Tbird 1.3 at 57C IDLE!!! HELP!

[uglymale]

I have a T-bird 1.3 in a generic 18" case with 1 intake and 1 exhaust fan. Right now I'm running an alpha 6035 and I've also tried a volcano 5, the volcano is 60C idle. what can I do to cool this beast down? I've tried flipping the fans on both heatsinks to no avail, I've changed the direction of airflow in the case with the 2 case fans, I've used thermal paste on both HS's. Made sure they were both seated firmly and correctly. I even put an extra case fan directly over the HS that resulted in a fantastic -1 degree drop. What else can I do? I live in a small town and NEW HS's are hard to come by and are very expensive. the alpha was $70. man I was pissed when I got it home and it only dropped my temp by 3 degrees. HELP!!!

 

[Newbie77]

Hmm.. what mobo are you running? If it's Asus, your high temp readouts are very likely as Asus boards tend to read temps higher than other boards. If it's not Asus, then you have got a problem. Firstly, find out whether your temps are a result of bad case ventilation (i.e. air circulation is bad in your case) or bad cpu cooling (your heatsink fan is inadequate / not functioning properly). Open up your case and get a table fan to blow at it. If temps drop drastically, then your case needs better ventilation. You can either get higher output case fans or try re-directing them to achieve better air flow. You can also try tidying up your case to enhance air flow.

However, if your temps don't drop despite having a big table fan blowing at it, then the problem lies in your heatsink fan. Try taking out your heatsink fan and reinstalling it. While you are at it, get yourself Arctic Silver 2. That should shave off about 2-5C. Also, when applying thermal grease, don't lay it too thick. A nice thin layer would do fine.

Try these tips and see whether they help.

 

[LanEvoVI]

$70 for that heat sink? If you can return it, do that. There are plenty of mail order places where $70 will get you a top of the line heat sink like the Swiftech. For half that you can get an Thermalright SK-6 which performs almost as well.

If you can't return it, Newbie77's tips are the only things i can think of.

 

[Tekchip]

I just got my grubby little paws on an Elitegroup k7s5a and a tbird 1.4Ghz. It took me a while to get Motherboard monitor 5 working correctly. Had to grab the patch. Any way I noticed that my proc was running at about 55C idle. I thought that was kind of weird so I went out reading and found a few sites that all stated that typically these processors will run between 49C and 55C. It seems logical then that if you are running the Asus board that this might be the cause of your 57C idle point. My proc was running between 55C and 60C while doing web browsing etc. and at one point while playing a 3D instensive game reached 77C and crashed the game with out taking windows down with it. Turns out I had forgotten to plug in my case fan. Now my proc. idles at about 49C and only heats to 60-62C while playing intensive games. Try running some Q3 for a while and if you don't lock or crash I'd say it's just the nature of the beast. Don't worry about running it to hot the proc's are rated at 95C before physical damage takes place. Let us all know what you find!