stock core i7 920 running too hot with prime95

[khoang82]

I am trying to overclock this cpu but having difficulty controlling the temperature.
Even when not OC, prime95 can slowly bring my core temp to 92C in 10 minutes and the temperature is stable there. What am i doing wrong?
Equipment:
PS: cosair 750
MB: p6t deluxe
Mem: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz
CPU: core i7 920
Cooler: ThermalTake V1

Thanks in advance.

Khoa

 

[daw123]

92C is far too high - you could be thermal throttling since you must be getting pretty close to or exceeding the TJMax for that chip (I can't remember what value TJMax is for the I7).

Try re-seating the HSF with new TIM (clean off the old stuff first ).

Edit: Welcome to the Forum.

 

[palladium]

You didn't install the HSF properly. Try re-seating it ( as per daw123's advice) . With stock HSF I get ~75C max with P95 on stock settings, with the V1 it should be much lower.

 

[khoang82]

Yes something is wrong with my setup but i don't know what. I tried reseating the HSF many times with no better result. I do not have extra thermal compound to clean off the old stuff. I tried shaking my HSF and none of the push pin go loose.

Khoa

 

[khoang82]

After cleaning and re-apply TIM, i was able to get <80C for the first 30 minutes on Prime95 but after that, it goes to 90+. Something is still wrong.

 

[daw123]

Does your HSF use plastic push pins for the mounting of are you using a bolt through kit?

If you are using plastic pish pins make sure that they are not bent or damaged and that all four are engaging correctly in the MB.

 

[khoang82]

I took out my V1 and use the stock fan. After OS boot, the cpu is in mid 50s as oppose to V1's 30s. The once Prime starts, the cpu drops down to 1.6GHz (132x12) @85C.
both of my HSF use plastic pins. I did double check and they are well locked in.

Frankly I am quite disappointed with the core i7 so far. Using stock HSF give me a 1.6 GHz cpu which frankly is silly.

Could run Prim95 for about 40 minutes and let me know their heat info?
BTW, i am using asus "ai suite" to probe for core and mb temperature. I am assuming it is correct.

Thanks,
Khoa

 

[khoang82]

I tried core temp 0.99.5 with interesting results:
The cpu frequency is 2.8GHz ( 1.33.64 x 21.0). Between different level of loads, the multiplier fluctuate between 12 and 21. I thought the 920 has its multiplier locked at 20x?

 

[palladium]

your cpu throttled when you run P95 with stock HSF. When you install your heatsinks, did you hear a 'click' sound on all 4 pins?

Read the stickies.

 

[Tweakin]

Are you sure your heatsink is making good contact with the chip itself?

Take a razor blade or something really small and straight and see if the cpu is above the locking assy. I have had two ASUS P6T boards that had loose clamps and would not allow for any heatsink to correctly seat on the chip...

 

[khoang82]

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Are you sure your heatsink is making good contact with the chip itself?

Take a razor blade or something really small and straight and see if the cpu is above the locking assy. I have had two ASUS P6T boards that had loose clamps and would not allow for any heatsink to correctly seat on the chip...

Above the locking assy? can you explain what you mean.

Khoa

 

[Rubycon]

Locking assembly = the metal plate that is holding the processor to the socket pins.

With those temps your heat sink is not making firm contact with the heat spreader on the CPU.

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: Rubycon
Locking assembly = the metal plate that is holding the processor to the socket pins.

With those temps your heat sink is not making firm contact with the heat spreader on the CPU.

Exactly. I have had two bad boards with loose fitting clamp assy...both would boot but then run into thermal runaway and shutdown. By using a small single sided razor, or something to that effect, you will be able to determine if your chips IHS is above the actual clamp assy. If it is, then you have a bad mounting or way too much thermal compound. If it is not below, RMA the board.

 

[The-Noid]

Stock heatsink on i7 for me would not touch more than 1/3 of the chip no matter how hard I tried. Was only looking to run this in media center pc, so I was not worried about installing a 3rd party HS. Ended up using buying a new case and putting in a Zalman 9700. Stock heatsink sucks with most motherboards it just will simply not fix.

As Tweakin posted as well I was using P6T motherboards.

 

[khoang82]

so how is the p6t? since i am spending $300 for a board, is it better to go with other brand? Anyone have recommendation?

Khoa

 

[The-Noid]

It is a great board. By far the best available for the core i7 imo. Very stable. ONly problem is board takes quite a while to boot.

 

[khoang82]

Originally posted by: Yoxxy
It is a great board. By far the best available for the core i7 imo. Very stable. ONly problem is board takes quite a while to boot.

Yes no kidding. The boot time is a pain.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Yoxxy
It is a great board. By far the best available for the core i7 imo. Very stable. ONly problem is board takes quite a while to boot.

This really depends on how things are configured AND what's plugged into the board.

My Areca 1680ix-24 takes seemingly forever to initialize drives at startup as seen here.

If a board is started minimally with a single SATA drive, minimal USB devices (keyboard) and all fans/voltages in bios set to IGNORE it will come up VERY fast. (unless you have an Areca card with dozens of drives LOL)

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Exactly. I have had two bad boards with loose fitting clamp assy...both would boot but then run into thermal runaway and shutdown. By using a small single sided razor, or something to that effect, you will be able to determine if your chips IHS is above the actual clamp assy. If it is, then you have a bad mounting or way too much thermal compound. If it is not below, RMA the board.

Yep that's great advice, I noticed this as well with my build this past weekend and used a credit card to check. My socket assembly was loose, but I think that's intentional to some degree. The amount of pressure from that clamp is kinda scary, we've certainly come a long way from the nice neat fits from ZIF sockets and a simple latch.

Originally posted by: khoang82
so how is the p6t? since i am spending $300 for a board, is it better to go with other brand? Anyone have recommendation?

Khoa

For $300 you have lots of options, personally I think you can do better at $300, like one of the EVGA X58 boards. I have the P6T vanilla ($230-240) and it has a better slot layout imo than the P6T-Deluxe. The EVGA also has better layout and cooling than the P6T-D imo. I mainly went with Asus though because I was so impressed with their P5Q-E P45 board. Very high build quality for a $150-ish board with extremely stable voltages, very little Vdroop, and no problem with high FSB speeds.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: khoang82

Originally posted by: Yoxxy
It is a great board. By far the best available for the core i7 imo. Very stable. ONly problem is board takes quite a while to boot.

Yes no kidding. The boot time is a pain.

I actually found POST and boot to be pretty snappy with a clean cadence overall on my P6T. One thing you can do is reduce the IDE seek time to like 5-10s. Also disable any controllers, features and such for components you're not using. Just make sure to remember in case you use these later. Like if you're not using any of the additional Marvell controllers, onboard sound, or you're not using Xpressgate, turn them off in the BIOS. The only thing that really slows down my boot is the "press any key" for the IDE controller, but its only like 3s.

 

[khoang82]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Exactly. I have had two bad boards with loose fitting clamp assy...both would boot but then run into thermal runaway and shutdown. By using a small single sided razor, or something to that effect, you will be able to determine if your chips IHS is above the actual clamp assy. If it is, then you have a bad mounting or way too much thermal compound. If it is not below, RMA the board.

Yep that's great advice, I noticed this as well with my build this past weekend and used a credit card to check. My socket assembly was loose, but I think that's intentional to some degree. The amount of pressure from that clamp is kinda scary, we've certainly come a long way from the nice neat fits from ZIF sockets and a simple latch.

Originally posted by: khoang82
so how is the p6t? since i am spending $300 for a board, is it better to go with other brand? Anyone have recommendation?

Khoa

For $300 you have lots of options, personally I think you can do better at $300, like one of the EVGA X58 boards. I have the P6T vanilla ($230-240) and it has a better slot layout imo than the P6T-Deluxe. The EVGA also has better layout and cooling than the P6T-D imo. I mainly went with Asus though because I was so impressed with their P5Q-E P45 board. Very high build quality for a $150-ish board with extremely stable voltages, very little Vdroop, and no problem with high FSB speeds.

Can you describe how to test the loose clamp?

thanks,
Khoa

 

[The-Noid]

Originally posted by: chizow

Originally posted by: khoang82

Originally posted by: Yoxxy
It is a great board. By far the best available for the core i7 imo. Very stable. ONly problem is board takes quite a while to boot.

Yes no kidding. The boot time is a pain.

I actually found POST and boot to be pretty snappy with a clean cadence overall on my P6T. One thing you can do is reduce the IDE seek time to like 5-10s. Also disable any controllers, features and such for components you're not using. Just make sure to remember in case you use these later. Like if you're not using any of the additional Marvell controllers, onboard sound, or you're not using Xpressgate, turn them off in the BIOS. The only thing that really slows down my boot is the "press any key" for the IDE controller, but its only like 3s.

I have almost everything disabled. Only thing enabled is USB and SATA. I do not use IDE, onboard sound or express gate.

Is there an advantage to using the ARECA in this day and age? After dealing with SCSI for years I am more than happy to be running 2 raids onboard, 2x 2TB WD and 2X 64 GIG SLC Intel drives and lose a bit in the way of performance.

 

[khoang82]

Can someone describe in detail how i can test the cpu clamp?

Thanks,
Khoa

 

[The-Noid]

All you have to do is spread the TIM very thin then place a heatsink over your cpu and make sure the whole cpu is covered. If that is the case you know you have correctly touched the cpu.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: khoang82
Can you describe how to test the loose clamp?

thanks,
Khoa

i7 Socket
Sorry its not more clear, I made all the marks in snipping tool and it wouldn't let me add more but here's a walkthrough:

1) The 4 circular grommeted bolts attaching the entire socket assembly have some give to them. It may appear to be a defect, but some give is necessary due to the pressure and torque created from the clamping mechanism.

2) The red circle shows a flange that sits on the CPU IHS, not the contact surface, but the recessed edge, holding the CPU in place. However, this prevents part A from sitting flat in the socket as it did previously, its at a slight incllined angle now.

3) The blue circled flange once closed goes underneath a clamp controlled by the lever at B, creating the downward pressure on the assembly holding everything in place.

4) Once everything is closed and the lever is locked into position, the A cover flap will still be slightly angled. You will want to place a flat object across the top of the CPU IHS to ensure no part of A is higher than the CPU IHS surface.

Hope that helps explain, if you need more detailed instructions I can try to mark up that pdf a bit better.