CPU Temp
 

I've been rendering a movie and normally it only takes a few hours on my system I have a pentuim 3.2 with the Asus P5AD2 Motherboard so I installed Asus Probe and it's showing a CPU temp at 70/C while I'm rendering so is this the problem shouldnt the temp be a bit lower? Thank's for any input and if I need a new cpu fan any recommendation?

Thank's

Nope, Pentium chips get hotter than a firecracker, that's been Intel's thorn in their side for years and what AMD continues to exploit. As long as the machine is not crashing your golden, If it does however then you need to explore better cooling cause rendering is pushing the processor to the max.

You might want to think about a card solution which can off-load the needs of your NLE to a dedicated card, I use the Canopus DV Raptor RT2 Max and it's benefit is renderless editing, the flip side benefit is during renderouts the speed is dramatically increased as the dedicated card handles all the calls for transitions and effects. Canopus no longer makes this card, but you can look at thier other solutions, also look at Matrox.

Miguel

yeah I would say that 70 is getting a bit on the high side. I am presuming you are running a prescott 3.2 CPU? Prescott's are known for running pretty hot but 70 is getting very hot.

I am not sure at what temperature thermal throttling kicks in on the Prescott 3.2 but I own a Pentium D 2.8 and thermal throttling kicks in at 66C. I have my CPU overclocked at the moment at 3.4Ghz with a SI-120 heatsink - idle it's 42 and under load it 60c. I would be looking at trying to reduce your temperature. Check out www.silentpcreview.com - they have a ton of info on the forums about CPU's and cooling.

What's your ambient room temperature as this will drastically effect your cooling capability?

Thank's all for the replies. I have a Pentium 4 640 Prescott 800MHz FSB 2MB L2 Cache LGA 775 EM64T Processor.My room temp is very cool I never use the heat. I believe it is throttling I just don't know what to do to get it to run cooler beside getting a new heatsink. Thank's all for the suggestions.

Hey Chad,

well if the ambient room temperature is low and you are not overclocking it then I would suggest the following could be wrong :

i) your ventilation and airflow in the case is poor. Take the side of the case of and monitor what temperature it get's to.

ii) the heatsink may need reseating on the cpu. You might want to reapply some heatsink compound and reseat the heatsink for a new seal.

The stock cooler on your prescott shouldn't be allowing the cpu to get to those temps.

Cheers

Robert

Is the cpu fan the one that came with the processor or not? With Asus Probe you should be able to monitor cpu fan speed: does it get faster when temp goes high or not? It should. A better (larger or dual fan system) fan would help. Lowering the temp at around 64-66 at full load would be ok - I think Asus Probe's treshold is 72oC.

Yes it's the stock fan and think it's a very poor design especially trying to install it. I will look into the fan speed and see if it gets faster under load.Thank's for the help.

OK I did some tests before I started the rendering I had a value on the fan at about 1765 once the rendering started it went up to 1864 for a second and then back down to 1820 and moved up and down and the temp got up to 71/C. I reset the heatsink and put some new artic silver 5 and still running hot. Any suggestion on a good heatsink? Thank's again for the help

if you're feeling brave...
 

you could try rigging up a liquid cooling system,

http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/produc...5/cl-w0075.asp

given that you are using a stock fan, i would place part of the blame there...

newegg shows fans with good data, esp. airflow...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2&N=2000110062

I am using this cooler for my AMD-XP:

http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/axp-3200.html

granted this chip doesnt have such major heat problems, but its a great cooler nonetheless...

also, an unappealing as it seems, removing both sides of the case and letting it run open greatly increases ventilation (which might also be a problem)...

also, seating a cpu is a really delicate task, i would make sure you cleaned off all the old gook with alcohol or arctic silver's cleaning fluid before you laid down a new layer of paste, and make sure you lay it down nice and smooth, covering all the areas..

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_s...structions.htm

sorry if i'm repeating stuff you already know...

-raza

There are plenty of heatsink/fans available that will outperform the stock Intel heatsink/fan. A good place to find one is newegg.com. If you read the reviews of the different offerings on the site carefully, you should be able to find one that will work well for you. Coolermaster and Thermaltake are a couple of brands that generally offer reasonably good quality. I wouldn't go nuts with a liquid cooling setup, unless you want to seriously overclock maybe (not a great idea).

The stock CPU + retail will work fine as long as you install it properly. The stock heatsink is actually the easiest to install, and harder than the other solutions to screw up. If you install it right, the CPU will be well cooled and have lots of headroom/safety margin (some people actually use it to overclock).

Yes other heatsink/fan combinations are better, but they are also unnecessary unless you want to overclock (which is a waste of time in my opinion, because it will lead to instability or you using time testing your computer).

2- Some motherboards and CPUs will report the temperatures differently than others, so you can only compare temperatures if the CPU and motherboard are the same. i.e. Abit, in the intel 865/875 chipset days had motherboards which reported temperatures higher than their competitors.

3- Applying Artic Silver 5 should lower temperatures a few degrees compared to the waxy stuff that comes with the standard heatsink. This was my experience with my Pentium 2.6C (which runs cooler than the newer Pentiums).

4- If Asus Probe warns you that the temperatures are too high, then they're too high. Your processor may slow itself to half speed to ensure stability. Any higher and it'll automatically shut itself off.

Otherwise you're fine.

Thank's all for the replies. I ended up getting a ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 7 Pro heatsink and boy what a difference. I'm rendering right now and it has not gone over 55c and it idles at around 37c.Thank's all again for the help it's much appreciated.

Chad

Well, I have to disagree on AMD chips not having major heat problems.

To start with my AMD 3200XP cruises at 62 degrees C, using the original AMD fan. I already tried a slightly better fan by Spire but it didn't improve much, or was even worst. I live in Rio de Janeiro, but I rarely use air-conditioning due to temp problems in my room. Temps in Rio are very hot in January and February, the rest of the year being around 25 C. As I live on eighth floor my room runs quite cool.

When I am playing games it's not rare the game taking me out, probably due to heat problems.

I have plenty of fans on my case, besides the one on the supply. One of the HDs, one on the back and one on the side, blowing straight into the CPU. I do not overclock.

I have considered using a larger case, but the thing is that if I put my hand on the heatsink it's not that hot. I am used to work with audio electronics, particularly power amps, so I am familiar with using thermal paste. I wonder what might be happening or how to go about it.

Would a better heatsink, like Thermalright SLK800, do a better job?


Carlos

Carlos -

I'd definitely suggest you get a new fan/heatsink. I never use stock fans on a modern CPU, even when a computer is in a nice, cool, air conditioned environment.

I am not familiar with the model you mentioned, but if you read enough user feedback comments on the model (like at newegg.com), you should be able to get a good idea if it will work for you or not. I'll just mention, that a good fan doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. I pay particular attention to over-clockers comments, because they really challenge fan/heatsink performance, and when they say something works for them, you know that it's been tried and worked for someone in a relatively demanding environment (I DO NOT suggest overclocking a CPU).

The way you described your chassis fan setup, it sounds like you might be saying that all the fans blow into the case. If that is the way you have it setup, reverse the rear fan to blow outwards from the case.

Thanks for your comments, Robert.

About the rear fan, it blows the air out, as it should, not in. And the air does come out warm. The one up front blows through the HDs, and that air should go through the back too.

Only the one on the side blows in, straight into the CPU and the video board.

What should I look for at Newegg? Feedback from people using a CPU similar to mine?

Your advice on listening to what overclockers do is certainly a good one, but where are them? Which is a good forum to go to about computer matters? Once I went to an Nvidia one, if I am not wrong, but they were very rude, didn't like it at all. Moderators did not seem to moderate too much.


Carlos

Sounds like you do have the chassis fans set up correctly.

Look for CPU cooling fan/heatsinks at newegg, and read the feedback comments from people that have purchased them. I generally want to see at least 50 feedbacks, with the vast majority being very positive, for a fan/heatsink.

Here's an example of a listing at newegg for something that might be suitable:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106035

If your chassis is designed for fan placement at the lower front of the chassis (assuming it is a tower), you should put a fan there also, blowing air in (towards the back of the chassis). If you cannot put a fan there, you might consider replacing the rear fan with a higher capacity fan (higher CFM rating).

The fan I have up-front, lower side, blows through the HDs to the back of the chassis, just like you say.

The CFM rating is a term I just recently learned. But it's close to impossible to find such data on the products you can find here where I live (Brazil).

Though looking for a more powerful fan to put on the back is certainly an interesting option. I will try that.

But I think my main concerns should be looking for a larger case, perhaps a server type (if there's such a thing), which would not stuff hot air in a small area. Also a more effective heatsink/fan for the CPU.


Carlos

I had followed your previous advice and understood what you said on "Newegg feedbacks". And I had done exactly what you seemed to do, finding that same "Volcano" type, which had the highest CFM.

But the most powerful seem to have one thing in common: they are noisy. The Volcano seems to have a fan control, which you can put up front to regulate it, which might be fine.

One that seems to have best of both worlds (high CFM and low noise) is this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106072

Noise is a problem in an NLE computer if you are going to edit audio, and I am already doing so. Even if the computer will be placed in a corner, better deal with those concerns before they become a problem.


Carlos

Yes, audible noise and cooling will go hand in hand (generally).

You could go to liquid cooling (or other more costly options) if need be, but you might consider using headphones to edit, as a possible, effective solution (might even be an improvement, even before increasing computer noise levels, if need be).

I don't see why you would want to waste time to fix something that's not broken. Seriously people, you could be spending time working on your projects instead of working on your computer.

If you really wanted to see if your computer is too hot, the practical test would be to run Prime95's torture test to see if the CPU is making calculation errors. If your CPU is not making calculation errors, then it is working perfectly. The retail CPU heatsink/fan is generally designed well enough that there is a lot of headroom before the CPU is overheating and generating errors. You can overclock your CPU around 20% on the stock heatsink/fan (not that you should do this).

Anyways, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Putting in a very high cfm fan will just give you a noise problem... and then using headphones can give you ergonomics and mixing problems (don't use headphones to mix audio... you hear things the audience won't hear, and you don't get stereo). Of course you can get a good cfm fan that isn't noisy (check out silentpcreview.com, and fans like the Zalman 7700alcu)... but that's money and time you could've better spend elsewhere. And re-installing the heatsink/fan has a small risk of damage / causing other problems.

This a small fan. The smaller the fan the faster it has to spin, and high speed means high frequency noise (the worst kind).

Rendering is nothing compared to some games for putting your CPU on fire. I have the 120mm Zalman 7700 CU (all coper heatsink) always at full speed and all I hear is a waft. It's a big (and heavy) boy though, doesn't fit all motherboards. Arctic silver is a must and a technician to mount the thing is a good idea.

This is another heatsink/fan that you might take a look at:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118119

It has a 92mm fan (should be able to push air more quietly than smaller fans). Zalman has a pretty good reputation, and this one has many positive reviews.

Let's heat down!

Glenn: I did try the Prime95 test some time ago (with another memory block unfortunately) for several days and it did went through fine. In spite of that I kept having problems with a strategic game I use to play to relax: the program copes out by itself, saying the reason for that I might be having heat problems. The minimum CPU temp I have (62 degrees C cruising, easily going up to 70, when the alarm starts to ring) I do think it's a bit high, don't you? What will it do if I need more demanding rendering? Coping out on a game is not as bad as coping out on the middle of a render. This is not fixing something which ain't broke, because that game behaviour seems like an early alarm for other problems.

Robert: headphones are certainly not an option. They are the worst way to do a mix, even when I am a professional sound recordist myself that might know how to judge that. Speakers are the way to do serious audio mix, particularly equalizing. The Zalman fan you suggest looks better than the option I found, as it's all copper and with adjustable fan speed.

Dionyssios: your fan looks very good. But it doesn't seem to attend Socket A type CPUs like mine.

The option is now between these two Zalmans.

The fan supports Pentium 4 (sockets 775 and 478) and AMD Sempron/AMD64 (socket 754/939/940).

Mine is socket A. It may be more difficult to fit on my mobo.

I don't know that much about working with audio, but I have been under the hood of more computers than I can count. Since you need to use speakers, and headphones aren't a viable option, you need to get the CPU cooled, while minimizing noise levels coming from the computer. Despite counsel given by another member here, I would never wait until a computer is actually displaying performance symptoms to address cooling. By the time you are experiencing performance problems, due to heat, the CPU is, more than likely, being damaged to some degree. I don't want to ever see my CPUs go over 60C. You can probably find a conventional type fan/heatsink that will provide adequate performance (enough cooling, within acceptable noise limits), but if not, you could look at liquid cooling options. You mentioned getting another, larger chassis. Looking at getting a new chassis could be a good idea in your situation. Some are designed much better for airflow than others. You might look at some of the cases from Cooler Master. Generally, cases that allow for the use of 120mm chassis fans can give you better airflow/noise level performance.