• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

c2d e6400 too hot?

W

WiL11o6

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 20, 2007
Messages
478
Hi, to make it short, my stock e6400 2.13ghz with a stock fan/heatsink is running at 45-50c on idle and around 50c on load according to coretemp while I play games.
I have had this CPU for about 2 years now, and I think it has always been these temperatures so it's not like this is a new thing until I started to look into overclocking and noticing other people's temps, which are a lot lower, maybe 35-40c idle and 50c OC'd to 3ghz.

What seems to be the problem? I hear even stock fan should be enough to keep it cool. When I do a slight overclock to 2.6ghz, it already shoots up to 55-60c on load, which is pretty high. I have not tried to check the seating of the fan because I'm afraid I might mess it up. Would I need to reapply thermal paste (which I don't have atm) if I take off the fan and put it back on? Or would I just have to get a new CPU fan/heatsink? Though other people seem to do fine with stock ones.

Oh, my voltage is fluctuating between 1.392v and 1.372 on CPUZ, but says 1.3250v on CoreTemp, which is weird.
 
Those temperatures are actually perfectly safe for the CPU. Even if you aren't overclocking, unless your temps start getting into the 70s I wouldn't worry about anything.
 
Oh is it? I'm just wondering because I don't see how other people manage OCing to 3ghz with only 50c on load with a stock cooler, while I get 50c idle at 2.6ghz. Maybe they just have better overall cooling within the case?
 
That is about what mine does on the stock cooler. As long as it's under 60C, most people here would feel safe. I personally never had any luck with the stock cooler.

Unfortunately you do need to reapply thermal paste after taking off the HSF. I would try to visually inspect the cooler to see if the lock tabs on all 4 corners are seated. The black tabs should be almost touching or touching the metal bracket of the stock cooler. It might be worth blowing out the whole computer with compressed air also.

As far as overclocking on the stock HSF goes, it really doesn't respond well to increased voltage. So a possibility is the board is using more voltage than needed to keep the processor stable. I'm not sure of the stock voltage on the e6400, but I would find out and lock my bios to that. Then stability test from there.

Hopefully someone else chimes in with more ideas, good luck. :)
 
WiL11o6 said:
Oh is it? I'm just wondering because I don't see how other people manage OCing to 3ghz with only 50c on load with a stock cooler, while I get 50c idle at 2.6ghz. Maybe they just have better overall cooling within the case?
Click to expand...

Perhaps. But realistically, it just doesn't matter. As long as your CPU is running at a reasonably safe temperature, it's all good.
 
Oh, thanks for the reply guys. I guess I'm fine, even if I OC a little bit, and thank you zero, this is the second time you helped me aside from my RAM question a week ago.

Though, would it be worth it just to OC from 2.1ghz to 2.6ghz for a +5c temperature rise. It's just a slight difference, would I notice any difference in games? I just bought a 9800GTX+ and I feel my CPU is bottlenecking it since I play at 1280x1024 resolution, and I don't want to go out and buy another CPU. Or should I just get a better CPU fan/heatsink so I can OC my CPU further for safer temps.
 
I would invest in a better sink.

My old E6400 is rock stable on a old Exos unit with a Zalman block @ 3.12 37 to 40c across the slugs. I did have to volt it up to 1.39v. There is more in the cpu. But its really not worth it. My E6600 walks all over it with a slightly less OC. The 6400's are hurt bad because of the lack of on die cache. 6400's are starting to get way dated.
 
Quick tips:
Change thermal paste (AS5,etc)
Make sure Heatsink is sitting properly
If using stock heatsink, get a better one
Might want to lap cpu or heatsink
 
LostStorm said:
Quick tips:
Change thermal paste (AS5,etc)
Make sure Heatsink is sitting properly
If using stock heatsink, get a better one
Might want to lapped cpu or heatsink
Click to expand...

Lapping is the very last thing to do. And only as a corrective measure.
 
That's because most people here do not use the stock heatsink.

But if it's worked for 2 years like this, don't worry about it.
 
psyshack said:
Lapping is the very last thing to do. And only as a corrective measure.
Click to expand...

Yup thats why i put it last. I bought E6400, when it first came out and never used it. Finally decide to use it, probably for htpc or intermediate pc
 
Thanks, but I figured it out, I think. I just had to clean it lol. All the groves in the heatsink were clogged with dust and I wiped down all my fans. After that, it already got 5c cooler. Then I just lowered the voltage manually since apparently I was dumb in the beginning and didn't know that my BIOS was automatically bumping up the voltage as I tried to OC. So now it's at 3ghz and a good 40c idle and 50c at load.
 
Let me get this straight. You're complaining about 50C load with a stock cooler?
 
No, prior to doing all that, I was getting 50c at idle at stock 2.13ghz. Which is why I made this thread.
 
WiL11o6 said:
No, prior to doing all that, I was getting 50c at idle at stock 2.13ghz. Which is why I made this thread.
Click to expand...

Don't worry about idle temperatures; the sensors are not calibrated to measure anything below ~40C.

If you are idling at 50C and full loading at 55C then I think your are pretty safe.
 
WiL11o6 said:
No, prior to doing all that, I was getting 50c at idle at stock 2.13ghz. Which is why I made this thread.
Click to expand...

WiL11o6 said:
around 50c on load according to coretemp
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you said 50c on load. But really, regardless of what you said, if you really care about temps now (and I am not so sure you do care about temps), a decent solution is to just get a good quality heatsink.

Of course if you tweak your system and lower voltage on your system with the stock heatsink, temps go down. Fairly obvious. And logic says if you had a better heatsink it would go down even more.

Or just live with it. If the darn thing is like that for 2 years, who cares?
 
I'm wondering if there might be more than one stock heatsink which came with the E6400s. When I first got my E6400 I used the stock heatsink as it was winter and my ambient temps never rose about 70F. I ran the processor at 3.2Ghz or 3.4Ghz (can't remember as it has been a while since I had it) and had temps on the stock cooler of around 60C under full load. I thought it was rather respectable for the stock cooler.

That said, my E6400 stock heatsink had the copper core. The heatsink was almost identical to the stock heatsinks which came with my Q6600s except the Q6600 heatsinks had a little more surface area in the sink and the fans were just a little bit bigger. This was the only C2D I had so I don't know about any of the other heatsinks but I was under the impression you normally did not get copper core heatsinks with the E6300s and E6400s.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top