CPU cooling- Is 56C too high???

[Rafa]

I'm getting drastic slowdowns after playing 3d intensive games for hours, so I checked my cpu temp via Sisoft Sandra. It is reporting 56C. Is this temp likely the cause of these slowdowns (to around 1fps)? I have not oc'd my 1.4 athlon yet, but would like to try later. My current cooling is an OCZ Gladiator heatsink mounted to the cpu with aritc silver in between. I am using the retail heatsink fan that came with the cpu. I know that isn't a great fan, but it is quiet. Even still, shouldn't the fan bundled with the retail heatsink be sufficient for the defualt speed? Thanks for the input!

 

[Migroo]

That temperature will not damage your chip. I am almost 100% cirtain of that.

Many people around here feel that they are not happy with temperatures as high as that (and I have those views too, for the most part) however there is nothing 'wrong' with running at that temperature at all.

I am not sure about the slowdowns. I had the same thing happen to me when I had an AMD K6-2 system. I was running Unreal and I would get those symptoms (1 FPS) after about 2 mins of play. After about 30 seconds, the proper framerate would come back. Once again the 1 FPS thing would return after another 2 mins of play. This turned out to be a dead HSF. The chip was getting to 75 deg. C, where the motherboard CPU protection was set. I can only guess that the motherboard downclocked the CPU and that once the CPU got into the safe temperature threshold again that it would be clocked back up to proper speed. By the way, that chip still lives and I was using it like that for about 2 months before I figured out what the problem was.

I hope this helps.

 

[Migroo]

I wasnt able to edit my post (kept getting timeouts) -

I forgot to add that yes, the retail fan should be sufficient.

 

[gunf1ghter]

I think this topic is covered very well in the FAQ