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New here - Need Cooling Help

A

Arakor

n00b
Joined
Dec 30, 2004
Messages
2
Alright first off I was pointed here by a friend. I am computer literate so feel free to not dumb things down :)

I recently upgraded my computer here are my new specs with what is new (Nothing is OC'ed):
Windows XP Pro SP2
DFI LanpartyUT nforce3 250g mobo (Upgraded to this)
AMD Athlon 64 3400+ (2.4ghz / 512kb cache) (Upgraded to this)
PNY GeForce 6800GT
2x Viking 512mb PC3200
2x WD 7200RPM, 8mb, 80g (149g on RAID-0) (Upgraded to 2 drives Raid-O)

Now my problem right now however is cooling. I used to have an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (stock hsf) which ran around mid 40s (in Celsius) idle to the lower 50s on load. New comp idles 42-43'c+ to 49-50'c on load. Ok thats fine except I went all out to get my temps low and to overclock. Now onto my cooling.

2 ThermalTake 120mm fans - 1 in front blowing in, one in back blowing out.
2 Fans that came with my XBlade case 80mm - One on the side blowing in and one near the front 120mm fan blowing in.
PCI Card slot dual fans blowing directly on video card.
ThermalTake Silent Tower - 59 aluminum fins w/ copper heatpipe cooling. 90mm fan attacked to the heatsink blowing into it in the direction toward the 120mm fan that is blowing out of the case.
Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste.

I want to know why my CPU temp is so high. I will now let you know all that I did to try to find this out.

1. This is what i think the problem is and will probably redo this tonight unless you guys say different. I put a good amount of AS5 on which I think may have been double what was recommended or maybe less. I put it on the center of my A64 chip on the heat spreaders of course. Then I slapped the hsf on top. During the installation of the hsf to the CPU I noticed I used a wrong screw. I had my brother hold the hsf to the cpu while we tipped the mobo sideways so i could unscrew the wrong screw from the bottom of the motherboard and put the right one in. During this process I noticed the hsf sliding quite a bit and i'm not positive but I think it may have even lifted up and came back down on it. Thinking of taking the hsf off, removing all the paste I see and putting a small bit of AS5 on the center of the CPU, putting the hsf on it and securing it. Reviews on this hsf were all from people getting MUCH lower temps than I. The CPU is not OC'ed.

2. With all these fans I thought that could be doing it. While running under load at 49'c I took off the side case and watched for a temp drop...nothing. Leads me to believe my fan setup is fine (correct me if im wrong on this guess). Also noticed my OC'ed 6800GT was running at 65'c at the time under load so I put it back down to stock.

3. Other possibilty was if the monitor was giving me false information. I went into the BIOS and it gave me the same CPU temp.

So my question is...what can I do to fix this problem? It should be much cooler.

As I type this my temps are:
41'c - 42'c CPU
32'c PWM IC (What is that anyways?)
29'c System

This is with nothing overclocked and on load my estimate would be this.
49'c-50'c CPU
Not sure on PWM IC Temp on load, probably the same.
System temp under load I saw was 30'c-32'c. Could just be lower now because the side case is off.

Thanks ahead of time! - I will be watching this closely so feel free to ask me to find out and/or post more information.
 
Forgot to say that when it was under load at around 49'c-50'c i touched the heatsink and it wasn't even warm.
 
You need to re-do the HSF. When you do, only use a rather small amount, only enough to cover the core of the proc. with a very thin layer. The more TP you use the harder it is for it to work correctly. Also, by sliding it around, and picking it up and then putting it back down again after first applying TP, only allows for the introduction of air pockets, and those don't help.

Your fan set-up seams fine. I have read the reviews of your particular HSF ( I was wanting to get one myself), and you should be getting better read-outs than that. It could be because the burn-in phase that all new TP&HSF's go through has not happened....I believe in one review for that particular HSF they suggested that you leave it on all day and turn it off to allow to cool to room temp, then run it again all day....repeating this for two weeks.

Also, I don't know about others, but the read-outs that I get from my Bios are not that acurate, I would get an actual temperature measuring device that you can stick near or even on your proc. and surrounding hardware. I could be wrong though.

My $.02
 
As far as your BIOS information goes, a lot of the A64 boards had temps that could be as far as 20*c off, some were higher, some were lower, so I second Tiny's suggestion for a temp probe.
 
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