Garde

A friend of mine just recently bought a pre-built computer and is having some temperature problems, I will paste what he wrote:

For no reason in particular, I just checked out my CPU temperature with the Soltek hardware monitoring utility, and the "CPU die" is reading as 60 and I'm not even running any games (just mirc, winamp, aim, basic stuff). What the ****? I have 7 total fans all running at their max speed in my basement, which is air conditioned all day. Not to mention from what I gather, the Soltek HM utility reads lower than it's supposed to. How is this possible?!

edit: quick info, I use a 3.0ghz P4 CPU with a Thermaltake case (w/ built in fans) and a fairly high end Soltek motherboard (forget the exact model). Bought 'em all new off Newegg, retail also.

Can anyone give me some advice so I can help my friend?

Maveric169

Tell him to upgrade the CPU heatsink from the stock POS, and to make sure that the heatsink is making proper contact with the CPU die. If the heatsink is not on right or the thermal material is not correct, he can have 400 fans and it won't mean squat.

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Temperal

Agreed. Sounds like the stock heatsink and fan are lacking. If he does not want to spend the money right away, and is comfortable with computer hardware, he could take off the heatsink and clean off what ever thermal tape/goop they put on and go with a good quality product like Arctic Silver 5 or Arctic Ceramique. Silver 5 is just a degree or 2 better depending on what review you read, but Ceramique is not conductive and won't short anything out. Their website with instructions is www.arcticsilver.com.
I would also check the case temperature. If it seems that the case temp is high as well he may want to check and see what the airflow of the seven fans are. I'm assuming he has two intake(Front), two exhaust(Rear), one side intake, one blow hole exhaust, and a power supply fan. If that is the case I would make sure that they are blowing that way.
Lastly he may want to make sure that the CPU is set to the correct multiplyer and front side bus in the bios. Although it is prebuilt, mistakes do occasionaly happen. If either of you need help with any of this feel free to post it. Good luck

Garde

Thanks a ton you guys, I just gave him this information, I hope this will help him. I'll post back after he's done something about the problem.

I myself use Arctic Silver III and have a Volcano 5, not top of the line stuff, but it gets the job done.

ElementalDragon

7 fans? for all you know having all those fans and they're running at their highest speed.... maybe they are moving TOO much air and not letting the CPU fan move any of the hot air from the heat sink.

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Maveric169

Highly unlikey unless all the fans were set to exaust and were creating a vacuum condition. Or even vice versa, a pressurize case would cause the air to stall and heat up and not allow enough cool air into the case to exchange.

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ElementalDragon

kinda hard to tell really. If he does decide to go with a new CPU fan, but doesn't want the heaviest chunk of copper possible to be mounted on it, i'd say go with one of GigaByte's cooling products. i couldn't be happier with my 3D Cooler Pro. i tweaked my CPU up an extra 600Mhz, and i don't think the temp moved much at all. think the only thing i had to do was turn up the fan speed a hair, but not much. can barely hear it over the other stuff in the case (hard drive, 2 case fans, power supply, etc...) could probably crank it up the other 200Mhz (which would make my P4 2.4 a 3.2) with still a pretty much not noticeable temp difference. Gotta love quad heatpipes and dual outward blowing fans.

Here is the link to GigaByte's cooling products page if he would like to look at them.

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Garde

He didn't tell me what CPU Fan he was getting, but he's getting Arctic Silver 5 and a new CPU Fan.

Apparently his CPU model runs hot. With stock equipment, it's supposed to run at 67.5 C at idle, which is a BIT high... His was running around 61 C, I believe. Mine runs at 51-53 C, though I have an Athlon XP 1700+, while he has a 3.0GHz... So yeah, mine should be running a lot cooler than his. :P

Thanks for all of your help.

Lee

I saw mentioned 7 fans. If you don't set the fans up correctly you can increase the temperature.

ElementalDragon

0.o i never heard of a P4 that normally idle's at 60+ C. are you sure he was right about that? aren't most P4's getting to a kinda critical heat limit when they get up that high in temp? as i said, my P4 2.4Ghz is now running at 3.0Ghz, and it idles in the range of around 38 C, give or take a degree or 2. when i'm playin a game like UT2004 or something, then it only get's to around 52 C or so.

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Maveric169

An Intel chip will run WAY cooler than any AMD chip. I have a Athlon XP2100+ OC'ed to 2.1Ghz and I maintain a full load temp of 45C with a case temp of 37C. I have my system set to shutdown if the temp exceeds 55C. So you both have some heat problems. While trying to find the optimum operating temps for the 3Ghz I coun't find anything on intel's site other than the max temp, but from other users their average temps seem to fall in the 35C-55C range, with the max being at 70C.

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