Athlon XP and heat 1

[edemiere]

Hello everyone.

Usually I can find a solution to just about anything that I work on in my basement on my 13 PC LAN. However, I recently completed building a new system from pieces and parts that people have given me and I got a serious heat problem that I just cannot seem to fix. Let me lay out the details and scenarios.

SYSTEM:
Asus A7V8X-X Motherboard
Athlon XP 2700+ (Thorobred B){Retail Boxed}
GeForce4 Ti4600
1GB Kingston DDR333 Memory (2 x 512MB)
WD 80GB UDMA100 HDD
SB Live! X-Gamer 5.1
Note: Nothing is overclocked


I have the system installed and working fine except for a heat problem. I use the standard heatsink that comes with the CPU and the system runs around 60C (sitting at desktop running something like seti@home), I put in a better heatsink with little change, got it down to 57C. I put in a 3rd heatsink with no change. The system used to lockup a lot until I put a fan on the southbridge heatsink and then most of the lockups went away. However, under heavy load (i.e. 3D gaming) the system runs fine, but gets to 67C.

Now, the 67C is with the side of the case off, whereas with the case side on I get over 75C and start to experience random lockups or a system shutdown from the temperature setting in the BIOS.

This PC has 10 Fans installed. Fans are as follows:

2 in powersupply
1 in back of case
2 blowing in front of case (which speed up as case temp gets hotter)
1 CPU fan
1 PCI slot fan
1 Southbridge fan
2 on hard drive

There is great airflow with the side on the case, however heat on the CPU seems to still be a problem.

I have used thermal paste on the heatsink/CPU each time I have changed out heatsinks. (yes, I clean the CPU off each time so as if not to get buildup).

Anyone have any suggestions on a better heatsink/fan combo for the CPU? I am fairly certain that it'll melt down a lot faster than I want if I don't get that load temperature down.

Thanks for any and all suggestions guys, I need to find a better heatsink solution.

Cheers!

 

[legend2b4]

Here's wot AMD have to say about heatsinks and fans

http://www2.amd.com/us-en/thermal/ResultsHandler/1,,30_182_869_4348^4356,00.html

10 fans!!!!!

How do you stop the damn thing tackin' off

If all else fails, You can always try Kicking the daylights out of it, and getting a faster and better system... lol

 

[SESaskDFC]

Howdy:

Quote:

1 in back of case
2 blowing in front of case (which speed up as case temp gets hotter)

Unquote...

Are any of these bringing air IN or does everything blow out ???

Murray

 

[xomcat]

What is the temp. inside the case ? If it is more than 5-10 degrees cooler than your CPU,than one or more of your components is eligible for RMA.If your case temp. is also hot,you may want to rethink your cooling strategy.

 

[edemiere]

The 2 Fans in the front are blowing IN and the ones in the back (near where all the heat is are blowing OUT.

The case temperature is usually around 38C, thereabouts.

Case temperature seems fine to me, and I would expect the CPU to run approximately 10C +/- more than the inside case.

The room temperature is relatively cooler as it is in the basement, so there isn't much variance with the room temerature.

Never had a CPU run this hot and I'd really like to get it down to around 50-55C at high gaming load.

Thanks!

 

[mcnorth]

It's not all that likely that my suggestion will be pertinent to your situation but I'll respond on the off chance. I went through a similar problem with an Abit board and Athlon processor. High heat, irradic behavior and high temp shutdowns. My case was gushing so much air it was unbelievable. Didn't get up to ten fans though. In the end the temperatures weren't as high as the motherboard utility indicated. The entire problem was resolved with a bios upgrade about a month after I jerked the board and processor to start over. If I remember correctly the problem was with Nvidia's nForce chipset. It was exclusive to Windows 9x. For what it's worth this may give you another direction to look.

 

[Eguy]

Hi edemiere;

You mention the GeForce4 Ti4600 graphics card. On most MOBO configurations the AGP slot is right under the CPU (heat rises). If you haven't already, keep the first PCI slot open under the AGP slot. This helps air movement around the video card.

My $0.02

Ed

Please let me know if the suggestion(s) I provide are helpful to you.
Sometimes you're the windshield... Sometimes you're the bug.

 

[jmichna99]

You mention a case temp of 38°C... that is actually quite high. The delta between your case temp and CPU temp (even when running at 100% CPU output, e.g., Seti@home) is around 22°C, which is quite reasonable considering the XP2700+ puts out 72 watts of heat at 100% output.

My suggestion is to take further steps to reduce your case temps. Is it a mini- or mid-tower rather than a full tower? They are harder to cool. I use a 120mm fan blowing in (bottom/front) and a 120mm fan exhausting out (top/rear) in a full case. In addition, I use a slot blower fan adjacent to my MSI GeF4 4600. For CPU heatsink I use a ThermalRight AX-7 (AS-III thermal paste) with 80mm fan (2900 rpm, 50 CFM). The Enermax PS has its own exhaust.

I try to keep case temps below 30°C, but that's hard to do in the summer unless running the A/C. Right now, my room is about 77°F (~25°C), my case temp is at 33°C and my XP2700+ CPU temp (running non-overclocked during the summer) is at 55°C (23°C delta); I'm running Seti@home commandline client.

 

[theoxyde]

I second trying to get your case temp down. 38C is quite warm . Heck, my CPU runs only 39C at idle, 45C at load (XP2500)

 

[nuxalktech]

sounds like a faulty cpu

 

[nuxalktech]

To find out if it is the CPU... try go back to where u purchased it and have them test it on a system of theirs to see if they have the same problem...

If so... they maybe able to give you another in exchange...

 

[Tarwn]

I tend to agree that this sounds like an ambient temperature problem rather than a faulty CPU problem. The hotter the ambient temperature is, the hotter it will be inside the case and the less cooling ability you will have. There isn't a fixed number for cooling, ie your processor doesn't automatically run at case temp+10C or any other type of constant like that. With a warmer overall case temp you will be effectively removing less heat from the heatsink. With a warmer heatsink you will of course have a warmer CPU. This works more like percentages than constants.

For example, my case temp has not gotten over 26C in months. My processor generally runs in the 33C to 41C range depending on load but has been known to go slightly above that number and generally drops to 31C in the middle of the night when I am asleep and the AC is on.
If I were to heat up my appartment and let the case temp get to 35C I would not expect to see the same delta in the temps, (+7 to +15) so rather than run at 42-50 it would likely run closer to something like 46-56. The CPU would still be releasing the same amount of heat, but in a warmer environment that heat is being removed more slowly, allowing buildup to occur.


At a guess I would say the problem is likely the number of systems you have running. It would probably be a good idea to turn the AC on a little higher to help control the 14 mini-heaters you already have running. Each computer you add to that setup is going to be another heat source you will have to compensate for. If you don't want to cool the whole house for the sake of the copmputers in the basement, you may want to conside getting some sort of window unit to add to the cooling in that one room.

[sub]01000111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00111111[/sub]

http://www.tiernok.com/

The never-completed website

 

[mainegeek]

Did you scrape the pad off of the heatsink before you applied the thermal paste to the cpu? You want to do this.
Are any of your hard drives in removable trays? If so, remove the top cover of the tray or mount them directly.
Space out your cards where possible.
Tie any/all cables up and out of the way.
Make sure the heatsink is not on backwards.
What size is your power supply?
What are the RPM's with the cpu fan?

 

[edemiere]

Hey everyone. Thanks for all the replies. I will try to address everyone one at a time.

mcnorth
I have flashed to the lastest 'official' BIOS (1005), updated all drivers for hardware, chipsets and probing software, this changed nothing with regard to temperature readings.

Eguy
In the system I have the Ti4600, 2 open PCI slots, sb live! soundcard, slot fan, 1 open PCI slot, and lastly an analog modem (for occasional fax purposes).

jmichna99
It is a mid-tower, 3 5 1/4" bays, 2 3 1/2" bays (external), and room to mount about 6 hard drives below the last 3 1/2" external bay. The hard drive is mounted below the DVD-ROM drive because I didn't want the drive obstructing the two fans blowing air in at the lower front of the case.

Tarwn
I am not running all 14 at a time, lol, I don't like my power company THAT well.

At any given time there is on average 5 counting my linux gateway box. I never leave the monitors on and a lot of the other PC's are low end (like original celeron and such) which do not generate a lot of heat. Even my gateway has a pentium 60, 1 hard drive, video card and 2 ethernet cards and that is all. It only sits and passes packets, nothing more so its [never] got a CPU load going to heat it up, per say.

I do run the central AC and have a vent blower blowing on me where I sit and the case is right in front of me on the table.

mainegeek
As I said earlier, all cards have at minimum 1 space between them. I keep all cables tied and use rounded cables for all connections. Heatsink is not on backwards (this one can only go on one way).

Powersupply is an Antec Trupower 400W dual fan. The CPU fan runs around ~3800RPM with variance that comes with fans. Last night I switched back to the heatsink that came with this retail box CPU.

You are saying I should have 'scraped' off the factory default paste on my retail cpu heatsink? No, I didn't do this as I was trying to keep everything at it's default since it was all retail box. Silly me for thinking it would be adequate.

Anyone/Everyone else
I have tried heatsinks with RPM's as high as 5500, and the temperature doesn't seem to move much. Though I have noticed a small discrepency between the BIOS and the AsusProbe software in temperature reporting. The BIOS seems to report the CPU as about 15C higher than what the AsusProbe software in Windows does, which kind of makes me wonder...

At the Windows XP Pro desktop running nothing more than the probe software and seti@home the system runs around 57-59C and then once I kick up the gaming where the video card starts working it has jumped as high as 70C.

Guess I am not very good at the cooling thing, but then again I never had any heat problems in the past. Heck, my XP 2200+ runs steadily at 55C, and doesn't even get past 59C at heavy gaming.

I like the feedback though, and appreciate any and all information you guys are sending me so I can try and get this resolved.

Cheers!

{I think I addressed everyone correctly and answered any questions you all had, let me know if I missed anyone/anything}

 

[mainegeek]

Scrape the pad off from the heatsink. Don't scratch or gouge it though.

 

[ceh4702]

By the time you pay for 10 fans, that may equal the price of a P4 System! Too many fans may make it worse not better. I cant imagine more than 2 intake fans and 2 outtake fans, a CPU Cooler, and then maybe a slot fan for the Video Card.

I tried a $9.00 Speeze Falcon Rock from

http://www.newegg.com

and it worked pretty good. Has a slower moving 8cm cooling fan. Worked pretty good on my Asus A7N8X Deluxe. It comes with the thermal grease on it already. I also used the Thermaltake Air Scoop mod which is basically a curved clear plastic pipe between the Cooler and the Fan.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[euston]

I'm doubtful about the wisdom of using intake fans which can create unhelpful turbulence within the case and actually disrupt air flow. Smooth airflow within the case is desirable. Turbulence that promotes good heat transfer will be induced by the CPU cooling fan and be local to the heat sink cooling fins. Just deliver plenty of smooth flowing ambient air to the CPU cooler and the cooler fan will do the rest.

The more air you can pull through the case, the better, and make sure it passes the CPU. Therefore, exhaust fans should be sited so that they pull air past the CPU. Make sure there is a decent aperture (that's posh for a 'ole) near the bottom front of the case. A decent PSU should have an internal bottom intake fan that is intended to pull air from near the CPU.

I observe a temperature difference of 15°C between case air and CPU at low CPU load. This increases to 18°C when the CPU has to work hard (poor thing).

Fans are a necessary evil. I hate high frequency noise and fans make plenty. Good quality fans are quieter and, I believe, more efficient. Their blade design may well be superior to cheaper ones which roar ineffectually.

The AMD web site has information that you might find helpful. See: -

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/cooling_guide.pdf

 

[mainegeek]

Too many fans may cause a vacuum and may not allow the cpu fan to properly blow air into and through the heatsink fins.

 

[euston]

Read my remarks (above) about a sufficiently large orifice to let air in. Just suck the warm air out, making sure that it passes the CPU on the way, and cooler air will gladly rush in to take its place (whoopee!).

 

[edemiere]

ceh4702

I ordered that fan, I was surprised by the CFM and low RPM so I thought it could really help. I also ordered the duct and a copper shim for this CPU.

Just has me frustrated, I mean, for all this 'cooling' effort I could have paid for a p4, lol.

Oh well, most of the stuff was free so I guess a little investment on my part isn't that bad.

Will keep you all posted as I move forward with trying to trim 20C of temperature at full load.

Thanks for the suggestions and let's keep them coming if anyone else has anything to offer.

Cheers!