i've got a Zalman flower cooling an Athlon XP 2200+ (the core after
throughbred, name escapes me). motherboard monitor reads 64 degrees c idle.
should i get rid of the flower and take te extra noise or is something wrong
for it to be this temp with this cooler.
case is fairly packed with heat making stuff but case temp reads at 30.
help!
tia
Motherboard Monitor could be wrong or your board might misreport the
temps. If you have a hardware monitor utility specific to that
motherboard (from the manufacturer), compare temps reported by it, and
futher compare to the temp report in the BIOS health monitor (or
however it's worded) screen.
However, idle temp is somewhat insignificant, it's the full-load temp
that counts, keeping that temp low enough. I suspect your reading is
slightly higher than actual but it's also typical for these Zalman
'sinks to cool worse than a high-quality traditional 'sink, even one
with a low-RPM fan which makes little to no extra noise compared to
the Zalman. The primary consideration might be whether it's
stable... a CPU can run fine at that temp, especially at stock/spec'd
speed and lower speeds of a given core. It is unclear though what CPU
you have, since the last XP2200 was a Thoroughbred AFAIK, the next
core was Barton and starts at XP2500 & higher.
About all you can do with the Zalman is verify that the CPU is getting
the correct core voltage, verify that the case is getting adequate
airflow (regardless of what the "reported" temp is, you should have at
least two exhaust fans (including power supply fan) and adequate air
intake, perhaps more fans in a sub-optimal chassis. You might also
remove the Zalman 'sink, examine the bottom for surface irregularities
and lap it if necessary, and reapply a fresh thin coat of heatsink
compound. If the Zalman clip isn't applying enough downward pressure
(and you can bend it safely) you might try slightly increasing the
tension of the clip, but be very careful if attempting that as too
much pressure or a misaligned clip can potentially damage the CPU or
socket.
You might try a different fan than that supplied with the Zalman, but
if it's too fast/loud you'd be just as well off with a more
traditional heatsink.
Dave
