Hot or Not? MB & CPU target temperature.

[Frogs_London]

Hi Guys,

I have a quick question.
I recently built my dream PC and finally managed to install XP on it
(thanks to this forum). This dream PC is a SILENT PC, it just does not
make any noise. A lot of PAPST 120mm fans and Thermalright helped me
to control the silence.

Now I can monitor the temperature of my PC, and I have absolutely no
idea if it is too warm or not.

Standard: (Word, IE, Excel etc...)
CPU: no more than 51 celsius.
MB: no more than 32 celsius.

Hard: (Chaos Therory 1600x1200 full res, iTunes running, and DVD to
Divx encoding)
CPU: no more than 67/68 celsius.
MB: no more than 38 celsius.


I looked at some great website who are testing PC cases, but I am not
sure how long can you have near 70 celsius in your case. This is damn
hot!!!

Thanks for your answers.
JC

 

[rstlne]

what kind of cpu is it..

 

[steve.anon]

Hi Jc,

Almost 70c sounds hot for your CPU. I'm interested in that answer
myself. I did find this page:
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/content.php?content=maxtemp.shtml

..... which states tha the max temparature for your a P4 cpu is 64°C -
78°C (check your processor documentation for the exact temp.). p4s
also 'slow down' when overheating, so they don't burn out, they just
run very very slowwwww...

Steve.

 

[steve.anon]

oh and check out that video from tomshardware to see what happens if
the cpu heatsink is removed while the machine is running.... smokin' !!

http://www12.tomshardware.com/images/THG_CPU_Cooling.zip

 

[Frogs_London]

The video of Tom's Hardware is cool. Another reason to stick with
Intel, they slow down when overheated instead of burning. Though I
should say that temperature of AMD is pretty high. Enough to cook a
good old turkey!

 

[rstlne]

The video of Tom's Hardware is cool. Another reason to stick with
Intel, they slow down when overheated instead of burning. Though I
should say that temperature of AMD is pretty high. Enough to cook a
good old turkey!

Shame you guys dont read other than THG..
You would come to see that amd chips currently run cooler than intels.. And
shame you dont keep up on times.. Unless your using a system that's about
4/5 years old then an amd cpu will not burn out either.

 

[Frogs_London]

Ok for AMD.
I looked on the Intel website and I found the following doc that
specified that a P4 540J should not run above 65 celsius. This is
pretty low!!!!

ftp://download.intel.com/design/Pentium4/datashts/30235103.pdf

 

[Frogs_London]

An this page for all Intel specs.
I don't konw about AMD. Anyway, looks like I need to increase my fan
speed there..... Less silence....

 

[Frogs_London]

I also found the general Intel specs.
http://support.intel.com/support/processors/pentium4/sb/CS-007999.htm#Specifications
Looks like I need to increase my fan speed..... That's bad, I am losing
silence down here...

 

[Rob]

The video of Tom's Hardware is cool. Another reason to stick with
Intel, they slow down when overheated instead of burning. Though I
should say that temperature of AMD is pretty high. Enough to cook a
good old turkey!

Just upraded to a Winchester (from a 2500) AMD - 42 max after an hour of
Doom, stock cooler, 32-3 during normal use. The 2500 used to be in the
60s - although last time I ran Doom on the 2500 the computer actually
closed down after overheating*.

Rob

* I assume it was overheating - the pc speaker had been bleeping away
for a few minutes. I, er, thought it was one of the game sounds ;-)

 

[DaveW]

68 C is VERY warm for long term use. It is prematurely wearing the CPU.

 

[abc]

What are you talking about you tool, that's what CPU throttling is, and the
settings are in the BIOS for just about any CPU, along with a shutdown temp.

 

[Paul]

What are you talking about you tool, that's what CPU throttling is, and the
settings are in the BIOS for just about any CPU, along with a shutdown temp.[/QUOTE]

For the AthlonXP boards, Asus added "Asus COP" - CPU Overheat
Protection. On a A7N8X board, that is implemented with a
Winbond 8 pin chip. The chip monitors the thermal diode on the
processor die - a threshold of 85 or 90C or so is used by the
chip, and it will signal a shutdown if the temperature goes too high.
I think Attansic may make a chip like this as well.

http://www.winbond-usa.com/products/winbond_products/pdfs/PCIC/W86L785TS-S.pdf

At first, Athlon chips had no protection. The first CPU overheat
circuits designed, needed help from the BIOS, and there could
still be issues where the processor gets hot fast enough,
that the BIOS might not initialize in time. After that rocky
start, the trick with the eight pin chip began to appear.

The eight pin chip can respond fast enough, that no matter how
you knock the heatsink off the processor, it will be in no
worse shape than a P4.

Athlon64 has a pin labelled "THERMTRIP_L", which has a similar
function to what a P4 has, in terms of detecting abnormal die
temperature. So, it is likely the little eight pin chip is
no longer needed on the newer AMD boards.

If there are any videos left on Tomshardware, it is
time to throw them in the trash.

Paul

 

[Alex Devlin]

Just upraded to a Winchester (from a 2500) AMD - 42 max after an hour
of Doom, stock cooler, 32-3 during normal use. The 2500 used to be in
the 60s - although last time I ran Doom on the 2500 the computer
actually closed down after overheating*.

Rob

* I assume it was overheating - the pc speaker had been bleeping away
for a few minutes. I, er, thought it was one of the game sounds ;-)

I had something similar happen to my P4 Prescott...
Was busy playing a game and noticed it was getting jerky. After trying
to find out what was going on in the background that was messing with it
I checked the cpu temp and found it sitting at 67C. CPU fan had died on
me and my Thermalright XP-120 was cooling the cpu all by itself. Not bad
considering I was gaming and it had been jerking for about 5 minutes
until I started to get pissed off. Just figured I was getting slow disk
access 'cause I was downloading from news groups at the same time.