E4300 OCing results

[Agentbolt]

Gigabyte GA-965P S3 Mobo
2 Gigs Kingston Value RAM DDR2 667
E4300 Processor
Nvidia 8800GTS

I'm wondering if part of the problem is that I'm using Vista. First off, I'm monitoring CPU temps with TAT and Coretemp. Also I have the BIOS of my Mobo set to screech if the CPU temp goes above 60. I'm using Orthos for stress testing. Also, I'm using the stock Intel HSF combo with Artic Silver 5 replacing the original thermal material. TAT says it's idling at 55 degrees C, Coretemp says 34 degrees C.

I can actually get the E4300 to run at 3.0GHZ stable with no increase in the VCore. Running the Orthos RAM/CPU test everything seems okay, if I run the small TFF test (stresses CPU only) though the temp spikes to 60 degrees C on Coretemp and like 75 in TAT. This is weird because, again, I haven't raised the VCore at all. Raising the Vcore by even a small amount to get an OC of around 3.2 GHZ causes the temps to go nuts, Coretemp jumps to 70 and TAT jumps to 80.

I'd heard pretty good things about the stock Intel HS assembly, especially when replacing their thermal paste, and considering I haven't overvolted at all, these temps seem a little out of whack. I guess my questions are:

A) Anyone have a GA-965P mobo-compatible temperature monitoring program they really trust? Obviously TAT or Coretemp (one of them) isn't working properly.

B) I know I shouldn't expect the hallowed 3.6 GHZ overclock with the stock fan, but with temperatures this high without even overvolting, is there something else I'm missing here? I'm sure I installed it correctly, I followed Artic Silver's C2D instructions to the letter, and took the entire thing out to reseat it to try again. Any other ideas why my temps might be so darn high? I've got good airflow in the case and the ambient temperature is ~80 degrees inside here in Tucson.

C) How realistic is the Orthos CPU-only test anyway? I'm certainly not getting temps anywhere NEAR as high when I'm just playing FEAR or encoding MP3s or whatever.

Any info is really appreciated, thanks.

 

[jkresh]

orhtos is going to be a lot hotter then any normal use (even then alot of other program that get to 100% cpu usage), one thing to try is touch the heat sink when it says 70C or 80C, if its scalding hot then those temps might be correct, if its cool to the touch then either you are getting realy bad contact with the cpu or something is seriosly wrong with the temperature sensors.

 

[Agentbolt]

Thanks, that's a good idea, I'll try that.

 

[engiNURD]

Are you sure the HSF is on properly? 55°C idle on stock settings? that seems rather high. Pick up a Scythe Ninja Plus Rev.B and see how it idles then.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Overclocking just doesn't work well with stock cooling. Get this Tuniq Tower for $54.99, a high cfm fan, and you should have noticeably better results.

edit: By the way, you're probably not doing anything wrong. You just don't have an adequate cooling solution.

 

[Agentbolt]

I've got an Artic Freezer 7 HS on the way. I'm also going to lap the processor, which anecdotally I've heard lowers temps by 3-4 degrees C at least. Certainly can't hurt. Few other things:

A: Currently the SmartFan controller on the GA-P965 seems to still be useless. Switching the controller to "off" is keeping temps quite a bit lower. (60C is about as high as it's getting under load now in Coretemp, 70 in Tat)

B: I'm not sure I believe the Coretemp program OR the Intel TAT program at this point. The general consensus appears to be that there's no accurate thermal monitoring software for Vista that properly monitors the E4300's temps yet. I'm just going to run everything stock until the AF7 arrives and see where it goes from there.

Thanks for all the help guys.