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Running without a CPU cooler.

F

fleggett

Gawd
Joined
Nov 30, 2004
Messages
546
This may be a bit of an odd question, but here goes.

I occasionally get a batch of like CPUs that need testing. Nothing major, just going through the POST and mucking around in the BIOS for a bit. It's a real pain to keep having to seat (and remove) a cpu cooler each and every time. Is it safe to run a chip without a cooler if all you're doing is looking at BIOS options and not stressing it in any way? Is there a time limit before the cpu starts to smoke itself? Thanks in advance.
 
Safe time limit at idle: 10 ms

ok ok, a better answer is: even 5 watt at load processors have heat sinks to protect them. Yours will probably generate 30W minimum at idle.
 
I did this once with a 1400 Mhz Athlon - It burnt to a crisp within 10 seconds. Supposedly, the new chips will automatically shut down before this can happen. In addition, the integrated heat spreader might do something...

If you can work with the motherboard parallel to the floor, you might be able to get by without actually mounting a HSF. put some thermal paste on a heatsink without the mounting apparatus and just let it stand on top of the chip. I wouldn't do this, but its better than nothing
 
Maybe you don't have to really mount it.

Put some thermal paste on, and use a heatsink big enough to cover the CPU, maybe just a block of copper. with a PCI slot fan that looks like a magnifying glass blowing on it.
 
I am interested in this so I did some research:

Suppose the die itself is 10 grams with heat specificity (energy it takes to rise in temperature) of copper. At 30W for 1 second, so 30 Joules, the temperature of the CPU die will increase by 8 degrees Celsius. After 10 seconds, it would be at +80, plus 20 for room temperature and it'll be frying at 100C.
 
Furystrike said:
^ Is a cooling term included in that calculation?
Click to expand...

No. Passive heat dissipation at 100C , or delta 80C is around 2W, roughly estimated. The whole thing is a guess, precise thermal-dynamics is better tested through experimentation than calculations.
 
If you're brave, just placing a GOOD heavy heatsink on the CPU without latching it down will do the trick, but be damn careful. Make sure to still use thermal paste, it helps stick the thing down :p
 
Newer chipsets automatically shut down. I once put on a cooler with dried up thermal paste and it auto shut down every time.
 
Sorry dude, the days of running CPUs naked with no attached cooling died with the early 486 processors.

You do not need active cooling, nor do you need to make sure the heatsink is solidly mounted, but you do need something there.
 
You need a big heavy FLAT piece of copper. Also, I'd still be quick about it.;)
 
Hmmm. Well, the consensus seems to be that, while it can theoretically be done without damaging the hardware, the likelihood of it doing so is exceedingly high, even with blocks of copper sitting directly atop the CPU (with or without thermal paste).

Furystrike, I use a Top Deck Tech Station, so my test motherboards are always parallel to the ground. I don't know what I'd do without one of these wonders.

Thanks for the feedback, all. I kinda figured it would probably be a bad idea. Someone should invent something to make this sort of testing much easier....
 
Just chunk a large piece of copper on top of it with some thermal paste, but don't run it without ANY kind of heatsink. You'll fry it, most definitely.
 
Even if you use your hand to put a little bit of pressure on a heatsink onto the IHS, that would be much better. I had a go with my old Athlon64 3200+ without a fan, and then without a HS entirely - without the fan the proc wouldn't boot into windows. Without the HS it wouldn't POST. You need something to take away all that heat, and the IHS just isn't going to cut it.
 
Bootleg Usher said:
The stock heatsink goes on and off pretty quick right?
Click to expand...

But how many times until it breaks or the motherboard gives way?

I would personally purchase a heatsink like the Megahalems or TRUE, apply a small blob of TIM and pop hte heatsink on top of the processor without fixing it down (horizontal obviously) and without a fan. Should be enough cooling for what you're doing.
 
I've done a lot of testing with the heatsink off on Intel Core 2 based chips and some people here are worrying more than you need to. It was never a problem just resting my Tuniq Tower air cooler on top of the CPU. This would instantly reduce the core temperature. When the CPU is idle in Windows, this was good enough.

Here's my E8400 getting a little toasty with the heatsink off.

e84001012c.jpg


My thermal interface material is a couple of strips of masking tape. :D

As soon as I placed the Tuniq back on this CPU, the core temperatures dropped immediately. As long as you use a little common sense, you'll be OK with the resting the cooler on the CPU trick. Some of Intel's energy efficient CPUs with very little L2 cache are simple to keep at a safe temperature even with the cooler completely removed. It's the old 65nm Quad cores like the Q6600 and the E8400 with 6MB of L2 cache that put up more of a fight.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong the the issue with bootup and bios is there are no HALT states issued to the CPU, this usually means that atleast the 1st core (core 0) is running at 100% load. I'd not consider that safe with a naked cpu. You need atleast thermal paste and a HS with some pressure.

I sold my boss a AMD X2 4200+ with a A8N32-SLI mobo and a 7800GT awhile back. He assembled it over a weekend and when we came back he was telling me the system couldn't install windows and was performing stress tests on it over the weekend and would randomly shutdown. I came to find out that he had installed the stock heatsink without any paste. Even after I installed the paste the system would still shutdown but less than before. We even installed a large aftermarket HS (Corsair A50) and he still says the system seems flaky once in awhile. Lesson to be learned is make sure you have proper supplies in order!
 
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