Need some major cooling advice!

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Paithar

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 17, 2003
Messages
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I'm having a problem cooling the system in my sig. I'm getting temperatures hovering at just over 60 degrees celsius while doing absolutely nothing except running ASUS PC Probe II. I'm not even overclocking this thing yet (partly because it's been running so hot). Also, I'm getting a lot of BSOD's that I think are because of my system overheating. The BSOD message I get is IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL and from what I googled of that, most said it was most likely a heat issue.

I have Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease and the default heatsink/fan that came with my cpu. I also have three 120mm case fans, 2 pulling air inside (one on the front and one on the side) and one blowing air out of the case (on the back).

My first question is, should I be having lower temps even with the standard heatsink/fan that came with the cpu itself?

My second question would be, should I be looking into a different heatsink/fan combo and if so what would you guys recommend? I know that a copper heatsink is supposed to be better at drawing the heat out than aluminum but I don't know what heatsink/fan combo is considered good for my cpu (e6700).

Lately I've been toying the thought of finding an easy to install, noobie type, water cooling solution but I'm not sure yet if that's the way I want to go. So I guess I wouldn't mind some suggestions on that as well but mainly I'm looking for good air cooling solutions.

Thanks
 
First: Did you make sure to properly clean off the pre applied thermal compound on the stock heatsink before applying AS5? Are you sure that you got all the push-pins pushed down alright?

For your questions:

(1) You temps are certainly too high if you idle around 60C even if it is the stock HS.

(2) You should get a better heatsink, it's not that important if it' pure copper, personally I have the Scythe Ninja+ (copper base and tubing, aluminum finns IIRC) and it it flawless for me. One thing though, do get a HS that mounts a 120mm fan, they are less noisy.

(3) I don't have any experience with watercooling, one thing is though, they are not noobish solutions. Personally I'd just advice you to go for high quality aircooling, it's easier to get right and much cheaper and it allows for quiet systems too...
 
the IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error, you can do this and try and fix it, but this wont fix your temp problem, go into your bios, and turn off everything that you dont use, like parallel port, serial port, firewire etc onboard sound etc etc, everything that you just dont use or need and it will free up some IRQ's for you and hopefully you wont get that error again, as basically that error relates to IRQ sharing and different pieces of hardware are either conflicting and causing that error or it could just be a driver issue, but in anycase its best to free up any IRQ's so that this doesnt happen again, as their is a lot of sharing IRQ's in windows and the less stuff that share the happier windows will be.

Did I mention I also used to get that error on one of my rigs and cured it by turning off stuff in the bios that I never used.

As for your 60oC at idle, thats too high, I dont know what type of cooling you use but I would definetly look into bringing that temp down.
 
Darth Bobo said:
First: Did you make sure to properly clean off the pre applied thermal compound on the stock heatsink before applying AS5? Are you sure that you got all the push-pins pushed down alright?

For your questions:

(1) You temps are certainly too high if you idle around 60C even if it is the stock HS.

(2) You should get a better heatsink, it's not that important if it' pure copper, personally I have the Scythe Ninja+ (copper base and tubing, aluminum finns IIRC) and it it flawless for me. One thing though, do get a HS that mounts a 120mm fan, they are less noisy.

(3) I don't have any experience with watercooling, one thing is though, they are not noobish solutions. Personally I'd just advice you to go for high quality aircooling, it's easier to get right and much cheaper and it allows for quiet systems too...
Click to expand...

Actually, the Corsair Nautilus is a pretty noob friendly solution. It only takes about 20 minutes or so to get it setup and going. You don't even have to remove your motherboard to install the waterblock.
 
Thermalright HR-o1 is a great solution in the 40 area. Heck even the 90 series from thermalright are great.
 
one problem might be in your forcing to much air in and not exhausting enough out. Instead of 2 in and 1 out, make it 2 out and 1 in.
 
Droc said:
one problem might be in your forcing to much air in and not exhausting enough out. Instead of 2 in and 1 out, make it 2 out and 1 in.
Click to expand...

I think this is precisely the reason why my Antec P182 gives me better temperatures than my Coolermaster Stacker 830 did. Too much intake and not enough exhaust. That's probably my fault to a degree. I messed with the intake and exhaust quite a bit, but I never could find the right balance so I quit jacking around with it.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone. I'll plan to play around with my system either tomorrow night or the next as I will be, unfortunately, very busy tonight. At first I'll probably take my current hsf off, clean it off and the cpu and reapply my AS5 and the hsf. Then I'll experiment with my fans (intake and outtake).

As for going into my bios and shutting off things I don't need I'll give it a try. I don't really see how I could be having a problem in the irq area though as this new system has less things (physically) than my old system did and I never had a problem with it but I'll give it a try and we'll see what happens.

And thank Dan_D for mentioning the Corsair Nautilus for water cooling. I'll definitely check it out.

Thanks again.
 
Th over heating seems like it is a result of either too much thermal compound or the heatsink isn't properly seated. One way to see if the case fan configuration is wrong is to tell us what the case/system temp is.

I also got IRQ errors when the ram would over heat on an older system.
 
use at least 91% isopropyl alcohol to clean the HSF and CPU. We do need to know what your ambient temps are like, if its 90F in your room there is not much you can do. Also for the AS5 make sure you only put a drop about half the size of a pea in the center of the heat spreader and then reatach the heatsink.
 
At the moment I can't give room or even case temps as I don't have those with me but I can say that the room is generally in the low 70's.

I did get to thinking, after reading other posts on this forum, that maybe I have just a bit too much thermal grease so I definitely plan to clean the whole thing and reapply and see if that is at least part of my problem. One thing I used to always do was put a small drop of thermal grease on the cpu and then I would use a razor blade to spread it as evenly as possible and then put on the heatsink but after reading other posts it seems that is not the best way to do this. So I will this time try and just put the small drop on and then simply put the heatsink on, allowing it to spread the thermal grease around.

I appreciate all the info.
 
I suspect the heatsink is not fully "popped" in, it takes a silly amount of force to fully seat those push pins. So much it bends the board to an alarming degree when done in the case. You have to push so hard it will hurt your thumb and you should hear a distict click. Do them in an X pattern. I recommend taking the board out of the case to do it on a table with cardboard or foam under the motherboard. Then flip it over and inspect where the pins popped through and make sure they all look the same. Then put it back down and use both thumbs and push the hell out of them again.
 
I don’t think I read what kind of case you have; it can make a difference.
You said you have 3x120mm Fans, 2x intake 1 x exhaust
You should turn the side fan around and make it an exhaust as well.
Also, I know Noise is a bitch but you might want to upgrade your exhaust fans to something more powerful. I run 3 x 80mm exhaust, 1 x 120mm exhaust; most of my intake air is created by Negative Pressure. But I have a Stack 801 so the front is 1 big filtered intake.
As others said, get a better HSF for your E6700 and make sure it has adequate cooling.

OffTopic.
Ntune/BIOS says that my CPU temps at Max load are one temp, but Intel TAT reads at higher temps (depending on the core). I know TAT reads the cores, does that mean that the CPU temp probe is reading the socket or I.H.S. or something else? I am not sure what to trust.

If I go by the CPU probe, the CPU is staying at ambient temp (23-30c depending on my room temp) and under load it only gets a few degrees above ambient.
 
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