Questions about cpu temps, and power supply influence for TB800

[MaximumOverdrive]

I'm not yet overclocking my system, but it appears to be running hotter than most other people posting. The Bios reports 117°F, Sandra reports 113°F, and VIA Hardware Manager is reporting 118°F. My processor was a boxed unit from AMD with heat sink and fan, so I have no idea what brand the fan really is. I'm not doing any cpu intensive applications at the moment either.

Will a less than optimal power supply cause the processor to run hotter? My power supply is a 250w unit that came in my InWin A500 that I was using with my old socket 7 board.

Also, the heat sink has a thermal tape that contacts the processor. I followed the instructions and peeled the blue plastic off the thermal tape before the heat sink and fan were installed. Would it be better to remove the tape and use silicon thermal grease?

 

[Assimilator1]

The PSU won't effect cpu temps (though its worth making sure that your PSU fan is blowing out & not in),do you have any other fans in your case?
Removing the thermal pad AND replacing it with thermal paste will help to lower your cpu temps.

 

[MaximumOverdrive]

Besides the PS fan (blowing out) I have a Star Tech slot fan also blowing out.

 

[Assimilator1]

What cpu temps do you get running the cpu under full load? ,eg running SETI or RC5
What's your room temperatures?

 

[MaximumOverdrive]

Have yet to really push it. Room temp is around 70-72°F. What is SETI or RC5? I do leave my system on most of the time too.

 

[Assimilator1]

SETI & RC5 are science projects that you run on your PC ,they take any spare cpu time you have to run the project,so if little else is running they will take around 95-99% of cpu time ,putting the cpu under full load ,more so with SETI due to it using the FPU ,whilst RC5 uses the interger side of the CPU.
SETI is the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence ,this is done by downloading a small block of radio data & then the SETI program searches for 'interesting signals' in the data.
Go to the link in my sig for more information & if your interested come & join THE search with Team Anandtech .If there's more you want to know about it pop over to the Distributed Computing forum & ask away.

RC5 is a program which tries to crack a 64 bit encryption code ,its purpose is to test the security of the code ,I'm not involved in RC5 so I'm afraid I don't have a link for it ,but if you want to know more about it head over to the DC forum ,they will be quite happy to help you there too .

BTW 118 F about 47C whilst it's a little high is OK IF that doesn't rise much further under high load .

 

[MaximumOverdrive]

Thanks, the highest I've seen it get is about 119°F, so I'm probably ok. I'd just like to keep under 110°F though.

 

[MaximumOverdrive]

I found a strange thing going on. McAfee AV was invoking a executable alogserv.exe that was taking 100% kernel processor time. I uninstalled McAfee and now I'm running at <90°F. So at full processor usage I was just under 120°F. This is much better.

 

[Assimilator1]

Doh! looks like mcafee went beserk!:Q ,your temps are ok

BTW will we be seeing you in the SETI or RC5 team?