29 replies to this topic

[Aznpersuasion89]

its so crazy hot in my house. like 80F. ive got both cpu fans directly plugged in to run at max, run prime 95 and i peak at 55C. i tried the AMD auto tune and it starting running tests, went to 3.7 GHZ and temps spiked to 58C so i killed it. looks like this cooler isnt very OC friendly. ive got two 120mm intake fans and two 120mm exhaust fans. anything i can do to try and help temps? im thinking about re-applying my thermal compound. but thats all i can think of.

[TheBigBadMoon]

http://www.amazon.co...s=liquid+cooler


It works.

That, or another variant of that.

Corsair is great.

Edited by TheBigBadMoon, 09 August 2012 - 09:02 PM.

[Aznpersuasion89]

ya, i kinda wanted to stay away from water cooling, but it looks like thats my only option. if reapplying the TIM doesnt help temps i may forgo a large PSU for one of these instead.

[Alex Fury]

Actually, if you look at the liquid-cooling and the better radiators side by side for stats, there really is not that much of a difference. Most of the liquid-cooler ones I've seen, STILL have the radiator IN the case.. which raises the overall heat again anyway.

[CanadianCaveman]

Lol, 80°F is nothing, I actually wish it was that COLD here!!
Ambient temp in my apartment right now is 36.7°C (or 98.06°F) give it a few hours and my beast will raise that by 6~8°C
I'd say if you don't want to do liquid and you have a large enough case, check out the Noctua NH-D14
http://www.newegg.co...N82E16835608024
http://www.newegg.ca...N82E16835608024

or you can do like me and go 100% custom liquid
I run a AMD 965 BE 3.3ghz stock @ 4.2ghz OC, idle temps are generally 3~5°C above ambient, 100% load for 72 hours got me to 15°C above ambient

Edited by CanadianCaveman, 09 August 2012 - 09:27 PM.

[ENDMYSUFFERING]

Only 80F? It's usually around 110F where I live this time of year.

[Aznpersuasion89]

ya, its 80 in my house.....camp pendleton doesnt believe in AC. Pretty lights caveman, ive got a fairly large cooler (silenx 120-HA5) with 2 120mm fans on it in push/pull. will the noctua really be a $100 better then what i have going on right now?

Edited by Aznpersuasion89, 09 August 2012 - 09:30 PM.

[Ouster]

Thermalright True 120 was the best air cpu cooler for AMD about 2 years ago. They probably have a better one out there now days though. I have only used Thermalright GPU coolers though and had some wild time’s overclocking my GPU.

http://www.thermalri...x.php?cat_id=39 (link fixed)

I used a Scythe cpu cooler though for the last 10 years and kept up impressively only being few degrees c below a true 120

http://www.scythe-us...ct/cpu_top.html

Air coolers can do a impressive job but they can’t keep up with really high wattage value at low temps like liquid cooling can. But the overclocking on air has produced very good results even for GPU overclocking for me in the past.


On an overclockign note I would recommend using Prime 95 while running the AMD overclocking tools they have there own well formulated tests. But there never produced results that are rock hard 24x7 stable for me in the past. But I have not overclock a cpu since the Phenom II’s. I would probably step back the clock speed just a tad bit off of the AMD tools and hand tweak form there using intelBurnTest test. It a good interface to linpack for matrix math it failed most of my over clock setting in under 10m. So it gives you way faster results then prim95. But it still would be good to let prime 95 run over night after you have intelBurnTest results that are clean.

http://majorgeeks.co...Test_d5987.html

Edit: Just to clarify I have always been able to push past the overclock produced by the AMD tools by hand. Multiple tuning session back to back have always made the tool push the computer too far and cause a crash before it could dial in the correct settings. So if you run the AMD tune tool once it will probably produce and ok result but hand tuning in the AMD interface and bios will be required to produce a better result then the default one it provides.)

Edited by Ouster, 10 August 2012 - 06:11 PM.

[Gremlich Johns]

58 deg C is not too high. I am building a new confuser and will be incorporating the Antec 620 closed loop liquid cooler for my CPU and an Arctic Cooling Twin Turbo II for my GTX560 Ti superclocked. All in an Antec 900 case.

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 11 August 2012 - 07:31 AM.

[Aescwulf]

Due to these temps I'm scared to turn on my new computer because it's hotter in my room than anywhere else in the house and my windows all point west and have no blinds yet so I can't do anything with technology in my room until 10pm

[squat251]

Lol, you can afford to buy a super powerful rig, but not a 80$ window air condidtioner? I did that last year, best decision I ever made, hell most of the time I have to turn it down because it works too good.

[Tal Kath Naabal]

Our ac was out there for a bit this week, and at the time the temp was around 110f to 112f so yeah. Its a nice cool 80f outside right now, loving it!

I'd spring for the corsair water cooler, your temps under load will be much more consistent cause the specific heat of the water is so much greater than the copper blocks in air coolers that the CPU won't be able to heat it all up as much. I run a Phenom x4 970 @ 4.0 with an H60 (i was cheap) and it doesn't even notice, when the air in the house is hot I think it goes to like 130f or so. (under load been a while since I noted)
I would deff go with the H80 if i could (i'm by no means a corsair fan-boy either, its just a good product)

//edit: I wouldn't worry about the water aspect, its all enclosed and sealed, and installation is pretty simple to figure out. Some of the clamps for AMD could be better, but it works just fine.

Edited by Tal Kath Naabal, 11 August 2012 - 08:12 AM.

[Aznpersuasion89]

Gremlich Johns, on 11 August 2012 - 07:31 AM, said:

58 deg C is not too high.

isnt the max temp for the 975 BE like 62C? 4 degrees from max seems pretty high to me, unless im wrong about the max temp

[Ouster]

The Phenom II 975 has a max listed temp of 62
http://products.amd....&f10=&f11=&f12=

You can look up any cpu max temp here.
http://products.amd....pCPUResult.aspx

While my gut says that that limit may be more of a product stability limit then a process technology safety limit since the AMD FX series list 61C as the max temperature. The FX series is a 32nm technology node so it should be way more danger of electron migration damage which is temperature sensitive. If you excide 61C consistently it possible it will shorten the life span of the processer but so does increasing the voltage for overclocking. Processer are generally designed to last year. They can easily last for 10 years so if you shorten it life a little most people would never notice because they will replace the cpu before its ever a issue. The old AMD Athlon products had a max temp of 85C and I have been generically rather surprised by how low the numbers have gone over the years. But I would say don’t exceed the max for extended amounts of time. The mobo’s are supposed to kick in though and shut down the processor if it exceeds the safe heat levels for all cpu these days so as long as that not disable in bios don’t sweat the temp too much.


My Phenom II 955 non overclocked currently loads to 46C with pore ventilation ( I lost a few fans over the years in my case).

If you’re trying to get a good overclock you probably want to push the loaded temps down to a 35-45C.

If you overclocking that defiantly hot. At those temperatures the processer won’t be able to overclock much faster. (Also ignore my comment about turbo core early that only applies to AMD FX cpus.)

As for whether liquid cooling or air cooling is a better solution, neither will overclock better when using a well design solution. Heat pipes used in air cooler are more efficient at conducting heat to the fins then water is to the radiate. Heat pipes are also way more efferent then solid copper at conducting heat as well.

Yes water cooling uses the specific heat of water to transfer the energy to the radiator. But heat pipes use the heat of vaporization which is much greater the specific heat capacity of water. What determines if the cooler will be effective for a given application really is the radiator/ fins surface area. For a given area the radiating surface area it will have to be at a certain temperature above ambient to conduct away heat. So if one cooler has twice the surface area of another cooler that cooler will keep the processer at a low temperature.

As for heat spikes processer can heat up very quickly but they don’t really spike per say they just produce so much heat when doing certain work.

The 2 big advantages of water cooling has over air cooling is it easier to move a large amount of heat to a very large radiator since the radiator doesn’t have to sit over the processer and the water pump may be quieter then a high speed fan. I But with modern gpu being so loud this is not as big of a advantage as it seems though since water cooling a gpu well is very expensive since high end gpu water blocks can be up to $200 (if you want to water cool the ram) last I check and they don’t really transfer from one gpu model to the next unless it a die only water cooler and those are much cheaper. So unless you have a very quite air cooled gpu or you’re willing to invest in water cooling for the gpu you won’t get much sound benefit. So bottom line water coolers can be designed more easily to handle much higher CPU heat generation levels. ( this is more of a issue for extreme over clock around 200W or Peltier cooling ( add another 100+ watts to what your cpu produces)

With air cooling the heat pipes have to be designed for a particular loaded cpu temperature and heat generation level to reach their max efficient. If heat pipe become over whelmed they won’t transfer heat away from the cpu nearly as quickly and the cpu will run hotter or overheat. But it fairly easy to over design heat pipe to cool at way greater capacities then required there more tuned for the desired cpu temperature. But it is a balancing game the higher the cpu temperate the more efficient the cooling fins are for a given surface area because it rises the heat differential so they can dissipate heat faster. So it takes significant surface area to keep temperatures down.

My personal opinion is Air is just fine for entry level non extreme overclocking. Air cooling is primarily a little more cost effective for a long term solution as well. Since a 20 dollar fan is cheaper to replace then a water pump. And I don’t know how reparable the closed loop water cooler are or how long there pumps last. (if you safety paranoid some may be filled with non conductive liquids or the fluid can probably be replaced.)

If sound or high voltage overclocking are your goals upgrading to water would be better. But it really it’s a matter of going with the solution that fit what you looking for at the right price.


Edit: I just saw your sig entry for cpu coolers. I would double check you have a good push pull air flow and if it’s seated right with proper thermal past application. That does sound high for that cpu cooler. Also make sure the net air output of you case is higher than its intake. I had that backward when I setup my first push pull a long time back and that was horrible. I think I had 240 cubic feet of air in and 120 out. Instead of the other way around and that made a big difference. This is also true for multiple cpu fans. The key with push pull is low pressure air. If you rise the air pressure it lowers efficiency.

Edited by Ouster, 11 August 2012 - 11:06 PM.

[Aznpersuasion89]

i really didnt have a goal. just wanted to see what i could get. thanks for the huge amount of info though

[Ouster]

Ow wow… I did not expect you to reply so quickly. Added an edit because I saw your cpu fan info. I was assuming you were on a stock cooler up to that point. You could try change one more case fan to exhaust that may help.

[Aznpersuasion89]

3 exhaust fans? the 2 intakes and exhaust are the ones that came with the case. i want to reseat and reTIM everything but i can only find 75% isopropyl alcohol. will that work? or does it need to be stronger?

Edit: about 100 cfm intake and about 140 cfm exhaust
The push fan runs at about 86 cfm while my pull fan runs at just 57. Should I swap the lesser to the push fan?

Edited by Aznpersuasion89, 11 August 2012 - 11:36 PM.

[iceboss]

The CPU under silenx 120-ha5 should score the temps a bit lower. On the other hand it is 125W CPU with T-max 62°C.
How is the heatsink? Cooling this CPU, it should be pretty hot when you touch it. Reseat it is a good idea anyway. I suggest to buy a new thermal paste also.

The red number is max temp reached with the paste with Pentium 4 :-D.


You do not have to buy Liquid Pro, but the Arctic MX-2 will be good. Do not buy MX-3 - this one is hard to create thin films.
To create thin film it is ok to use the credit card or a finger in clean plastic bag. I do not like the process when a bit is put into the middle of heatspreader and pressed to the borders by the heatsink. Do not also forget that the paste needs few hot hours to provide optimal performance.

If you used the stock silicon paste supplied, it can worsen the performance by few degrees. On my Radeon 6870 the temps dropped by 15°C when I put a new paste there...

I would go with 1 intake on HDDs and 1 outtake on tha back side and 2 on the upper side. Usually it does not help too much to install fan on the side plates, the airflow should do the job itself.

[Aznpersuasion89]

i adjusted the fans so now i have ~100 cfm intake and ~190 exhaust. 1 back exhaust, one side exhaust and one on top of the case since i cant fit it inside since the cpu cooler is massive. i used GELID extreme 3 TIM applied with the layer method. so now i just have the ~86 cfm fan on the sink idling around 35C. gonna run prime95 now to see how hot the sink gets to the touch and what the sensors say.

EDIT: holding steady at 53C-53.5C and heatsink itself is.....warm, but barely. can i use less then 90% isopropyl alcohol to clean TIM and reseat heat sink?

Edited by Aznpersuasion89, 12 August 2012 - 12:35 AM.

[iceboss]

side exhaust... not sure if it does some good to the airflow. From where the fresh air is supposed to enter? IF GPU is OK, you can try to cover bottom part of the perforation of the side panel to speedup the CPU cooling.

53°C is good, 9°C below specs is absolutely fine. But try Linpack from OCCT test, it heats the CPUs all cores much better :-).