PC Heat Issue

[iCraig]

Hello All,

Just a quick question, yesterday I spent upgrading a friends PC. They wanted to upgrade from an Cedar Mill P4.

They wanted to stay Intel and insisted on a Pentium.

So out I went to Scan and bought them a Pentium E6700, their current motherboard supported it.
All went well and booted fine, detected new CPU fine too.

However we used the Intel stock cooler. Underload the CPU got to 75C and it idled around 48C! Now that to me is abit high. Considering my own Core 2 Duo is cooler even when stupidly overclocked!

Now is this right for a 45nm Wolfdale CPU? Or does it possibly sound like a defective chip?

Also running the PC side by side with my own E6300 C2D, it doesn't seem at all fast either considering its double the clock speed!

Any ideas? I did post in the Scan forum too.

Cheers

Craig

[Ulti]

Did you update the BIOS? Sometimes even when the CPU runs fine, the BIOS will detect the temperature wrong.

I remember that with the Abit IP35 Pro boards, you could put a 45nm processor in without the right BIOS and it'd run fine but it'd display the temp as about 80C :O

Also, make sure the cooler is installed correctly, there was thermal paste on the cooler right? IIRC Intel stock coolers had the thermal paste applied pretty well in strips so that shouldn't be an issue. Try to reseat the cooler first and also check if the BIOS version is up to date or at least supports the 45nm processors fully.

Sometimes even when you have a better CPU (in terms of higher clock speeds, newer architect, more/faster cache), the difference is hard to tell when you run a PC normally. Things like RAM and the HDD will certainly limit a system too. If someone had an i7 (X58) with 6GB RAM and an IDE HDD, it'd probably be slower than a system with C2D, 4GB RAM and an SSD.

[iCraig]

BIOS Update was the first thing I did before upgrading it. I've already tried reseating the HSF and even scrapped off the thermal pad and put better thermal compound on and still the same.

I've just taken of the intel HSF and used my own thermaltake HSF, and its reduced the temperatures slightly to 43C to 65C, so a little better but not great.

[Terbinator]

I'm with Ulti on the heatsink fitting - I would just do it again to make sure that all the white pins are completely through the other side of the motherboard on the cooler.

also, try a few different monitoring programs to see if they all report a similar temperature.

[iCraig]

Done that too, took the motherboard out and seated the HSF properly.

Tried Speedfan, HWMonitor, Sisoft Sandra, and even Asus PCProbe II.

I've tried every usual trick.

[Ulti]

Last thing to check is the CPU voltage, the BIOS may have set the voltage too high, check the BIOS reading as well as the CPU-Z reading.

Have you tested it in your own board btw?

That's all I can think of I'm afraid. You'll have to send a note to Scan and see what they say, their customer service is usually superb that they'll test out the CPU and send you a replacement if the original was faulty.

[smargh]

If you're sure the heatsink is attached properly, and it's just warm to the touch when under load, you can probably safely ignore the temps provided by software.

[iCraig]

Right got it in my own board now, and still the same it seems.

Even underclocking it to 2.4GHz barely makes a difference to the idle temps now 43c! 10 degrees higher than an overclocked Core 2 Duo running at the same speed with the same HSF??

[Ulti]

It seems the thermal diode in the processor itself is faulty then, if you don't mind waiting a few days or possible a week or two (I've never used Scan's RMA system myself personally) then RMA the processor.

[iCraig]

If you're sure the heatsink is attached properly, and it's just warm to the touch when under load, you can probably safely ignore the temps provided by software.

Underload it is hot to the touch!

Craig

[iCraig]

It seems the thermal diode in the processor itself is faulty then, if you don't mind waiting a few days or possible a week or two (I've never used Scan's RMA system myself personally) then RMA the processor.

I bought it from the shop will the RMA take long then even if I took it back myself?

[iCraig]

FYI for peoples info it was the board not supporting the processor. Even though the same board supports the E6500 which has the same stepping and revision!

Stupid Asus boards, sticking with Gigabyte from here on it!

[Ulti]

That seriously is stupid, so what did you manage to do in the end? Get a new board or processor?

[iCraig]

New board unfortunately the shop wouldn't accept return of the CPU, and i wasn't junking the E6700.

I did contact Asus about any boards that they may have that support it. They confirmed to me they have no boards for this CPU and would need to get an example to test it. I couldn't be bothered waiting and bought a mid-high end Gigabyte P43 board, which is far better anyway.