CPU too hot? Advice, please

[Shooty*]

Gents,
New build last night. Abit 35 Pro Off road model, Q8200 processor
Scythe Ninja Rev b cooling it. CPU at stock, scythe has fan (more about that later as I want to know if it's OK to put it on ANY face, the RAm is getting in the way a bit) spinning at "normal" (i.e. not temp dependant) speed.

Everest is showing idle temp across all 4 Core of 50 degrees c. In addition, it keeps flashing in and out the "Cpu" temp as 32 degrees, then 86, then 102! then 65, all over the scale, showing a temp for a second, vanishing, reappearing a couple of seconds later.

the core temps stay constant, in that they vary slightly up and down, but don't cut out or anything like that.

1. Is 50 degrees too hot idle? I didn't enjoy the S775 bracket retention clip installation, but think the ninja is properly in place. I'm using Zalman thermal grease STG1

2. If it IS too hot, what should I be looking at, temp wise?

[Thorsson]

Yes it's too hot - if that's the real temperature. What does uGuru say? Try RealTemp as well, just to see if there's any major difference.

And yes, the position of the fan matters - it should be blowing towards the back of the case. Depending on case airflow this could make several degrees difference.

As to what you should be looking for, well it all depends on your case and your CPU TBH. Perhaps someone who has that case might comment. As far as the CPU is concerned, what's the voltage it's running at according to Everest. From various posts around the place you might get anywhere between 30 (good CPU and something like the Antec 900 needed for this end of the spectrum) and low 40s on air.

[Shooty*]

Ah, crap. I thought I should be aiming for about 40 as well.
*sigh*
Right... OK, It might still be on a burn in from new installation, perhaps, but I think I might try it with some arctic silver.
Thanks Thorsson.

[k0nigen]

I've found that the ninja performs very similarly with or without the fan installed, as long as you have a small amount of air moving through (and out) of your case - I've always used Arctic Silver 5 with them though...
Perhaps the IP35 Pro doesn't report the temps correctly?

[Shooty*]

Just taken the ninja off.... I think my Zalman paste might be past its best... doesn't seem to have spread well at all.
Let's try the arctic... horrible stuff... reminds me of Miconium, if any of your are parents

(very thick, sticky poop that newborns have)

[Shooty*]

Dammit, temps seem to be holding steady even with the arctic. Couple of degrees less.

[Haiku32]

Have you tried a variety of temp programs? Sometimes they give wildly different results and if you have say, 4 or 5 different temps you can work out the average to give you a closer indication what the actual temps might be. For example, coretemp always gives me 15C higher than speedfan.

[Shooty*]

I'm not having a good day. It now keeps BSODing and refusing to boot. Freezes. Ram light indicators freeze, and mobo post sticks on C1. Very very frustrated and angry.
Trying to reinstall vista from DVD, but that takes me through the "windows is loading files", past the green "loading" bar, to the blue screen which should NORMALLY have the "welcome to vista gubbins on it, but I just get a blank screen...

Oh, wait, hang on... something;'s happening

OK, format C... Next....

My god, it's actually doing something.
Fingers crossed a reinstall might help.

Expanding files is stuck at 0%. Not good. COME ON>

I avoided Uguru until I'd understood the sytem, but it's not worked long enough for me to get that far

So miserable. Feels like I wasted £300.

F**k. BSOD. Stop 0x000008e

[format]

Use coretemp and realtemp for reading temps, I never trust the BIOS on my board (I've got the same one)

[Pob255]

Please run memtest it really sounds like a ram fault

[BUFF]

full system specs.?
BIOS version?

[Shooty*]

Will have to check bios version.
Q8200
BFG 8800gt
Abit IP 35 Pro XE
2gb corsair ram of some kind with pretty lights on top
Xfi extreme music
1 x pci usb card
Scythe Ninja rev b
1 x 74 gb raptor system drive
2 x 300 gb storage/ game drives.

After a lot of sweat, tears and a little blood, ti appears to be stable now. moved the ram to slots 2 and 4 as 1 and 3 appeared to be borked, or something, and 2 and 4 work OK> True Temp and Core Temp showing temps of 47 degrees across all 4 cores at idle, rising to mid 50s under light to mid load. Havne't torture tested it yet, but ran 3dMark 06 on it last night, score of 11000 ish on default settings (the bloody mars trench thing was still 1 fps, which I was surprised about). Left it on all night, no BSOD, still OK in morning.

If I flash the bios, or update it, will I have to reinstall windows? Don't think I could put myself through all that again.

It got to the stage where I was emiting strange animal groans, and my little boy asked mummy "what's wrong with daddy today?"

Edit: Only BSOD over last 24 hours was setting O&O defrag to do a boot defragment. It didn't seem to like that not one tiny little bit.

Oh, ran a ram test: Didn't find owt.

[shaithis]

Flashing the BIOS does not mean you have to re-install Windows, you might need to re-set any BIOS settings you moved off of default though.

That mars test runs at 1-3 fps on all PCs btw

[Infinite]

Check my idle out, lol

[Thorsson]

Suggests the TJMax figure is wrong. But that's not idle - Core #1 is showing 20% load.

[Shooty*]

re: Mars. Thank god for that.
...

So what's it testing?