Intel Core 2 Temperature Issues

[Ron Krebs]

The 8000 is a lower end cooler, not as good as the 9500, but less
expensive (the 9500 is normally about $70, but I've seen it on sale
recently for high $40's ... the 8000 is normally about $55 or so).
There have been quite a few independent tests of aftermarket coolers,
it's amazing how many of them are not as good as the stock Intel coolers
(which are actually quite good, overall), but ALL of them that I have
seen are rating the CNPS9500 as the "best" air-based cooler from anyone,
at any price. However, it is big and heavy, so much so that it exceeds
the recommended maximum weight for a cooler to be installed on a
motherboard during shipping (quite a few of the after-market coolers
suffer from being too heavy for guaranteed safe shipping due to
excessive weight on the motherboard).

I'm wondering if it would be possible to jury-rig some kind of hanger that
would support the 9500 inside the tower while it is suspended on the mobo
which when installed is hanging upright with the cooler sticking straight
out. While I know that the cooler has a support bracket attached underneath
the motherboard, I wonder if that's enough. This is especially worrisome for
large VGA coolers like Zalman's VF700 as that kind of weight can warp the
video card after time. Thoughts?

Ron

 

[Phil]

Relatively speaking, the CNPS9500 at 530g, is not that heavy. The backplate
will provide all the support needed for safe operation. Now, there are some
truly heavy HSFs out there, like the Thermaltake Big Typhoon (850g), Scythe
Ninja (815g), Tuniq Tower (965g w/ fan), Coolermaster Hyper6+ (971g), etc.
You definitely want to move your rig carefully, with one of those attached.

-phil

 

[Peacekeeper]

It looked like a pad, but I didn't touch it. Whatever, it was
pre-applied. And yes, it was several "stips", I thought it was two but
perhaps 3. The reason I thought it was a pad is that thermal compound
is not usually pre-applied, due to the mess it can make if it then comes
in contact with things ... usually if it's already on the heatsink, it's
a pad, if it's in a syringe, it's compound. But it's possible that this
was pre-applied thermal compound.

e6600 had 2 pink preapplied strips . Was surprised it worked. I had AS5 tube
ready in case it ran at a high temp but was not needed.

 

[Major Ninth]

so life is good with stock all the way? no need for after market and AS5
with the E6600?

 

[Barry Watzman]

The original Intel design for the P4 had the heatsink mounting screws go
all the way through the motherboard to the chassis of the case, but this
design was later modifed to attach to the motherboard only (Asus had an
innovation in the P4T motherboard to allow it to be used in cases that
did not have the requisite mounting holes).

It would be possible .... relatively easy, in fact, to resurrect this on
a "one off" basis with not much more than an electric drill and possibly
a tap to thread the holes. A bit of trouble, but not at all impossible.

 

[Barry Watzman]

The stock solution is totally adequate for normal operation. I bought a
Zalman CNPS9500 and never ended up installing it. The Core 2 Duo CPUs
use just over HALF the power of the dual core pre-Conroe chips, and yet
VASTLY outperform them. It's hard to say enough about this chip design.
Biggest advance in CPUs in at least 6 years.

Of course, if you want to overclock the Core 2 Duo chips ... and people
are doing that, and doing it quite successfully ... then you may want to
move back towards a more exotic cooler, and from many articles and
reviews that I've read, CNPS9500 is definitely the one to move to. But
it's just not necessary unless you are overclocking, and I'd say
probably overclocking significantly.

 

[kony]

so life is good with stock all the way? no need for after market and AS5
with the E6600?

There never was a need for AS5 for any CPU, but just like
with any other CPU, if you did a good job of applying AS5,
it may reduce temp a trivial % and could allow easier
removal of the heatsink later.

 

[kony]

The original Intel design for the P4 had the heatsink mounting screws go
all the way through the motherboard to the chassis of the case, but this
design was later modifed to attach to the motherboard only (Asus had an
innovation in the P4T motherboard to allow it to be used in cases that
did not have the requisite mounting holes).

It would be possible .... relatively easy, in fact, to resurrect this on
a "one off" basis with not much more than an electric drill and possibly
a tap to thread the holes. A bit of trouble, but not at all impossible.

Most motherboard trays are not very thick and might be
difficult to tap well without high precision equipment. A
couple of other alternatives might be to fasten a thicker
plate (that was tapped out), to the motherboard tray, or
just regular oversized holes through the tray then longer
screws and nuts on both sides of the tray wall.

 

[Andrei Outkine]

Hi,

I'm experiencing problems with Intel Core 2 E6800 temperatures on my
ASUS mainboard, but part of the problem is I don't even know if the
values I'm seeing reported on screen are correct or not!

I've created a quick web page with a screen shot and details here

<http://www.xp20.dircon.co.uk/hardware/>

Does these readings make sense?

Gerry, I learned something yesterday that might be useful to you as
well. My P5B board comes with ASUS's "AI" software suite that runs
under XP and allows for some "advanced" tweeking of the system. In
particular, the "AI Fan" feature helps regulate both the CPU and the
Chassis fans. Until yesterday, I had this feature set to "Optimal" and
was reaching 59-60C temps using PRIME95 in "maximum heat" mode.
Yesterday I switched AI-Fan to "Performance" for the CPU fan only, and
achieved a 9C drop in temperature, as the fan now rotates at 1700RPM
instead of 1000 during the stress test.

Did you check your CPU fan settings to ensure maximum cooling?

 

[Gerry_uk]

One example:
http://www.rbmods.com/Articles/Zalman/Cnps8000/2.php

Yikes, he's mounted it at 90 degrees different to what I have?

In this picture:

http://www.rbmods.com/Bilder/Articles/Zalman/Cnps8000/pic9.jpg

he has the fins horizontal and the heat pipes near the PSU, whereas I
have the fins vertical and the heat pipe jutting out towards the DIMMs.

I did it like this coz that's what it said in the Zalman leaflet.

Mounting it one way or the other isn't the same, the copper plate is NOT
square, it's a rectangle...

What now, did I mount it wrong?

 

[Gerry_uk]

You'll have significantly cooler temps with the CNPS9500.

One example:
http://www.rbmods.com/Articles/Zalman/Cnps8000/2.php

His temps are still lower than mine. He's using P4 and I'm using E6800.
Surely the P4 would usually be hotter than the E6800 under all conditions?

 

[Gerry_uk]

You'll have significantly cooler temps with the CNPS9500.

One example:
http://www.rbmods.com/Articles/Zalman/Cnps8000/2.php

Interesting what he says about the performance under load. This agrees
with my finding.

When I had the Intel stock cooler, the temperature would jump all over
the place, the 4-pin fan would speed up and down depending on what I was
doing on the computer and this noisy was annoying. The idle temp was
good but under load the Intel cooler wasn't happy.

With the Zalman, the idle temp is terrible, but when I load the CPU to
100% (75%+25%) for 15 minutes, the temperature only climbs slightly and
I don't notice the 3-pin fan speed changing very much even when I choose
different fan speed profiles.

 

[Gerry_uk]

Hi Ron,

On my ASUS board there's a reasonable distance between the heat-pipes
and the DIMMs, but the thing is, the pipes don't get hot unless I
disconnect the CPU fan!

Actually, talking of DIMMs (2x1024 DDR2 Corsair), they get hot anyway!

 

[Gerry_uk]

Hi Phil,

Relatively speaking, the CNPS9500 at 530g, is not that heavy. The backplate
will provide all the support needed for safe operation. Now, there are some
truly heavy HSFs out there, like the Thermaltake Big Typhoon (850g), Scythe
Ninja (815g), Tuniq Tower (965g w/ fan), Coolermaster Hyper6+ (971g), etc.
You definitely want to move your rig carefully, with one of those attached.

Yes, my case is huge and the MB is strong once you have all four bolts
going through.

I might invest in one of these, but I don't know if my problems are
related to the cooler or not. It's pointless to buy more kit if the
problem is actually something more fundamental.

 

[Gerry_uk]

Hi Barry,

What exactly are the power ratings?

If I have an E6800 running at 3Ghz and an LGA775 P4 or Pentium D running
at 3Ghz, how much do they each consume under full load?

Probably not ... the Core 2 Duo CPUs use so much less power than the
previous processors that I'm running in the low 40's, sometimes even
high 30's, with the stock Intel cooler. These are truly amazing
processors, they beat the top-of-the-line processors from BOTH Intel and
AMD that were $1,000 only 90 days ago, yet they use half the power and
run cooler, and that's even the case with the mid-range E6600 that's
down now to $327 at ZipZoomFly.

[As a consequence of the reduced power consumption, I'm also running a
high end system with multiple hard drives and multiple optical drives
with a 380w power supply and everyone seems happy ... CPU, power supply,
heatsink .... and most importantly, ME ]

Also, I've seen the CNPS9500 recently on sale as low as $40's. But one
thing about it, while it is unquestionably the best air-cooled CPU
heatsink currently available, it is big and heavy and they recommend
that it be removed for shipping because of it's size and weight.

Agreed, but the Cooler Master is $30 cheaper and has excellent reviews
on NewEgg. Given that my temperature issue doesn't seem to be severe
(have yet to confirm that after the stress test), I decided to save
some money. Do you think I'll regret it?

 

[Gerry_uk]

Hi,

I left all BIOS settings on default except choosing the fan connector
type (4 pin vs 3 pin), I didn't install any of the fancy "AI" software,
but I did install ASUS Probe II.

In my BIOS it has profiles for both the CPU and chassis fans and these
profiles can also be chosen in ASUS Probe II. If you choose a profile in
one, it AUTOMATICALLY selects it in the other.

I have tried out all three profiles "Silent", "Performance" and "Optimal".

A) With the Intel cooler, the temperature and noise was severely
affected by these settings.

B) With the Zalman cooler, it makes little difference which I choose.
The fan DOES speed up if I choose "Performance", but the temp doesn't go
down or up by more than about one degree!

Either way, thanks for the tips, I need all the help I can get!

 

[Phil]

You might try redoing your heatsink install. Apply a very small amount of
thermal paste, the size of a small grain of rice if you're using Artic
Silver 5. Sometimes it takes a few attempts to get a good quality mating. In
any case, you will get better results with a CNPS9500, over the 8000.

-phil

 

[Barry Watzman]

A few weeks ago I put a Celeron D into a Matsonic MS9087C
(Chinese motherboard, Intel 865 chipset, actually a pretty good quality
motherboard for about $35). It ran, but the idle temps were in the
60's. I knew that wasn't right. Well, my conclusion was that the 9087C
BIOS doesn't support the Pentium/Celeron "D" processors. I pulled it
and installed a Northwood, and all was fine (The Matsonic BIOS supports
Prescott, but apparently nothing beyond that).

Question: Are you sure that your bios supports your CPU?

 

[Gerry_uk]

Hi Barry,

Question: Are you sure that your bios supports your CPU?

The ASUS P5WDG2-WS-PRO board said "Intel Core 2 CPU" in big letters
first in the feature list, so I hope it does, but even if it didn't the
readings from Core Temp would probably still be correct...

 

[Barry Watzman]

Core 2 Duo is a whole family of CPUs, not a single CPU. If you have not
done so, and if there is a later bios than you are running, update the
bios. Your particular CPU may not be fully supported.

The issue isn't the readings (e.g. the accuracy of the readings), it's
the management of the CPU. If the bios doesn't support the CPU (fully),
it can cause the CPU to run extremely warm.