Help....my CPU temp is 49-53 IDLE.....

[magomago]

I just built my pc (i'm not a newbie...so don't worry 'bout that)

and i'm in the bios (stll haven't loaded on a OS cause I can't find my win2k disk) and it says my 1700+ is at 51 degrees.

mind you this is idle and i have done nothing to it....

I have a fan blowing air to the inside from the top...

I have a fan on the sdie case blowing out air

and a fan blowing out air from the back of the case

and I haev a Volcano9 coolmod as my CPU fan...so the rig is prety well ventilated (air goes in the top and out the sides and bck)

Now i put Arctic Silver 3 inbetween.

I followed the intructions, however I coudn't slap it on...it was actually somewhat hard to get that HUGE heatsink on a mobo so i no doubt moved it around while on contact...

And i know it takes a week for effect to be been...

but even then is 53 degress (right now) IDLE okay? I would assume it lower considering a) Its idle and b)i have a volcano 9

any help? Until then i'm too scared to even install windows for fear of frying the processor.

thanks...

 

[DannyBoy]

hmmm.....shouldnt be that warm now should it....

Install 2k or at least the first part of copying the first files, shouldnt take more than a few minutes,
then when it goes to restart your machine, quickly go into the bios first, and check the temp.

If your over 60 then call it quits and wait till someone else says sumthing.

dan

 

[holdencommodore]

Dependent on the temp inside the case, but that temp is warmer then a 1700+ should be - try reseating the HSF, even a small pressure difference on the core can have a large effect. As above, if the temp gets over 60, then start to worry...


Cheers

 

[Tbirdkid]

What motherboard? My epox 8k3a says like 45 degrees on my 1600 but it uses the internal diode so it is actually like 10 degrees lower than that. Check to see if your mobo uses the internal diode. Second, I would work my fans a bit different. The front should be blowing out I think and the side and back one should be blowing in. The top one I think should also be blowing out. That is my opinion. Also, to see if you are getting proper air flow take the side panel off the side of the case... if the temps go down alot it is case cooling. What hsf are you using? and what cfm fan are you using. alot of factors here. give us some more information so we can help effectively..

 

[Davegod]

53C? OK thats v poor for that specific heatsink, but dont get worried until you start going past 65C - even then its not about to suddenly fizz away. It wont actually fry until at least 75C, and thats assuming a mobo thats very optimistic about temps.

btw bad fan arrangement - top blowhole should be exhausting the hot air thats rising, not blowing it right back into the case. Rear fan is exhaust as it should be, side panel fan should be intake. fans lower to the ground are where the cool air is, so intakes, fans up high are where the hot air is - so exhaust. Turn those two fans around. Personally I'd also take the side fan and stick it as an intake on the front fan holder, get a proper flow through the case.

If your temps are still pretty high considering the hsf take off the hsf and remount it with fresh goop - only a v thin but flat layer mind, its not like icing a cake.

 

[AnAndAustin]

I'd say it's your case fan placement and mis-direction of airflow. You ideally want a case fan at the bottom front sucking cool air in (make sure there's some ventilation there) and then one near the CPU at the rear of the case blowing warm air out (again you need somewhere to blow the air to so look for local ventilation). You may also find your case simply lacks adequate ventilation too, or simply has bad placement for the PSU (the CPU area should not be covered by the PSU at all). If you mount fans anywhere else other than front and back you will most probably find you're simply disrupting the natural and desired flow of air. Obviously check you are only using the smallest amount of paste on your CPU as this is another area people get caught out on, you are only trying to apply a postage stamp sized thin layer to plug up any microscopic pockets of air and that's all. Sorry I haven't had time to read all the replys so far (or even scour your post) but I hope some of this helps.

 

[magomago]

I just woke up right now...

This iw what did...I noticed that the fan wasn't BLOWING any air away..I noitced it was blowing air towards the heatsink


I promptly adjusted that (odd considering that is how the volcano 9 came....)


then i moved the fan on the back to the bottom front sucking air out....

I got it down to 42-43 idle...but stilll.....and i adjusted it so the smartfan2 is always at full sped (IE- i'm at 5000-5200 RPM...its insane)


Also, i'll try your guys's arragnement.

However my side fan covers my cpu about 1/2 way....would blowing air in mess up the fan on the cpu trying to blow air out? I'll still try it anyway (i'm going to have a purchase another fan)

 

[AnAndAustin]

Your airflow still sounds VERY odd to me and the fans are all prob hindering airflow than enhancing it. Take note of your internal case temps if you can as even the best HSF's in the world can't do much if they only have warm air to cool things down with.

CPU HSF (Heatsinc Fan) designs have proven to be better when blowing air down on to the HS and CPU rather than trying to suck the warm air off them, so the V9 should really be changed back to how it was. You should never truly need a Volc7+ or 9 on FULL power, medium setting should give you at least 90% of the cooling power with VERY little noise.

My advice would be to remove all your case fans completely just leaving the std fans on the CPU, gfx card etc and see what the temps are. Now take a good look at the optimum points for mounting case fans, BOTTOM FRONT of your case and by the CPU at the REAR, you need the fans which would be mounted there to get at the air outside the case so the BOTTOM FRONT FAN can bring cool air in to the case, it will pass over your components and then the REAR and PSU fans will take the air and blow it out of the case. Now get ready to mount the case fans and rem a bigger fan even at a lower rpm moves more air than a smaller fan. Take special note of the arrows on the fans, then mount a case fan at the bottom front ensuring the arrow is pointing in to your case AND that there are enough holes in the case for the fan to get the cooler air from. See what your temps are and then try the fan at the REAR ensuring the arrow is facing towards the rear of the PC so that warm air gets ejected by the fan, again note the temps (ensuring you left long enough for the temps to return to relatively cool). Then try both REAR and FRONT fans at the same time, I would not advise mounting any other fans, if your PC doesn't run cool enough verify all fans are plugged in correctly (unplug an replug), working correctly and are blowing air in the correct directions. If your PC is still running too hot (lockups and crashes under load) then it is almost certainly your case. I wouldn't mount fans anywhere else just go get a new case.

As a final note, do rem the temps reported by sw, even the mobo sw or BIOS are only there for a rough guide and take lockups and crashes under load as the best indicator that the PC is really too hot. HTH!

 

[usas]

The CPU fan usually is supposed to be blowing air toward the heatsink. Most of the time that is the most efficient way of cooling, for most fans anyway. A nice steady airflow from the front out the back is the best as has been said. Does your powersupply have a vent on the bottom, or does it have a fan that sucks up air?

 

[magomago]

okay okay....
I'll try that


i just removed the heatsink and am recleaning it to get ready for another app of arctic silver3...don't worry i cleaned them though

except what about the side fan? What direction do you want me to put that?

 

[AnAndAustin]

Case manus and some people swear by them esp in wide / full tower cases BUT I'd suggest you either leave it off or else remount it in one of the optimum mounting points (above or below the existing one if necessary). A lot depends upon your precise case design (esp ventilation) and also effectiveness of your PSU. If the side fan is powerful it will disrupt airflow too much (esp CPU HSF) so always have it blowing the warm air out, if it isn't very powerful the you could try it pulling the air from outside the case and throwing it at your CPU HSF but I'd say either way it's prob more of a hinderance than a benefit. The only thing to do really is unplug them all and then add each fan individually to see what has the greater effect, try all combinations but the most important things are 1. ensure there is good ventilation around the case fans and 2. try to establish an airflow through your case otherwise you're blowing warm air around inside there instead of getting it out! A badly placed fan is worse than no fan at all (except on the CPU of course LOL!)

 

[magomago]

I would also like to bring up the cpu fan. Do i want air blowing TOWARD the proccesor, or away fom the processor? I always thought it was away...

however the volcan9 was positioned so it blew air toward the processor...and it has this same position in the pictures.


Should the Heatsink be blowing toward the processor?

thanks

 

[magomago]

nah, the volcano 9 is good...its only a 1700+ (albiet huge...)

So anyway Should the cpufan blow air away from the cpu or toward it?

 

[PlatinumGold]

don't confuse the bloke.

alright, i've never found a consistent difference between blowing towards or away from the cpu but if you've got a blow hole on the side of your pc blowing air IN then you should blow towards the CPU. now where are the other case fans and which way are they blowing?? you PS is gonna blow air away from the case. do you have another fan??

Which motherboard are we talking about.

also, try to put as thin a layer of as3 as possible on the HS. too much AS3 is almost as bad as no AS3.

btw, i wouldnt' stress 50c at idle too much.

 

[magomago]

don't worry...it is a VERY thin layer of AS3

Okay here are the case fans I have:

Top fan is blowing air OUT of the case


fan on the bottom front of the case is blowing air IN

the CPU fan is currently blowing air IN the case

The side fan is blowing air IN the case


I can control the speed of the CPU fan. At full spedd (5200 RPM) the idle temp is a constant 42/43 degrees.

I am going to get a second case fan to stick on the back (I have two fan holes...i'm going to put it i the bottom fan)

I will also get speeds at 3000RPM and lower.

brb

 

[magomago]

at 3000 RPM I get a stable 44-45 idle


at 2500 RPM (the lowest i can go..if i go lower the mobo wno't read it at all though it is spinning...) it is a stable 45-46


The mobo is the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (nforce2 chipset)

edit:

I built the computer literally 8-9 hours ago...Ya think after 100 hours the arctic silver 3 will start to kick in?

the only problem with having the pc at 42ish idle is i gotta have that thing blast loud...VERY VERY loud...it literally does sound like a vaccum


and when its at 46 degrees and i push the power back at full blast it goes right back down within 5 minutes to previous temps.

 

[PlatinumGold]

at 3000 RPM I get a stable 44-45 idle


at 2500 RPM (the lowest i can go..if i go lower the mobo wno't read it at all though it is spinning...) it is a stable 45-46


The mobo is the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe (nforce2 chipset)

edit:

I built the computer literally 8-9 hours ago...Ya think after 100 hours the arctic silver 3 will start to kick in?

the only problem with having the pc at 42ish idle is i gotta have that thing blast loud...VERY VERY loud...it literally does sound like a vaccum


and when its at 46 degrees and i push the power back at full blast it goes right back down within 5 minutes to previous temps.

Wow, sounds to me like your temps are a little high.

i have the same mb /w a 2700+ in it. using the SLK and an 80mm fan running about 2700 rpm i get 50c.

my suspicion is that the A7n8x reads temps directly from the CPU diode, hence the higher than normal temps. the guy that wrote MBM is trying to get the code from Asus so that his program will read the temps but they haven't given it to him yet. other temperature monitoring software such as asus probe and another i tried show temperatures lower than what you find in the bios. i think it's because those are reading off the thermistor on the motherboard. i really wouldn't worry too much about your temps. i think your fine.

when i noticed 50c in my bios i didn't even hestitate to boot the thing up in winxp. no problems yet. .

also, your board does have themal protection so that if the cpu overheats the computer should shut down.

 

[Davegod]

^^ your setup now sounds about right

general rule of thumb is, when looking into the case from removable side panel, have air coming in the bottom-right of the case, and going out the top left The Fan on the CPU heatsink nearly always blows onto the heatsink, which takes some heat off the heatsink as it gets blown through the pins/fins out the side. The occasional heatsink & fan combo works a touch better the other way round but thats definately the exception to the rule.

I'd leave your fan on the 3000rpm, if just to ensure it gets enough voltage at startup to kickstart the fan into spinning; and for a little lee-way so your mobo can always detect the rpm with a safe margin. After a while when youre confident all is ok can consider reducing some rpm if you want to cut noise, but test with case door open to ensure cpu fan is always getting enough voltage to get spinning in the first place.

The AMD guides are actually pretty useful. Just take a look at the diagram here, notice the bottom-right to top-left flow of air and just keep it in mind when fiddling with fans
To overcomplicate things, you might notice on that diagram the other two corners are thus left with little airflow. They dont matter very much but fans places around here (low case door fans, 5 1/4" drive fans) should usually be slow rpm, not providing a huge amount of air but just to provide a little push to circulate air.

That fan is a TT smart fan 2 yeah? I have that fan, and its predecessor, and while it shoves amazing amount of air on full whack its just so noisy, even at low rpm its a lot noiser than most fans. Thats a case of looking for another fan but thats another job in itself imo, get yourself sorted with what you have now before starting a new little project imo As he ^ says, temps differ a lot from board to board, due to where sensor is put, the sensor itself, the way temp is calculated.... On most boards the cpu temp sensor is in the middle of the socket on a little plastic spring thing, if you really want you can pull out the cpu and push down on the sensor and then replace cpu etc, so teh sensor now reads the the air under cpu and not by touchng cpu itself. Hence, temps might well be reported >10C lower but nothing has actually changed

 

[magomago]

so should I be fine running at around 3000 RPMS?

wait...if our mobos get to a certain point the mobos will automatically shutdown to save themselves, or the processor?

 

[PlatinumGold]

From asus's web site. <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://usa.asus.com/mb/socketa/a7n8x/overview.htm">ASUS C.O.P (CPU Overheating Protection)

ASUS C.O.P (CPU Overheating Protection) is a hardware protection circuit that automatically shuts down the system power before temperatures go high enough to permanently damage your CPU.
</a>

 

[magomago]

i think it got it....
;
i was looking at the fan that blows air in from the side of the cpu and it got 32.5 cfm....but i knew that wsan't enough..

so i put it to suck air from the bottom front and put a stronger (yet not louder...) fan on the side and now i'm 42-43 degrees idle at 2500RPM on my fan!

and hopeflly when the arctic silver kick in i can get it 40-41 degrees (1-2 degrees sounds about right?)


thanks though!

 

[Eli]

Just be sure you don't have more fans sucking air out of your case than you have blowing in, you'll create a vacuum... and since there is less air in a vacuum, your cooling will go way down.

 

[NOX]

Originally posted by: magomago
I just built my pc (i'm not a newbie...so don't worry 'bout that)

and i'm in the bios (stll haven't loaded on a OS cause I can't find my win2k disk) and it says my 1700+ is at 51 degrees.

mind you this is idle and i have done nothing to it....

I have a fan blowing air to the inside from the top...

I have a fan on the sdie case blowing out air

and a fan blowing out air from the back of the case

and I haev a Volcano9 coolmod as my CPU fan...so the rig is prety well ventilated (air goes in the top and out the sides and bck)

Now i put Arctic Silver 3 inbetween.

I followed the intructions, however I coudn't slap it on...it was actually somewhat hard to get that HUGE heatsink on a mobo so i no doubt moved it around while on contact...

And i know it takes a week for effect to be been...

but even then is 53 degress (right now) IDLE okay? I would assume it lower considering a) Its idle and b)i have a volcano 9

any help? Until then i'm too scared to even install windows for fear of frying the processor.

thanks...

So you haven't installed Win2k (or any OS) yet? You do know that Win2k has a built in HLT instructions right? Which means your temp should be atleast 5c lower once you have Win2k installed and running.

 

[Davegod]

Originally posted by: Eli
Just be sure you don't have more fans sucking air out of your case than you have blowing in, you'll create a vacuum... and since there is less air in a vacuum, your cooling will go way down.

a vacuum = no air.
more exhaust fans than intakes just means low air preassure (not by much 'cos it'll just suck it in through all airholes anyway) and cooling works better at low air preassure - several heatsink manuf' websites will even show this on a chart somewhere. AMD reccomend one extractor fan and one PSU extractor fan, noting to be careful with intakes. Having a higher case airpreassure than outside it is only useful for minimising dust, since it will push ait out of the little holes and all incoming air will pass through the intake fans, where you can have a filter.