Terrible Q6600 temps

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GrimWD

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Dec 29, 2007
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I have a new q6600 (G0) and an asus p5e x38 board (flashed to 0601 bios), and my idle temps with everything at stock settings was around 44c as reported by core temp 0.96.1

This seems really high, as I can only overclock it to 2.7ghz without hitting 50c idle temps. I'm using a zerotherm nirvana cooler, which was a real awkward fit on this board (especially considering the adhesive backplate is no longer adhesive due to me having to rma the first mobo it was attached to).

I reseated the heatsink as best I could, and these temps are really unreasonable. I went with the quad hoping to hit 3.2ghz at least - but I've been basically limited to stock settings without burning up.

Could this be because I applied to little thermal paste? I applied roughly the small thin line indicated on the AS5 website, and perhaps this is the problem. (I'm a first time builder, so I'm not very good at diagnosing these problems)
 
Did you use Artic Silver 5 or the ZEROtherm paste that came with the Nirvana?

ZEROtherm reccomends using a thin layer across the entire heatspreader for their paste.

You're definately running hot..my Q6600/Nirvana is idling at 38-40 C at 3.6Ghz/1.4vcore.

Did you really tighten the HS down? I was concerned about over-tightening..but you might want to try giving each screw a another turn (as per instructions in the manual, alternating) and see if temps go down at all. It might be that it's just not tight enough.
 
lapped my IHS and cooler (TRUE)

3.2Ghz Quad, 1.20v, idling 32'c load 50'c
room temp 23.7c
 
I'd be more concerned with your full load temps. My B3 @ 3.0ghz idle temps read as: 44°C, 43°C, 36°C, 39°C +/- 1-2°C. It's kinda warm in my office though. Full stress load reaches 67°C on one core after about 20 minutes. Kinda risky with a B3 but I don't use any apps or games that will stress my chip to that point. Only Prime will get it that high.
 
I'll try tightening the screws a little more - perhaps its not making enough contact.

My load temps go up to around 70ish on orthos. Hopefully I can get it down enough to finally overclock.
 
i cant help but think the temp gauges in these chips have a 10-15c variance in readings.

i have a q6600 with a scythe ninja HS on gigbyte p35-ds3r my buddy has a E4300 has a zalmin 9700 with a gigbytep35-ds3l.

both put on by me. i lapped both heatsinks, same style paste application.

my q6600 idles at 22c the e4300 idles at 38c. both in the same room. same air flow everything. both OC'ed mine has + core voltage his is stock voltage.

now if i had to guess mine is reading low and his is reading high. both same version of core temp. i reseated his processor at least 5 times. even put washer down to make more pressure to hold the zalmin against the processor.
 
I've been wondering about the temperature sensor being wrong. I have a stacker 832 with a total of 7 120mm fans, and my mobo temp is about 28C, with my GPU idling at 35C.

The overall cooling in the case seems to be great, but the cpu is still causing me some problems. (Being a first time builder with a defective mobo is no fun ;), so after doing an rma and finally getting things to work, a problem like this is the last thing I want to deal with).
 
@GrimWD - what is your vcore (please don't tell me you're using a setting of auto)? That is key. Read my c2d/c2q overclocking guide and be sure to read the section about minimizing vcore as well as thermal management.

I dunno what a zerotherm nirvana is... how does it compare with an Ultra-120 Extreme? As others have pointed out, you may have to lap the base of your HS and the IHS on your q6600. Again, read the thermal management section of my guide for links to this.
 
My v-core is 1.288, which was the stock setting.

I retightened the heatsink this morning and it seemd to lower my temps a small bit.

I am now running at 9x300 on the 1.288 vcore at an idle temp of about 40C.

I read that the zerotherm nirvana was just slightly below the TRUE-120 in terms of performance, so I was really hoping to hit 3.6ghz.

I've dropped my expectations now, but would still like to be able to break 3ghz since I play a lot of high end games.
 
I've tried raising the vcore as high as 1.38, but I cannot get to windows on any clock higher than the 9x300 I'm running now.
 
What is your fan speed at when your cpu heats up? Oh and, check your speed at idle. If you're not overclocked, your speed could be 1.6ghz, so of course people will get low temps at that low speed.

My idle's around 40 degrees too with my Zalman 9500 but that's at 1400 rpm and 2.8ghz (9x311mhz). Before overclocking it, I set the treshold to 45 degrees and at full load (all 4 cores at 100% for a few hours) it would stay at 45-57 degrees...but my fan was spinning at 2500rpm. (louder than any of my other fans)

If I leave my fan at 100% all the time (loud), I'll stay at 40-45 at full load...but it's just annoying. I'd rather have 50 degrees and under 2000 rpm, since I can't even hear the fan then. (set temp in BIOS to 55 degrees until the fan starts spinning fast)

My friend's got an Ultra-120 with a 120mm fan at full speed (1400rpm) and his temps go slightly over 70 degrees when doing a stress test at 3.6ghz.

Anyway, I'm playing around with overclocking today just to see how far it'll go on my Zalman 9500 (cause I regret not buying an Ultra-120 but I wanna see if it would have made a big difference).
 
That stinks Grim. Did you check your full load temps? Or are you just concerned with idle temps? If so why?

I hoped to hit 3.2 or even 3.6 but thats how the cookie crumbles.

BigD - Same here with teh Zalman noise. I gotta keep it under 2000rpm or its just loud. Otherwise I'd probably be safe going to 3.2 but the noise would make me crazy.
 
Well my load temps under prime95 is 70C so it woud appear that I've already maxed out at a 1.28 vcore and 2.7ghz.

Disappointing since I really need that little bit extra for gaming.
 
@GrimWD- you might need to boost the MB's voltages (NB, IHC and FSB for example) to reach higher than 300.
 
Here's one that nobody has asked.

Are the heatsink fins actually getting warm under CPU load?

If not, your cooler has bad heatpipes. It doesn't happen often, but I have seen a few coolers that evidently had nothing in the heatpipes.

There is definitely something wrong if you are getting 70c at only 2.7Ghz.

Look at my sig. This is with a modified Thermaltake Big Typhoon. And max temps under prime95 loading all 4 cores only gets up to max ~65c.

And I haven't even lapped the CPU yet. I bet I could get it over 3.7Ghz completely stable if I did.
 
Seems like my temps aren't going to matter any more.

Cleaned off the cpu with isopropyl alcohol, reapplied AS5 and reseated the heatsink - and it seems like something has died - no longer getting a signal on the monitor. (GPU, HD, DVD, Fans, are all on and working).

Strange thing is this happened to me a week ago as well. Had a p5k, same problem couldn't get it to work, rma'd and bought a p5e instead, and this worked - or at least did for a few days until earlier today.

What are the chances of having the same problem with 2 different models of mobos within a week...

If my cpu died, how would I know?
 
cyclone3d said:
Here's one that nobody has asked.

Are the heatsink fins actually getting warm under CPU load?

If not, your cooler has bad heatpipes. It doesn't happen often, but I have seen a few coolers that evidently had nothing in the heatpipes.

There is definitely something wrong if you are getting 70c at only 2.7Ghz.

Look at my sig. This is with a modified Thermaltake Big Typhoon. And max temps under prime95 loading all 4 cores only gets up to max ~65c.

And I haven't even lapped the CPU yet. I bet I could get it over 3.7Ghz completely stable if I did.
Click to expand...

what changes did you do in the BIOS???.. i can't go past 9x333 on my q6600.. even if i up the cpu voltage to 1.45 :(
 
mjz_5 said:
what changes did you do in the BIOS???.. i can't go past 9x333 on my q6600.. even if i up the cpu voltage to 1.45 :(
Click to expand...


I was stuck at the same exact OC for a while, even if I upped the voltage to 1.4. But then I stumbled across a forum post somewhere with some settings that really made everything work for me.

These are my settings:

Vcore: Auto (the guy said to do 1.325 but I found I could use auto and it is still stable)
Mem: 2.09
HT: 1.48
NB Core: 1.45
SB Core: 1.60
CPU VTT: 1.55

I dropped my memory to 667 mhz to make sure everything was stable, then I brought it back up to 800. I don't do mem overclocking because its just not worth the hassle for the minimal performance gain to me.
Timings are 5 5 5 15

I didn't even know what most of these meant, but I typed them in and I was stable at 9x355 for a while in Prime95, but I had to back it down until I figured out a better way to deal with the heat. I just put on watercooling so I'll be turning it back up after I get the bugs worked out.
 
Dang Grim that sux!

Have you tried rebooting like mad? Asus boards can be kinda flakey sometimes. Mine gave me all kinds of 'Overclocking Failed' messages on boot when I wasn't overclocking a thing. Now that I am overclocking the message has all but disappeared and it boots fine. lol @ Asus.
 
Well I'm up and running again!

It seems like the row of capacitators(those little circular caps) is right along where the cpu lies, and the zerotherm nirvana sits on them and cannot make proper contact.

I've completely worn the screws away since they were hard to screw in, so if I manage to remove it, can anyone recommend a smaller heatsink that shouldn't conflict with the capacitators around the cpu on a p5e?
 
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