Does P4 clock throttling always work & board question

[Booster]

I just installed a new mb+CPU setup, an ECS P4S5A/DX+ and a Celeron 1.7 (retail HSF, a free 'upgrade' from an old SDRAM Athlon XP 1800+ rig). Went ECS after success with a K7S5A. Guess what, regardless of the board brand image, everything works rock stable and fast (as fast as a Celeron could be, though ). I have only a couple of *minor* issues with this setup.

First of all, this board has very limited BIOS options, and I like it - no need to waste time setting a bizillion of options or jumpers. When I run the SiSoft Sandra 2002 SP1 CPU information module, it shows that the thermal monitor of the CPU is disabled. And, to make things even worse, I can't enable it since there's no such option in the BIOS. I guess so much for clock throttling in case the HSF falls off or it gets too hot, right?

And more, what do you think will happen if it gets too hot or the cooler falls off? Will it just freeze like a PIII or an older Celeron or heat way up and fry like an Athlon on this board?

Second problem - why I even worry about the heat issue (after all, this Celeron should be just as smart as a P4, right? Maybe not.) I'm getting a frigging 50C when idle! I mean, really idle since the latest MBM doesn't support this board properly and I can only see the temps in the BIOS. There it's 50-51C. Heck, if I could see the temps under load I'm pretty sure to see figures in the high 60s to 70C and all the way up! And it's a frigging Celeron. This is just frustrating.

I installed the HSF according to Intel instructions, trying not to damage the thermal material. But it seems like the HSF mounting clip is deteoriated a bit, not quite straight after the installation. And the clips have almost popped out of their holes. Maybe it's an ECS mounting bracket, strange, it looked like a good qualilty plastic.

Anyway, I'm sorry this is so long to read (if you have read ), my question basically is: is this CPU im thermal danger on this board in case it doesn't make a good contact with the HSF? I'm very busy right now and don't have the time to disassemble the whole thing, I also need to use this PC right now.

 

[pm]

And more, what do you think will happen if it gets too hot or the cooler falls off? Will it just freeze like a PIII or an older Celeron or heat way up and fry like an Athlon on this board?

It won't fry or even lock up - but it will slow down a lot. Thermal protection against catastrophic hardware failure is built into the CPU. The motherboard and its BIOS don't have anything to do with it. The thermal monitor Sandra is reporting as disabled is probably the monitoring chip that monitors the SMB bus. There is no danger of problems if the CPU is idling at 50C - although that does seem pretty high. If the temperature climbs up into the 70's then there is cause for concern. My guess as to your problem is that the heatsink is not flush with the IHS (the silver slug that the chip rests under) due to the mounting bracket. If the bracket appears damaged or non-functional, I would recommend contacting the vendor you purchased the motherboard from.

Patrick Mahoney
Microprocessor Design Engineer
Intel Corp.

 

[Booster]

The motherboard and its BIOS don't have anything to do with it.

That sounds pretty good. Thanks for replying.