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P4 northwood (1.8A) running way too hot... what gives?

J

JeffMeininger

Junior Member
I had a 478-pin 1.6 (not northwood) P4 in my Asus P4T-E for about a week. It ran too hot, though... whenever I would perform a CPU intensive task, it would start pushing 120 F and my temperature monitor would start giving me warnings (at which point I chicken out and stop the CPU intensive task). Doing nothing at all, it would hover around 96 F.

Now I have a 1.8A (northwood) P4 in the same machine... and it doesn't seem to run any cooler at all. Doing nothing, the temperature stays around 97 F. Doing an intensive task, the temp will rise (perhaps a bit more slowly) to about 120 F, where I once again, chicken out.

I've read lots of info that the northwood chips run at like 89 F when idle, and after some intensive benchmarks have been run, rarely break 100 F!! I'm certainly not seeing those kinds of temperatures.

I'm sure I've installed the HSF from the retail box properly. I'm not overclocking... not even a little bit. My voltage is set at 1.5. I think my case is adequately ventilated. What else should I check?

Also noteworthy: I have noticed zero performance gain from 1.6 to 1.8A in my own benchmarking tests. I don't care so much about that... I just wanted a cooler-running proc! As it stands, I think if I tried running SETI@home, my machine would melt within 10 minutes.

Thanks for your input...
-Jeff
 
If H/F was installed and works correctly, it may be mobo temp sensor, or simply software setting was wrong (read from wrong sensor).
 
120F is ~49C. That isn't anywhere near too high.

What is your case temp? when comparing temps, you always have to adjust your readings versus their readings based on case temp. Warmer case = Warmer CPU temps, and there is a direct corellation between the two.



Mike
 
My temp sensor reports 2 temps:

CPU: 96 F (at idle)
SYS: 91 F (pretty constant)

I assume that "sys" is case temp. If you're asking me what the temperature is inside my case, I'd have to say not too far above 75 degrees F, since that's the temperature of the air being blown into it. (I have one of the case panels removed.)

Is my temp sensor just that horribly wrong? Is there a way to fix it, without relying on software that just "adjusts" for a user-input discrepancy?

Thanks!
 
Like Mikewarrior2 said, 120F is about 49C. According to intel anything above 70C (which is exactly 158F) of below 5C (which is exactly 41F) is the processors danger zone. I am running a 2.0A (with stock HSF and Antec Thermal Grease) on the Intel D850MVL mobo in an Antec SX1030 case (300W PSU) with a 16x DVD-Rom, 32x CD-RW, 100 GB HDD, and GeForce4 Ti4600 and my CPU's idle temp is 28C - 30C (which is 85.4F - 86F) and my system idle temp is 30C - 32C (which is 86F - 89.6F), and under full load if never seen my CPU go over 38C - 40C (which is 100.4F - 104F) and my system temp under full load is 40C - 42C (which is 104F - 107.6F). And thats when I run Flight sim 2002, Combat Flight Sim, NASCAR 4, and a few other processor and graphics intensive programs. The only reason your CPU should be running that high is because you have poor ventilation, your system or case temp is too high, your HSF is not connected properly, the TIM is damaged (which will happen with the stock TIM if you remove the HSF from the CPU, you should replace the stock thermal pad with either thermal grease or a silver thermal compound like AS3). The P4's temp monitor is built into the processor so even if ur mobo is damaged u should receive the correct temp of the core from the CPU. Also, if ur rooms ambient temp is too high that will keep the CPU's temp high. The ambient temp in the room with my computer is 22C - 25C (which is about 71.6F - 77F) depending on the season.
 
Most fairly recent motherboards support reading the temp through the BIOS. Most of the also support reading the temps through a windows program like motherboard montior 5. The readings in the BIOS are pretty accurate. My motherboard (Intel D850MVL) doesn't support reading the temps through the BIOS but does support reading the temps throught their program known as Intel Active Monitor, but Motherboard Monitor also works.
 


<< 120F is ~49C. That isn't anywhere near too high.

What is your case temp? when comparing temps, you always have to adjust your readings versus their readings based on case temp. Warmer case = Warmer CPU temps, and there is a direct corellation between the two.



Mike
>>



Thanks Mike for the conversion, as I can't really "think" in degrees Faranheit over 100F (I'm a Celcius man, like most of my fellow Canadians).

JeffMeininger -

I recently built a P4 1.6A machine for a friend with a P4B266; basically the same machine as my 1.8A on a P4B266. My machine idles at about 30C or so and goes into the low-mid 40's at load at 2.25 GHz (overclocked). My friend's machine idles at 48C at 1.6 Ghz and 49C at 2.1 Ghz w/ 1.600 volts. His machine can run all day without any problems just like mine, so I wouldn't worry about it overheating or anything, it may just be a different/screwed up temperature monitor or maybe the chip just runs hotter than others. Either way, both machines run fine without problems, and I wouldn't worry about the temperatures you're measuring.
 
The BIOS reading is almost exactly the same as the software reading. If I reboot into bios directly after doing something CPU intensive, I can watch the temp fall from what software said back to about 97 F, and stay there.


 
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