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CPU Overheating Advice?

T

ThanatosXXX

n00b
Joined
Jul 15, 2005
Messages
10
Hey guys, I'm looking for a bit of advice here. (Apologies if this should be in the Overclocking/Cooling forum, I came here since I've done no overclocking at all.)

Background: In spring 2007 I built me and my wife our "new" computers. I've discovered that when upgrading I need to do both at once otherwise she starts looking over at mine and asking why it's performing better and then getting mad at me so they're both more or less identical. (DVD drives are different and she has a pink case because...she wanted a pink case and when you're building your wife a computer so she'll play game with you a pink case is a small sacrifice. :))

They're both Core 2 Duo E6300s with stock heatsink/fan in Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 boards with 2 gig ram and 8800 GTS video cards.

Now that that's out of the way here's my problem.

We've been playing Warhammer Online and they've handled it just fine until last week sometime when my wife started complaining about lag. I ignored her for the first little bit but when she stopped playing because it was "unplayable" I had to check it out and it truly is unplayable.

I did the standard spyware and virus scanning, checked processes to see if anything was going nuts, rebooted a couple times but there was no change. Then I moved on to blaming the video card. I picked up EVGA's Precision tool so I could watch the heat there but her video card actually runs a couple degrees cooler than mine and everything else seemed to check out. Finally on a lark I decided to check out the CPU temperature with SpeedFan.

Low and behold, her machine idles at about 65 degrees C while mine is in the 43 degree C range. And when we fire up Warhammer hers spikes all the way up to 91 degrees while mine only jumps to 51 or so.

I've never had any experience with overheating so while I assume this is the cause I thought I'd ask. Will that kind of heat affect performance?

And if so, how should I go about fixing it? The fan looks to be spinning fine (by which I mean it's spinning fast enough that the fins are a blur) so my only theory is that the thermal paste has somehow gone bad. But I'm more than open to other theories if anyone has one.

Thanks in advance.
 
I don't know about the reliability of this information, but based on a chart I found, here are the critical temperatures for most Intel Processors:

Intel Core 2 Duo


Intel core 2 Duo (Conroe E4300, E4400, E6300, E6400)
61.4?C

Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe E4500, E4600, E4700)
73.3?C

Intel Core 2 Duo (Conroe E6320, E6420, E6540, E6550, E6600, E6700, E6750, E6850)
60.1?C

Intel Core 2 Duo (Wolfdale)
72.4?C

Mobile Core 2 Duo
100?C


Intel Core 2 Extreme


Intel Core 2 Extreme (Conroe)
60.4?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Kentsfield Q6700)
71?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Kentsfield Q6600)
62.2?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Kentsfield QX6700, QX6850)
64.5?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Kentsfield QX6800)
54.8?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Yorkfiled Q9300, Q9450, Q9550)
71.4?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Yorkfield QX9650)
64.5?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Yorkfield QX9770)
55.5?C

Intel Core 2 Extreme (Hypertown QX9775)
63?C


Based on that, something is amiss here. Is her computer near a heater or anything like that? The fact that this just recently started to happen suggests to me that it is something conditional. What is the ambient air temp going into her case? Heat can affect performance, however to what extent is somewhat trivial.

Is it high quality paste that was (Arctic Silver?) used or was it the cheap stuff? I doubt it went "bad"...
You could try reapplying it. Remember, don't use too much, just a little bit to make some contact is good.

Perhaps there is a chance that the processor is simply defective...
 
Thanks for the speedy reply. I found a site listing heat values close to those, too.

The two cases are 6 feet or so apart with no heaters anywhere nearby so I've ruled out ambient in my own mind.

The paste was just the little patty of stuff that comes on a stock heat sink so definitely not high quality stuff. I'm playing with the idea of running out to Best Buy and grabbing "generic thermal compound #5" to see if that helps but figured I'd look for some confirmation first so that I was fixing the "right" problem.

If I do so, how much of a pain is it to remove the old paste? I've seen that rubbing alcohol and q-tips will do the job but will I be scrubbing for a week to get it clean?

And you mention the possibility of a defective processor. Is it possible that something has went wrong with the processor and it's now pumping out more heat than it should or would anything going wrong with the processor just kill everything?

(I ask because when I built these machines I specifically said "we'll go with these processors now but it leaves us room to pick up faster ones later down the road" and I half want to upgrade them. But the other half of me would rather not spend the money since they've been performing fine. :))
 
Yeah, reseating the HSF is a good first step. I would use CoreTemp instead of Speedfan though. It's not hard to get the old paste off. Just use an old credit card or something similar to scrape off what you can and then rubbing alcohol and a coffee filter will take care of the rest.
 
Your heatspreader on the cpu may also be irregular. Also, speedfan probably wont report the right temps for that proc.
 
You will encounter differences in the reported temperatures depending on the program used. It would be a good idea to use 2 different ones.
Try to get some of this stuff. Linky when reseating the hsf. It is popular and works great. If it is defective, I honestly don't know if it would take out your whole system. I wouldn't think so, but I suppose there is always a possibility... Ask someone else just to be sure.

I just thought of this, has the computer been moved at all. One time my mother moved my computer when I was at school to dust and it wouldn't turn on when I got home because she knocked my power cord out. Maybe your wife did something similiar and the hsf could have partially dis latched.
 
Thanks guys, as Frobot suggested I've picked up CoreTemp. At idle mine is running around 59 degrees and hers is 77 or so. Under load I sit around 71 degrees on both cores while Core #0 on hers shows "126°C (?)" and Core #1 is 81 degrees.

I'm not sure what to make of that.

I'm off to see what I can find at Best Buy for paste, Arctic Silver would be nice but I don't want to wait for Newegg to ship it (my game playing is severely curtailed when she can't play with me).

xdivenx it's possible that she kicked the case or the dogs may have been fighting nearby and slammed into it. That may have unseated the HSF maybe? Although they latch on there pretty tight. But if that's the case I'm in the same boat right? Gotta get more paste and reseat the HSF.
 
Well guys, I have a confession to make.

My name is Jeff...and I'm a moron.

I went and picked up some thermal compound, came back and couldn't for the life of me find the rubbing alcohol that I know we have somewhere. So, off I went to the drug store.

Get home and disconnect all the cables and drag the case out from under the desk. Take it to my nicely lit workspace and suddenly the problem is clear. The heat sink was CAKED with dust. Sure, the fan was running just fine but there was no way any air was getting into that heat sink. I've never seen anything like this, it was atrocious. I'm embarrassed a) that I didn't catch that it might be the problem and b) that I let dust get to such a point.

Anyway, I took the vacuum to it. Great big strands of dust came out of that poor heat sink, it's hard to describe the volume in there. Once it was clean I fired it back up...idle temp is 33 degrees. Peak I could get under load was 48. No lag problems.

So let this be a warning to everyone. Dust is the devil! And it can decimate your performance. (Yeah, yeah, we all knew that already. But maybe Google will send someone with a similar problem to this thread and it will save them separate trips to Best Buy and CVS. :D)

Thanks to everyone who gave advice.

P.S. Yes, I'm on my way to clean my own heat sink out, too. :)
 
I am just glad that you got it fixed. I never even thought to suggest that lol. You must have some SERIOUS dust if it got that bad in such a short amount of time.

Glad you and your wife are gaming again =)
 
Problem solved...wonder how the large amounts of dust got in there in the first place...
 
This case has a tube going from the side of the case to just above the processor. To allow direct air from outside, I assume.

My bet is that the grating isn't fine enough to catch the dust so it becomes a dust highway straight to the heat sink.
 
ThanatosXXX said:
This case has a tube going from the side of the case to just above the processor. To allow direct air from outside, I assume.

My bet is that the grating isn't fine enough to catch the dust so it becomes a dust highway straight to the heat sink.
Click to expand...

You should probably get a mesh air filter and put it in there to block large amounts of dust.
 
ThanatosXXX said:
This case has a tube going from the side of the case to just above the processor. To allow direct air from outside, I assume.

My bet is that the grating isn't fine enough to catch the dust so it becomes a dust highway straight to the heat sink.
Click to expand...

You could just take the tube off altogether. From my experience, it doesn't really do much except provide an express path for dust to get into the CPU heatsink (which you are well aware of right now ;)).
 
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