Stock AMD 7850 BE running at 58C while idle!

[MasamuneXGP]

Greetings all. I just finished putting together a new PC. CPU is an AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition, motherboard is an ASUS M3A78-EM. When I powered on for the first time and went to the BIOS, I discovered to my horror that the hardware monitor was reporting a CPU temp of 53C already. After waiting a while it climbed to 58, at which point I shut it off in terror. I didn't touch any of the overclocking settings; this is at stock speed. I felt the heatsink and nearly burned my hand off, which tells me it's probably not a mounting problem. The fan seems to be working fine and had an RPM over 3000, which seems normal to me. What are my options here? Is the CPU defective? Could it be the motherboard?

 

[richierich1212]

You probably need to remount the heatsink better, or apply the thermal paste differently.

 

[MasamuneXGP]

If it were a matter of remounting, I would think the heatsink wouldn't be getting so hot. But I guess I'll try it anyway... If I remount and and it's still crazy hot, what's the diagnosis? Defective CPU?

 

[richierich1212]

Originally posted by: MasamuneXGP
If it were a matter of remounting, I would think the heatsink wouldn't be getting so hot. But I guess I'll try it anyway... If I remount and and it's still crazy hot, what's the diagnosis? Defective CPU?

Nope. But what is your cpu vcore?

 

[yh125d]

temp in bios isn't temp at idle. Get into windows

 

[hans007]

bios temp is usually actually at near full load.

also , 58C isn't even that hot , if you are using a retail heatsink thats probably reasonable for in the bios. the 7850 is not a particularly cool running chip to beginw ith.

 

[Fox5]

Reseat the heatsink.
Is the fan spinning full speed? Check the fan speed control in the bios.

Or maybe it's just a crappy heatsink. That, or maybe you need some case fans.

 

[Eureka]

Go into Windows, run Coretemp, and tell us the temperatures in there.

The 7850 shouldn't be running that hot, I had one and it was doing 45-60 idle/load on the stock cooler. And that was overclocked.

 

[MasamuneXGP]

Okay, just tried remounting. I was using a tube of *really* old Arctic Silver, so I tried some newer Ceramiq instead. That seems to have lowered the temp a bit; it gets as high as 56 now in the BIOS. My vcore is around 1.3V; the motherboard doesn't give me the option of undervolting though. I tried lowering the multiplier to 8x, which is as low as it goes; that dropped the temp down to 53. I am indeed using the stock cooler, but I have the case open, so ventilation shouldn't be an issue

I wasn't aware that BIOS is near full load, which is why I haven't installed Windows yet; I figured it would toast itself. I'll install Windows and see what coretemp says I guess.

 

[MasamuneXGP]

Alright, windows installed. Coretemp said 50 degrees, CPU Idle. I fired up Prime95 and hit the max-heat option; the temp climbed to 64. This is underclocked to 200 x 8 (stock is 200 x 14), with an open case in an air-conditioned room. Okay, it's a stock cooler, but 64 degrees under full load while underclocked? That cannot be normal.

 

[richierich1212]

Yeah still seems pretty high. But since you aren't going to be stressing your system as much as Prime95 does I wouldn't be too worried. Try running it at normal clockspeed and see the temps, not using prime95 of course.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: MasamuneXGP
Alright, windows installed. Coretemp said 50 degrees, CPU Idle. I fired up Prime95 and hit the max-heat option; the temp climbed to 64. This is underclocked to 200 x 8 (stock is 200 x 14), with an open case in an air-conditioned room. Okay, it's a stock cooler, but 64 degrees under full load while underclocked? That cannot be normal.

That's a bit hot, especially underclocked. I would expect those temps if you were overclocking.

Does your heatsink have heatpipes, or is it just a block of aluminum? Try to find one of those AMD heatsinks with heatpipes, there's a guy selling them on ebay under "AVC AMD heatsink".

 

[Eureka]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: MasamuneXGP
Alright, windows installed. Coretemp said 50 degrees, CPU Idle. I fired up Prime95 and hit the max-heat option; the temp climbed to 64. This is underclocked to 200 x 8 (stock is 200 x 14), with an open case in an air-conditioned room. Okay, it's a stock cooler, but 64 degrees under full load while underclocked? That cannot be normal.

That's a bit hot, especially underclocked. I would expect those temps if you were overclocking.

Does your heatsink have heatpipes, or is it just a block of aluminum? Try to find one of those AMD heatsinks with heatpipes, there's a guy selling them on ebay under "AVC AMD heatsink".

The 7850 has the solid block heatsink.

I also have the stock Phenom II heatsink (with the heatpipes), if you want it shoot me a PM.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: MasamuneXGP
Alright, windows installed. Coretemp said 50 degrees, CPU Idle. I fired up Prime95 and hit the max-heat option; the temp climbed to 64. This is underclocked to 200 x 8 (stock is 200 x 14), with an open case in an air-conditioned room. Okay, it's a stock cooler, but 64 degrees under full load while underclocked? That cannot be normal.

That's a bit hot, especially underclocked. I would expect those temps if you were overclocking.

Does your heatsink have heatpipes, or is it just a block of aluminum? Try to find one of those AMD heatsinks with heatpipes, there's a guy selling them on ebay under "AVC AMD heatsink".

why bother with stock coolers at all?


they are not made for overclocking at ALL

especially when great Coolers [like hyper 212] are $30

 

[Eureka]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: MasamuneXGP
Alright, windows installed. Coretemp said 50 degrees, CPU Idle. I fired up Prime95 and hit the max-heat option; the temp climbed to 64. This is underclocked to 200 x 8 (stock is 200 x 14), with an open case in an air-conditioned room. Okay, it's a stock cooler, but 64 degrees under full load while underclocked? That cannot be normal.

That's a bit hot, especially underclocked. I would expect those temps if you were overclocking.

Does your heatsink have heatpipes, or is it just a block of aluminum? Try to find one of those AMD heatsinks with heatpipes, there's a guy selling them on ebay under "AVC AMD heatsink".

why bother with stock coolers at all?


they are not made for overclocking at ALL

especially when great Coolers [like hyper 212] are $30

They work fine when you're not overclocking. Not everybody overclocks.

And I could get a pretty good overclock with the stock 7850 BE, but the chip wasn't much of an impressive overclocker.

Of course for my 955 I'd die without my Xigmatek.