Overheating?

[Tringa]

Is overheating always caused by bad seating the cpu cooler?

The set-up was
Silverstone Strider ST60F psu
ASUS A8N32 Sli Deluxe
AMD X2 4200
Arctic 64 Pro heat sink/cooler
Akasa hi spec 450 thermal paste
2 x Corsair CMX1024-3500LLPRO
80Gig Samsung HD080HJ SpinPoint P80 SATA 300
250 Gig (IBM/Hitachi) 0A31636 Deskstar T7K250, SATA300
NEC ND7170 DVD RW
MSI 7900 GTO
Jeantech Phong II case with extra fan on the side panel


I thought one of the sticks of RAM was faulty (if I put both in, there were errors in test 5 of memtest, but one stick completed memtest ok)

SCAN tested them and said they were OK, but I thought I'd try different memory to rule out any possible probs with Corsair RAM

Set up is now as above, but with 2 Gigs of CT2KIT12864Z40B instead of the 3500LLPRO

It boots up fine and SpeedFan 4.32 shows the following temps when idling

Temp1 32c
Temp2 36c
Temp3 –128c (don't know what this means)
HD 0 27c
HD 1 21c
Core 31c

If I try playing CoD2 Temp1 and the Core temp climb very quickly and within about 10 mins both get into the upper 80s and it will crash.

I admit that this sounds like poor seating of the cooler but

I've tried the stock heat sink and the Arctic 64,
both with a lot of thermal paste (eg about the size of a pea) and with little (about the equivalent of a couple of grains of rice),
I've tried spreading the compound over the cpu (as suggested by Akasa) and also leaving it in the centre of the cpu and spreading it by rotating the heat sink back and forth (as suggested by Arctic),

so I hope that I have managed to get the right amount of compound and got the heat sink seated properly.

Hence my question - is overheating always caused by bad seating of the heat sink, or should I be checking anything else?

Apologies for going on a bit.

TIA

[Clunk]

Those temps look a little bit high for idle.

Is the cpu heatsink definately held down properly, and not catching on anything round the cpu socket?

Thermal paste, less is more. You dont want loads, just enough so that when you take the heatsink off, there is a fine layer left on the heatsink and cpu. Try it a couple of times to get it right.

Is your case full of messy wires?

Do you have good airflow into and out of the case?

Take the side panel off and try blowing a large desk fan into your case and see if it still does it.

[Biscuit]

i wouldnt say those temps look high I get around about the same temps as you and my airflow isnt amazing

i have the same motherboard as u and i also get that -128c bit. I think its for the sli chip so its only active if u have two cards in (just a guess though) i think that temp 1 is the northbridge chip so i think the best way you can test the machine is to try a different cpu in the system and see the same happens again. In which case its ur mobo if not its the cpu.

Overheating isnt always the cause of bad cooler seating it could be any number of things, I wouldnt have thought a little bit of bad air flow would cause the cpu to rise past 80c though.

[Clunk]

i wouldnt say those temps look high I get around about the same temps as you and my airflow isnt amazing

i have the same motherboard as u and i also get that -128c bit. I think its for the sli chip so its only active if u have two cards in (just a guess though) i think that temp 1 is the northbridge chip so i think the best way you can test the machine is to try a different cpu in the system and see the same happens again. In which case its ur mobo if not its the cpu.

Overheating isnt always the cause of bad cooler seating it could be any number of things, I wouldnt have thought a little bit of bad air flow would cause the cpu to rise past 80c though.

80c isnt high? Do you live on the sun?

[chuckskull]

I'd put money on the Cooler being badly seated. Take it off, stick on some AS5. might wanna check you haven't accidentally put accidentally 1.6v through your CPU in the BIOS too. Unlikely but I've seen it happen.

EDIT: Oops missed part of your post. BIOS would be my first suspect then. Try a CMOS clear, might be a bit of corruption.

[Biscuit]

80c isnt high? Do you live on the sun?

I thought 60c was the safe temp to stay under

[Clunk]

I thought 60c was the safe temp to stay under

In that case, 80c is high then

[Thorsson]

I think that 80 is around the point where you start to do damage...

[chuckskull]

I think that 80 is around the point where you start to do damage...

Yup 62 is the max safe rated for AMD64 IIRC

[DecomposingStar]

80c should be programmed to your motherboard to turn your computer off if it gets that high.......

If you used too much thermal paste, it will actually act as a barrier. The heat will be stored in the paste and then passed back to the CPU instead of going up to the heatsink on your cooler.
If the cooler isn't seated properly, you'll have a small gap that will cause one part of the CPU to get hotter than the other. Not so good.

Try re-seating it with the motherboard out and reading the instructions on the Arctic Cooling website about thermal paste, it tells you the right amount.

[Biscuit]

In that case, 80c is high then

aaah i idnt get the sarcasm before

I didnt mean i get temps of 80 i meant the other temps he got when idle

[Thorsson]

The idle temps are fine. But then I've never seen a problem at idle.

I set my PC to turn off if the CPU reaches 60. Better safe than sorry...

[manwithnoname]

I have a Opteron 165 clocked at 2.2Ghz
Temps are 30C idle, 41C underload (prime running on both cores)

What voltage is the CPU at? Check you have not set the 'Over Volt the CPU option', I think it will zap another .2v into it, so 1.35 is infact 1.55v

[Tringa]

Checked the the voltage in BIOS and with SpeedFan. Both say 1.39v.

I'll try the heatsink again.

Thanks all

[Pete Davies]

For what its worth I thought I'd put my tuppence in too.

I've got a very similar rig and had problems fitting the Artic fan onto the CPU. First check that the fan is facing the correct way, (blowing air towards the rear case fan) You have to adjust the base of the Artic and turn it round. I also had to cut away a small portion of the Artics fins so it would fit over the MOBO's passive cooler. After all that it was still very tricky to use a screwdriver(!) to prize it into the correct place. Scary man it feels like the CPU or MOBO is gonna break.

I used the thermal compound that was already on the Artic.

My system run cool(ish) CPU 42'C

I agree with the other comments that its probably that your Artic is not seated properly on the CPU.

[directhex]

depends ENTIRELY on the processor as to what counts as hot

unfortunately, AMD make info on their processors hard to find