In on the Vid Card , Mobo, and HS/Fan

 

[Wigwam]

another thing to bear in mind is that 54C diode temp [as measured by MBM%, say] is lower that 54C socket temp as usually measured by motherboard utilities [or at least i found that with my Asus and asusprobe]
cant really see why you're having instability with those temps though [esp if they are diode temps].
i also concur - make side fan intake: i switched em round at some point in the past and it is worth a couple of degC

 

[lobadobadingdong]

I had an old 300W no name power supply in it, and it was running fine until 2 weeks ago. I suspected the powersupply and bought the antec 350, so I doubt it is the psu.

the kt4vl(KT400) doesn't use the cpu's diode as far as I know, and until I flashed the bios (thought that might have been an issue as well) the temp read 60C under full load. MSI's latest bios for this board corrected some mis-readings from the thermal diode.

- 14Wbecuse I use 1 stick of ddr, - 4Wnic modem becuse my nic is on board and I don't have a modem, keep in mind those are all maxes of power usage (and I rarely use my firewire device), I've seen a similar setup (-all the case fans) running on a 180W power supply just fine. (I still came up with 329W under full load from all devices.)

it looks like the consensus now is I need to switch the direction on my side fan and see what that does. the system is perfectly stable when the proc is at stock speeds btw (and reports as being at 52-53C under full load). I won't have enough time until later this afternoon, thanks for the input guys.

 

[Tetsuo316]

My 2¢ is that "some zinc oxide thermal compound(TC) I got with a dell laptop hsf replacement" is what's causing your rig's instability. Lesser quality compounds have a tendency to dry up and lose their transfer capabilities. My advice to you would be to bite the bullet and buy some quality arctic silver. Or before you do that, take off the heatsink you currently have a check to see the consistency of the TC you have on there now. if it's all caky and dried up, that's your culprit. Or, you can do like the rest of the crew advised and upgrade the heatsink. I found the Thermaltake Silent Boost to actually be pretty quiet. Under 22db i don't know...

Good luck!

 

[lobadobadingdong]

after switching the direction of my side fan I now have a 44C under full load and it's stable now as a 2800+

Thanks a heap guys.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
after switching the direction of my side fan I now have a 44C under full load and it's stable now as a 2800+

Thanks a heap guys.

Now it's time to make it stable as a 3600+.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

lol, for that I would need to up my power supply and probably need a new mobo, the kt400's aren't the greatest overclockers as they don't lock the agp/pci buss.