Need help convincing a n00b friend

[zmzhang]

I have a friend who I recently helped build a comptuer for. It's a P4 with a retail heatsink and fan. Anyways, he claims that since the cpu temp is over 50 C, (but under 60) it's going to burn out his cpu. I know this is false but can anyone help me out?

thanks

 

[WarCon]

False, false, false. Tell your friend to call Intel and see what they say........ (Tell him to call and ask for an RMA for a processor that running hot, and let the technician there tell him he will be just fine. He might believe it then.)

P4's run hot and its quite fine. If it gets hot enough it will throttle itself. Motherboard readings vary also, so if hes using an ABIT they tend to read higher than others.

 

[zmzhang]

he got that one fry's p4 2.4ghz with ECS motherboard combo. Is the ECS probe accurate? hm.. i need to try that get him to call intel for an rma

 

[Corporate Thug]

is that the idle temp? if so, it isnt good at all

 

[WarCon]

Not sure about the ECS boards.

Couple truths about temperatures are:

1) Almost all processors (same speed, same vcore) will measure within a couple degrees of each other in the same environment.
2) Case air flow is a much bigger element than most average (not anandtechers) computer users understand. (Some people actually lock high speed computers away in those little computer niches in computer desks and wonder why they overheat).
3) Unless you really poorly installed the heatsink, which is pretty hard for the retail heatsink then whatever temp the motherboard says you are going to be just fine running at stock speed with stock voltages. (Only way to screw that up is to not clip all 4 clips on the holder before using the arms to tighten it).
4) 74C as measured by a diode on top dead center of the heatspreader (not internal like most of the readings we see) is the max rated temperature for a 2.4C. (The internal temp would be much higher most likely).

Forgot to add this biggie.
5) Ambient temperature (room temp) differences will directly add to your CPU temps as fans are not active coolers but use room temp air (warmed by case air - how much depends on case air flow) to cool the CPU. (i.e. if your room is at 68F (20C) for winter as the summer temps invade your room air temps can go as high as say 80F(26.7C) so your processor temp would be 6.7C higher in that room during summer temp versus winter temp.)

 

[lchyi]

There's nothing wrong with running at at 50C idle. It's hot, true, but motherboards don't measure temperatures, they calculate them. Therefore different motherboards post different temps. My ASUS board reports that I have a 40C temp in a 32C case temp. Then when I switched to an Abit board, it says I have a 33C case temp and a 48C idle temp. Same heatsink, TIM, fan, etc. I really don't mind now.

 

[zmzhang]

hm.. alright, thanks. The ~50C temp was measured through the bios. I'll try to convince him...

 

[WarCon]

You know that bios is not idle right? I always consider it to be between 40 - 70 percent load based on the motherboard.