High temps on Q6600

[rh71]

It's a stock Q6600 with stock cooler. I've been doing a lot of video encoding that takes hours and while doing so, HWMonitor shows my 4 core temps are way up there. I read the max core temp is 100C before throttle/shutdown. Thing is, I've done this for months, not nightly, but at least weekly and it has never had an issue. Am I simply shortening the lifespan (no big deal now) or is this bound to fail any day now?

Since this is a set max temp, is video encoding reaching max temp normal?

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I had a q6600 (or 6800, I forget), and the stock cooler was completely garbage. Mine would actually overheat in the bios, and this was with arctic silver and a proper mount (remounted/repasted like 3x to be sure). I actually assumed something was wrong with the chip, but ordered an aftermarket sink/fan first for like 15 bucks, and it lowered my temps by like 30c under load.

That series of chips was *hot* and the stock cooler was hot garbage. Find an aftermarket one.

FWIW the CPU will probably be fine, they were also built like brick houses. Mine was OC'd for ... 8 years? and totally fine, still works.

 

[Valantar]

I take it this build is at least a few years old. When did you last clean out the cooler and fans? If that's not the issue, buy a CM Hyper 212 Evo or other cheap tower cooler (there are a few other good ones out there, including some cheaper and better than the 212, I just can't remember them right now). That should both lower temps and noise significantly.

 

[rh71]

Yes it's over 8 years old but I still blow out the dust from time to time. It sits at 48C idle so I'm not apt to do any replacing unless it would get me some extra speed...

I assume CPUID would tell me real-time if it's being throttled - it stays at ~2.4 GHz throughout.

 

[Valantar]

Yes it's over 8 years old but I still blow out the dust from time to time. It sits at 48C idle so I'm not apt to do any replacing unless it would get me some extra speed...

I assume CPUID would tell me real-time if it's being throttled.

HWMonitor lists clocks, so yes, you'd be able to see if it's throttling. Simply look if clocks are lower than stock speeds. C2Qs don't have any kind of turbo, and thus should run at max speed under any load condition.

OTOH, do C2Qs even have thermal throttling? I can't recall ever seeing temps high enough to warrant this on my Q9450, but my motherboard simply has a "high temp alarm" feature. If I were you, I'd swap the cooler. $30 is nothing if you actually care about the work it does. Or at the very least, change the thermal paste - that stuff goes hard and stops doing its job after a few years. I bet you'd see a marked difference just from that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes it's over 8 years old but I still blow out the dust from time to time. It sits at 48C idle so I'm not apt to do any replacing unless it would get me some extra speed...

That sounds like a high idle temp, TBH. (If that's idle in Windows, with Speedstep and C1E enabled.)
Sounds like a cooler mount is failing, fan motor failing, or needs to be re-pasted.

OTOH, do C2Qs even have thermal throttling?

Yes, they support PECI and bi-dir #prochot. Or maybe I'm mis-remembering, and they just support "TM2" (Thermal Monitoring 2).

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It'd be worth checking to verify speedstep/c-states is enabled in the BIOS, a lot of those early boards still considered that a 'new gee-whiz' featureset that wasn't necessarily enabled by default. Variable fan speeds was another.

 

[Valantar]

That sounds like a high idle temp, TBH. (If that's idle in Windows, with Speedstep and C1E enabled.)
Sounds like a cooler mount is failing, fan motor failing, or needs to be re-pasted.

Yes, they support PECI and bi-dir #prochot. Or maybe I'm mis-remembering, and they just support "TM2" (Thermal Monitoring 2).

My Q9450 idles at 45-61 degrees (depending on the core), never exceeds 80 degrees under load. This is with a Hyper 212 Evo, and the fan at low speed at idle of course. Then again, it's quite heavily OC'd - from 2,66GHz to 3,52. As such, the idle speed is now essentially the same as the previous max (idles at 2,64GHz). I'm guessing that has a thing or two to do with the idle temps.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

As I remember, some of the monitoring software used the wrong factor for Tj for the Q6600. I think at one time it was supposed to be 85C.

I've still got one running WHS'11 on an old NV 680i board. I don't use the nFarce controller. I used a $50 Startech Marvell 4-port PCI-E. Or maybe two, I think. Yeah. Two of them.