Appropriote CPU temp folding?
I'm kind of a newb about cooling, I just slap on the heatsink and leave it. So I recently just setup my new motherboard that I got from an RMA (Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra) and I noticed with Folding at home running, the temperature is running around 135-140 Degrees (F). Is this an okay temperature? Is this what it should be running or is it too hot? The processor is an AthlonXP 2100+, running at standard clock speed.
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If it's a stock heatsink, it often will be pretty high temps when running FAH. Check if it's seated, check if it's using a TIM, and if so, get rid of it and use some AS3 or another decent thermal paste. Another option is to grab yourself a reasonable replacement HSF, they usually come with some heatsink compound for free. Anything is better than TIMs (a little Thermal Interface Material thing, looks like a sticker kinda material).
Once you've got those temps down you should be able to clock it up a bit more as well and get more WUs done
Is your case very cramped? If so, can you fit some case fans? If the case temperatures are high, you might benefit from slapping an air intake at the front (bottom) and an air exhaust fan at the back (usually there is a location for the PSU). It should help get the temps down and keep the hard disc(s) cool(er) too, which will keep it working for longer in my experience. Some HDDs run hot as hell without cooling
SK7 w 50cfm fan
FAH v3.25beta @ 100%
40C / 104F
John.
The difference you saw by just changing the TIM is pretty normal compared to junk/no TIM at all.
Lets check what the temps are in the room where the pc is at. If you know that, then we can tell you straight away what you can expect. Use F@H since it gives pretty accurate full load temps and that will also help things a lot. As a good general thumb of rule, 25C MAX over ambient on the cpu at load is good/ok for a retail/junk heatsink/fan but pretty high at default cpu speed and voltage. You dont have to care about the case cooling since you have more than enough to do the job.
For example, as we speak my 2100 @2 ghz is running at 50c with a retail amd heatsink/fan for a XP1700 and wothout any casefans at all at an ambient of 23c. As long as your ambient isnt any higher than that, i cant see any problems getting your temps around those temps. Let me know if there is anything i can do to help out buddy. Give us a rundown of the volt on the cpu/memory/chipset and what the bios report it as.
Mac
The ambient in my 'server' room goes up to insane values as I can't afford aircon (I'm in the UK, would cost too much to install & run). When temps are above 30 degC in the room, the additional heat of the 18 PCs really doesn't help stability much
It sticks out about 3kW worth of heat continuously. Most of the time it can escape, I'm planning to move the big rack in the loft and tunnel cool air over it, hot air away from it, but I haven't had the time
I'm in a flat, first floor, so it's not that hard to climb up. There are no further floors but I'm just paranoid. I cannot replace the rigs if they die due to the cost
Still, most of the time as said, they're not a problem
Thanks for the info Mac, this is what I'm running at now. I replaced the "cyber cooler" HSF, cause that thing just kinda sucks, I replaced it with the retail heatsink which seems to be working better than that previous one.
It's cooled down ALOT in my area since I first was having this problem, but here's the rundown anyway.
Ambient Room Temp: 19.4C
Case Temp: 25C
CPU Temp: 48C
Voltages:
CPU 1.74v (AthlonXP 2100+)
DDR 2.46v (three 256mb sticks, one 2700, two 2100)
the board is a Soyo Dragon Ultra KT400.
48c (under full load/F@H) is still a pretty high temperature for a 2100 running at stock speed and voltage, isnt it?