TRUE - poor cooling even at 1.07v

M

Masejoer

Gawd
Joined
Mar 11, 2001
Messages
698
So I have a TRUE that I've reseated and whatever, along with adding a washer to the mounting brackets. My Q9550 can do 1.07v (the lowest my board will go - set to 1.1v in the BIOS) at 3.4GHz but I get a load temperature of 68ºC. At 1.175v (stock), I also get ~70ºC load. At 3.8GHz with 1.175v I get ~75ºC load. Any idea what's going on?

This is with IBT/Realtemp at 100ºC Tjmax and using Thermalright's thermal paste. The temperature drops a whopping 5 degrees with the side panel off. The system has a 70cfm 120mm fan on the heatsink, another at the rear, and two 60cfm 92's up front. It shows an idle of 45-50 no matter where I'm at with the above settings. One would think the heatsink wasn't mounted right but I know how to mount a heatsink and have remounted it a couple times since getting this combination. The surfaces are both pretty flat with a very slight crown on both surfaces - the crowns are aligned so that the high spots make the most contact.

Edit:
I should add that this is with a supposed 75ºF room temperature (feels a bit cooler than that thing's reporting, closer to upper 60's) on a p5e-vm with vdroop mod.
 
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Just going by your saying it is mounted properly -----

Are the heatpipes and heatsink fins getting warm, or is only the base of the heatsink getting hot?

If the base is getting hot and the heatsink is not, then it is probably one or more bad heatpipes.

Even if it is sorta working.... it sounds like it may have at least one bad heatpipe.
 
Best test would be be , (if possible) to swap the HS and use same fan and/or the CPU if you know someone locally with same chip. Lap the HS.... always an option.
 
It is somewhat hard to mount these things incorrectly, but I've seen threads on it. With the right amount of paste in the middle, just tightening down loosely one corner, then the opposite, then doing the other two to full tightness, finishing up with tighening up the first two, there is uniform load across the base of the heatsink. It does not hit on the case of any part of the motherboard. With the washer, it takes some effort to twist the thing. I cannot PUSH air through the heatsink with my case unless I want backwards airflow.

Honestly, the entire thing warms up as equally as it can but it isn't the easiest to measure with the amount of airflow I've got going over the fins. The fan pulls away a fair amount of heat. The base doesn't get too warm and never has which was my first reason to pull the system apart and check everything out including clearances. I previously used an Ultima 90 that cooled about the same when only overclocked to 3.4GHz at stock voltage on a p5q-em...I saw very little difference between the two heatsinks.

It is hard to know if a 25-30ºC difference between idle and load is to be expected but it appears to not be normal. These temperatures are more along the lines of i7 chips. I have not tried the system with the stock heatsink - only have used one on an E7200 that has issues over 3.4GHz with temperatures (now in a Shuttle XPC).
 
Why do you have the fan in a pull set up? It should be set up to push air through the HS to the back of the case (or where ever your exhaust fan is).
 
BlueFireIce said:
Why do you have the fan in a pull set up? It should be set up to push air through the HS to the back of the case (or where ever your exhaust fan is).
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he has a push pull setup..

OP: have you tried running it with the pull fan off?
 
I also didn't read a push - pull setup but rather just a pull setup i.e "I cannot PUSH air through the heatsink with my case unless I want backwards airflow." I must admit, I can't picture in my head why you cant have a push air setup on your TRUE. Any chance of a picture?
 
wtf, my post didn't go through...

Anyways, I may not have been clear last night due to exhaustion...I have no room for a PUSH fan in my case due to a hard drive being in the way (Antec EA3480) so I have to have the fan PULL the air from the back. It flows into another 120mm rear-mounted case fan fan that is 2" away from the heatsink's fan. I have no capability of using PUSH unless I bring in air from the back and PUSH it towards the front of the case.
 
So you are effectively pulling the warm air from the hard drive and passing it though the CPU heatsink.

I bet if you modded the case and made a duct that went from the outside of the case (side) to the front of the heatsink, it would lower temps quite a bit.

For that matter, you could mount a push fan on the outside of the case to send air through the duct.

Also, if you blocked the edges of the heatsink with something so that the air is forced to go all the way through the heatsink and not just take the "path of least resistance", it would probably help as well.
 
How many intake fans do you have? You need to get room temperature air near that heatsink, not the warm air that is coming in though your hard drives. What case are you using?
 
Technophobe said:
I also didn't read a push - pull setup but rather just a pull setup i.e "I cannot PUSH air through the heatsink with my case unless I want backwards airflow." I must admit, I can't picture in my head why you cant have a push air setup on your TRUE. Any chance of a picture?
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yeah i relize i really shouldnt post when im half asleep anymore.. :p

i also agree with the ducting but that only depends on how many hard drives hes running..
 
A pull fan only on a TRUE is not going to be very efficient. Not surprised your temps are where they are.

The fins on the TRUE need turbulent, high pressure airflow to cool efficiently. Above that, an axial fan doesn't work very efficiently when its intake path is largely locked by a gigantic heatsink with tight fin spacing and what little air it is getting is already heated.

The HR01+ or a smaller HSF altogether might be a better option for you.
 
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There are two 92mm fans up front pushing air in. I originally had the rear fan ducted to the heatsink using aluminum tape but didn't like the lack of cooling around the cpu socket so removed it and installed a fan on the heatsink. It cooled the same.

I've got one hard drive up front, one mounted to the bottom of the case, and one mounted up high in the second 5 1/4" bay (the three locations for hard drives in this case). After the cpu is loaded up, it drops back down to idle temperatures within around 5 seconds so I can't see there being much difference between room ambient and case temperatures. As noted, the entire load only drops around 5ºC with the case open and laying on its side. The northbridge (or mb temp, don't remember which this board has) reads a whopping 42ºC loaded - pretty low.
 
Stellar said:
A pull fan only on a TRUE is not going to be very efficient. Not surprised your temps are where they are.

The fins on the TRUE need turbulent, high pressure airflow to cool efficiently. Above that, an axial fan doesn't work very efficiently when its intake path is largely locked by a gigantic heatsink with tight fin spacing and what little air it is getting is already heated.

The HR01+ or a smaller HSF altogether might be a better option for you.
Click to expand...

This is more of what I am looking for. Any suggestions for a PWM fan that has some decent suction? The above temperatures are with the fan running at 100% but in normal use, I let the motherboard vary the temperature on its own since it makes the system dead silent at idle and remains in the low 50's at idle. The motherboard ramps up the fans (all 4 of them) to full speed at 60ºC.

I wish a better designed case with similar dimensions would be released - I don't feel like doing modifications to this one. My biggest desire are easy-replace/clean air filters up front as I'm having to clean the heatsink off every month or so as cooling begins to suffer more than the temperatures above. The rest of the case remains spotless...damn heatsink/pull fan configuration :p The hard drive layout could be thought through a bit better, especially by using standard 120/120mm fan design and making the front panel inputs horizontal again.

My hard drives run cool with exception of the one up top in the 5 1/4" bay that sits at 50 something Celsius due to lack of airflow.
 
SGSeeker said:
Any suggestions for a PWM fan that has some decent suction?
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That's the thing, fans tend not to work well in a pull set up on a TRUE because it pulls from the sides rather than through the length of the HS, fans work good in a pull setup when shrouded like on a rad.

I still cant see why you can use a pull set up on the HS, I am not familiar with with your case, do you have any photos of the TRUE mounted inside?
 
I don't think so but I'll see about grabbing one. I still need to mod the case to reroute the cabling :p
 
I'm too lazy to go recheck the rules on using image tags and image sizes so I'll just post links. The wiring does not really get in the way of airflow but it can't be managed further due to the length of cabling. I need to modify the case in order to better route the power and SATA cables. The inside:

http://home.comcast.net/~seekproj/ea3480_1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~seekproj/ea3480_2.jpg

Edit:
I will add that I can prime again while touching the base of the heatsink and it gets slightly warm, as with the rest of the heatsink - including the top fin gets warm enough to feel. It is all very slight though. I cannot get a good feel for heat inside the heatpipes. This is where a temperature gun would come in handy. During IBT, a constant "warm" air comes out the back of the heatsink and chassis. The base is never HOT, but rather warm without even being close to discomfort.
 
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if you can move the hdd to 5.25" and mount the cooler sideways or reverse the cooling fan direction i think that would be ok.
 
There is already a drive up in the spare 5 1/4" bay. Without doing something with that drive, a fan can't be mounted on "front" and and heatsink doesn't fit the other direction...just barely.
 
I'd recommend getting a larger case and put all your cables behind the mobo tray. Airflow looks to be the issue.
 
I think this is a simple case of having to small of a case, that lower HDD doesn't get hot sitting that close to the vid card? Or does it also block air flow into the card? You might want to try what was suggested and reverse the air flow in the case, intake in the back, exhaust out the front and push air through the HS and see if that helps (hey, it doesn't cost anything).
 
Eh, was just curious why my load at 1.07v is the same as 1.17. If it is indeed case, I won't be doing anything as it's already large enough. The 5 degree drop with the case open isn't as much as you'd expect if it was indeed a case airflow issue. Anyways, with normal use, I rarely see it hit 60 and my graphics hard idles at 70 with 17% fan speed so there isn't much to worry about - I'm just curious about the poor-ish cooling of the cpu heatsink as the rest of the system runs cool for the parts that are in there (overclocked g35 at 447MHz/8GB ram, quad core and HD4870 running 10-15 degrees cooler than my HD4850 did with stock firmware in a more open case). It's a nice compact setup that gets me away from the Shuttles - I only hated the fact that each upgrade needed a new barebones.
 
A05 is compact as well, with much better build quality, style, cooling, and room for an ATX motherboard.

I would highly recommend it. :)
 
Does seem a bit warm. Use software to set your video card fan higher... 70 really is too high in my opinion. I've had to RMA two cards that hit 96C at load after a week. Sure 70 isn't near as bad as 96C but I'm sure it does shorten the life of the card.
 
Stellar said:
A05 is compact as well, with much better build quality, style, cooling, and room for an ATX motherboard.

I would highly recommend it. :)
Click to expand...

There's a lot more to "compact" than height - Lian Li cases are HUGE in the depth department. I won't be going any larger and if anything, my setup will be moved down to ITX at some point. The only reason I have the drives I do is for RAID1 storage and my boot drive will likely go SSD here soon. The system gets very light gaming as I'm only playing the first game now in over 2 years. I just can't stand waiting for PC's to do ANYTHING, ever since moving from a 486 DX4 to a 300Mhz K6/32MB ram/4GB hdd/Riva 128/Windows 95 back in the day. A quick quad core and 8GB of memory helps aid in this, along with SSD.


noteworthy said:
Does seem a bit warm. Use software to set your video card fan higher... 70 really is too high in my opinion. I've had to RMA two cards that hit 96C at load after a week. Sure 70 isn't near as bad as 96C but I'm sure it does shorten the life of the card.
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Eh, it has a 3 year warranty, doesn't matter too much. At 100% fan speed, it runs in the 40's so it's the standard temperature the HD4870's do with the stock cooling.
 
I would try reversing your intake and exhaust setup. Set the rear exhaust as intake, turn the TRUE's fan around so it's pushing air towards the hard drives, and flip the front intakes and use them for exhaust. I know it goes against convection but unless you want to get a new case or do some mods on yours (external side panel intake) it may work out well. Just keep an eye on the video card temps.
 
Did you lap the TRUE right? I think the best way is to get a full size ATX case for the best airflow.
 
This may seem a bit "Getto", but I think it may be worth the try in your case !
Cover the sides of the heatsink and seal the gap at the top and the bottom with duct tape so it forces the air to be pulled through the heatsink.
 
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