Temps going up over time...

[blade52x]

I swear, I think my temperatures go up slowly over time. I really don't know what could be causing this...

Right now in a room that's 74F, my Q6600, with a TRUE, is idling at 46C, 43C, 42C, 44C. Yes, you read correctly - with the best heatsink on the market I've got these really crappy temperatures. Load will get into the low 60s.

Now, over the summer when I first installed my Q6600, my room was slightly warmer. It was usually 77-78F, and at this speed my idle temps would be around 40C. So my ambients have dropped slightly since the summer, yet my temperatures are much higher.

I have however, made two hard drive additions since, and went from a 7900GT to a warmer 8800GT. But even with the new hard drive blocking some of the lower intake, I still have a completely unobstructed upper intake that supplies air to the RAM/CPU area. What exactly could have caused this large increase in temperatures. Dust is ruled out because my intakes are filtered and I clean those out on a regular basis. There's very little dust inside of my case.

Here's a picture showing temps of everything inside of my case... The only real idea about case temperatures I've got right now is AUX and GPU Ambient - both are recording ambient temps in right about the same area. I think 36-37C seems a bit high for a room that's 23-24C... even if the air is passing over 3 hard drives.

 

[SmokeRngs]

What did you use for thermal paste? If it's some cheap stuff it's likely that it has "worn out". I know Arctic Silver 3 (I believe it was) would do that over a 6-12 month period of time. Many of the cheap pastes also do this. They'll dry out badly and won't allow for a decent heat transfer anymore which means you have to clean off the old stuff and reapply.

This is one of the reasons I stuck with Arctic Silver 2 and then Arctic Silver Ceramique for so long. At this point Ceramique is all I use. AS5 might give a couple degrees better temps but for me it's not worth the price, the extra hassle of cleaning it plus Ceramique will not conduct electricity like the tiny amounts AS5 can. This way I can use it on chipsets and RAM without a problem if I decide to do so.

Your best bet would be to remove the heatsink, clean off the old paste and put new paste on. Preferably a decent quality paste although it does not need to be the most expensive by any means. Even the same paste you were using would probably work just fine for a test. If the temps drop, then you know it was the paste and you should get something better.

If reapplying doesn't work, it's probably the extra hard drive or different video card heating up the case which is causing the problem.