OC temps

[dragonfly]

I've OC'd my 4200+ to 2.39ghz, and I was wondering about temps...

 

Specs:

 

Asus A8N s939 sli premium

4200+ x2

pc4000 OCZ xtx gold

 

and for heatsink, TT big typhoon

 

This IS my first build and attempt at OC ever, so I'm probably doing somethign wrong. At stock speed, my idle temp for my proc was about 28-32 area (36-38 at load), and board was about 38 or 40 (i think). I oc'd to 2.39 and now my temps at idle at about 34-36 and under load at about 42 for my proc. This feels kinda high to me. BTW, to get temps I'm using the asus ai booster (but not to OC - using bios).

 

question 1: is this thing accurate?

 

question 2: this feels high, is it? should I be worried?

 

question 3: if yes to question 2, what do i do to fix it?

 

thanks guys!

[Laz.e.rus]

I DONT know if those are accurate temps, BUT, if they are...

Under 50C at load on and amd is ok. No worries. If your poppin over 50, start realizing that the life of your cpu IS getting shorter.

 

First..what is load to you? If I run dual prime 95 ( on my dual core) Ill hit and hold 49. But, gaming is only in the high 30s.

Obviously, I will never run prime and 100% tax both cpus in real life.

 

Next: Hows your caseflow? A major part that people dont realize...get that hot air OUT of there! Makes all the diff in the world.

[Cujo]

not sure on accuracy. use a program called coretemp as that will give you best chance at getting accurate temps. also, make sure coolnquiet is disabled in bios. NEVER oc with that on. newbs to ocing typically overlook this so just making sure.

 

as for temps, 42c is just fine. have you raised the voltage? 42c does seem a bit hit for bigtyphoon and stock volts. what's your ambient?

 

if possible, take a picture of your system with the side panel off to give us an idea for air flow and fans. then we can suggest ways to help or tell you if it's all good.

[dragonfly]

I can't get a pic at the moment unfortunately - no camera. But as for fans:

 

120 on the hdd rack (front of the case, bottom) for intake

smaller size(90?) on the top for out

120 on back for out

90 on back for out

my psu has the 2 fans on 90 degrees, pulling from the side (towards the side panel) and pushing it out the back (enermax noisetaker 600w)

 

Load to me (though i could be way off) is after playing ut for 3 hours. I mean, that's load to my pc anyway cause i cant think of much else that would be more of a load anyway.

 

I have disabled cool n quiet for sure. before I OC'd i turned it on just to see, but didnt really notice it being much quieter, so i disabled it. 1.35v is what its at right now I believe. I didnt raise it in bios, but it was set to that (and not auto) when i looked to oc in the first place.

 

 

 

I DL'd coretemp and ran it, and it was reading close to the same (within 1 degree) currently as my asus software.

 

Chances are, seeing as it's my first build, i didnt do thermal paste totally right, or something like that. I'll see if i can get my sis' camera and take a pic some time today.

[bushwack]

I DONT know if those are accurate temps, BUT, if they are...

Under 50C at load on and amd is ok. No worries. If your poppin over 50, start realizing that the life of your cpu IS getting shorter.

I'm going to agree with this, but I don't think it would hurt to run in the 50's after looking at what todays GPUs run at. My 7900 GT at the moment is at 56 with its stock heatsink and fan.

 

I also dont think it should be a problem to overclock with 'Cool and Quiet' enabled -providing you know what your doing. It works great on my system , as my temps never gets over 49 too with prime running. You can set the max fan speed to whatever temperature you like, so when your not gaming you don't have to listen to your CPU fan whine. But it did take me awhile to get the temp/fan settings adjusted just right.

[Cujo]

I also dont think it should be a problem to overclock with 'Cool and Quiet' enabled -providing you know what your doing. It works great on my system , as my temps never gets over 49 too with prime running. You can set the max fan speed to whatever temperature you like, so when your not gaming you don't have to listen to your CPU fan whine. But it did take me awhile to get the temp/fan settings adjusted just right.

 

NEVER USE COOLNQUIET WHILE OCING. you could seriously damage your components. cnq controls your multiplier and voltage. if you change these settings from stock to something different cnq could accidentally set your voltage incorrectly and fry your cpu.

 

 

as for the temps. if core temp is reading 42c that's actually really good temps for that setting. i read in the mid 40s at 2.8 with a higher rpm fan on my bigtyphoon.

 

based on your case description i remember you telling me you have an armor so cooling should be just fine. 2.4 on stock volts is alright. keep the core temps no higher then the low 50s and you should be fine. see how high she goes.

[dragonfly]

Alright guys - thanks a lot! I think I'll wait until I get a backup drive for storing all my school files. Just incase. But I'm looking forward to it for sure I'm thinking of getting another 120 fan for the front of the case too, just for fun.

 

New question, and easier i'm sure: If i want to go Raid1 (b/c i dont want to loose stuff ever) do i have to reformat and install xp over again? Or can i get a second identical drive and set it up from there?

 

oh yeah, Bush: i found out why my ping was so bad - my roomy was downloading revit and autocad. Stupid roomates lol

Edited September 17, 2006 by DarkArchon

[bushwack]

Maybe I am mistaken about what Cool'nQuiet is. My motherboard says "Supports AMD Cool'nQuiet Technology" but no where is it in the BIOS. Is this a software program? In my BIOS there is a smart fan controller that can be enabled. I thought that was the Cool'nQuiet thingy. It is a highly configurable fan speed controller, wish the case fans used it too.

[Cujo]

dark, i tried going raid 1 once without formatting on my dad's comp but i ended up giving up. he ended up not even using raid cause he didn't want to format or risk losing his data.

 

i actually have a second bay fan for the front of the armor. not sure how much it really helps but it looks cool.

 

bushwack, cool n quiet is a feature that should be in your bios somewhere. it's nothing to do with fan controls. it's more like on laptops when your cpu isn't fully utilized on battery power it drops to like 800mhz. same idea with your desktop. it changes the voltage and drops the multiplier to a default setting.

[Laz.e.rus]

Armor case + extra fans:

Amazing. I run cpu at 26-29 idle...with the cpu fan OFF. It kicks on at 30.

As for what it does for my vid card having the extra air moving thru there, my 7900gt is OCd to 555/1700 and never goes over 60C

[dragonfly]

Thanks again. According to what Bush said in the thermal paste section, I probably put on too much to begin with Yep. Noob here. Maybe someday when i'm really bored i'll try my hand at it again

 

K - If i dont want to loose files i think i'll just get a second drive for storage. The one I have atm (WD Sata2 250gig 16mb cache) i like a lot, so maybe i'll get a second one incase i ever feel like trying the raid0 again. In the mean time i'll see if i can find a cheap usb drive to throw my school files on.

 

The second fan: i think i'll do it. Fans are cheap anyway.

 

I OC'd to 2.42 now. I cant help myself, I'm addicted

[Cujo]

The second fan: i think i'll do it. Fans are cheap anyway.

 

you actually have to buy the 3 drive bay that thermaltake sells cause there's no actually mounts for case fans otherwise. it's not super cheap. cost me about 40cdn.

 

I OC'd to 2.42 now. I cant help myself, I'm addicted

 

haha, that's the way it starts.

[dragonfly]

Ha ha! Yeah you buy that if you want to be "Professional"

 

I bought a dvd +/- R RW today, and installed that. I also bought a 12 cm fan (Nikao Chameleon LED fan - looked pretty cool anyway, and had the lowest dbA i could find). I installed the DVD burner, then went to remove the A drive "holder" from the middle of the tower, and realized they had screwed it in on BOTH sides. I have no idea how to get that out now. So i took the fan, put it on top of the A casing and underneath the DVD burner (it's as far INSIDE the case as it goes, cause that's where it fits) and gently wedged two nicely cut pieces of cardboard in to hold it in place :D:D

 

You actually cant really see the carboard at all, and it's a perfect fit! Temps went down 5 degrees immediately. I also took out the hdd rack i'm not using near the top of the case by the outtake fan. Figure it'll let more air through. Temps now sitting at 30 instead of 35! thanks for the help guys! Thermal paste can get done another day, time to game!

[dragonfly]

Dunno how clear these are:

 

1

2

3

Edited September 19, 2006 by DarkArchon

[Cujo]

pics aren't workin for me. try www.imageshack.us

Edited September 19, 2006 by Cujo

[dragonfly]

I went up to 2.53 now. I was at 2.51, getting 149ish fps in CS:S stress test, then went to 2.53 and it dropped to 240ish fps. Any ideas why? And did I ever mention I hate filelodge? yeah, it's true. Oh yeah, and steam too.

 

Edit: I have one. I forgot I had i explorer running. I did the test again and got 148. Guess that was it.

 

At what point do you have to start increasing the volts? I'm sitting at 2.53 and 30 C cpu and 37 C system. I feel like I have room left to go...

Edited September 19, 2006 by DarkArchon

[Cujo]

increase the volts when your system is unstable.

 

temps looking good.

[dragonfly]

increase the volts when your system is unstable.

 

temps looking good.

 

Ok, I'm now curious as to what qualifies as "unstable".

 

I was playing ut2k4 onslaught yesterday, and all of a sudden when I was zoomed in w/ the hellbender rear, the game froze up for about 5 seconds and continued to play the same audio sound (not like a loop, but a constant buzz at the pitch it was at at that moment). This happened twice. I have had AA and AF set to max for that game under performance and quality settings for the last 3 or 4 weeks, but this is the first glitch like this. I think it's also the first time i've played at 2.5ghz. Is this considered unstable? I also switched servers and the problem didnt happen again, but then the problem didnt happen to anyone else in the server i was in either.

 

Does it hurt to increase volts 1 step if it doenst really need it? I can also hear the cpu doing the "buzz/thinking" sound sometimes a bit more now than when it was at 2.3 or 2.4 (dunno how to describe it). Does this have somethign to do with anything?

 

Yay for noobs!

[bushwack]

I went up to 2.53 now. I was at 2.51, getting 149ish fps in CS:S stress test, then went to 2.53 and it dropped to 240ish fps. Any ideas why? And did I ever mention I hate filelodge? yeah, it's true. Oh yeah, and steam too.

 

Edit: I have one. I forgot I had i explorer running. I did the test again and got 148. Guess that was it.

 

At what point do you have to start increasing the volts? I'm sitting at 2.53 and 30 C cpu and 37 C system. I feel like I have room left to go...

Is there some kinda cap on the fps in the CS test? I just ran it and got 150, same as yours but I'm running a vanilla 64 3500+ and a 7900GT. Figured your GTX would have pulled ahead considerably.

 

Last month after the AMD price plumet, I OC'ed my 3500+ from 2.2. to 2.4 (10x240). I had to add a smidgen of voltage to make it stable, I can't remember but the 2.4g settings are saved in my BIOS Reloder program if I need to retrieve them (I love you Biostar T-Force!). The extra speed boosted my Quake 3 bench fron 75fps to 78fps -wooptie. But the thing is this: to keep my CPU at the old 2.2 coolness the fan adjusted itself and now was audible.

All in all the minute performance gain wasn't worth the extra noise to me so I am running at default speeds.

[Cujo]

dark, unstable is crashing. programs and windows crashing. a 5 second glitch i'm not sure can be attributed to ocing.

 

as for the cpu "thinking". you should not be able to hear your cpu EVER. perhaps you are mistaking your cpu for your hard drives?? that and the fans is all the noise your system should make.

 

bush, a 9% gain in core speed is gonna gain you MAX 9% in a cpu limited situation. in cs:s for example it would gain you almost 9% performance. i'm not familiar with quake so i can't tell you the gains for that. just remember every little bit helps and your avg fps may not go up much but the biggest limitation in any game is min fps and that's what you always want as high as possible.

 

back when i did cpu tests in cs:s i gained 29% on my avg fps goin from 2 to 2.5GHz.

[bushwack]

Just ramped my 2.2 up to 2.4, the CS perf test went from 150 to 159.

I use my PC for primarily for gaming, entertainment and communications. Right now it just doesn't make sense to me to overclock, unless I see over a 10% boost in a game. According to what CS test and Doom3 timedemo1 have to say about it, I am not even getting a 1% increase. Maybe in the future when I get a better video card. Which brings me to another question...

 

Why is my 64 2.2g + 7900GT combo on par with Dark's dually @ 2.5 + GTX as far as CS perf test?

[Cujo]

Why is my 64 2.2g + 7900GT combo on par with Dark's dually @ 2.5 + GTX as far as CS perf test?

 

well cause you have no idea what resolution and settings he's using for starters.

 

also, 150-159 is more than 1% and another thing, cs:s is completely different in servers then in the stress test. stress test is primarily gpu limited but in game playing with ppl is VERY cpu limited. one sec i'll get a link.

 

http://www.gamrs.co/forums/in...showtopic=22907

 

 

and why doesn't it make sense to overclock? what's the harm? if you're stable then you're not damaging anything so why not? plus with winter coming up, extra heat can't be a bad thing.

Edited September 21, 2006 by Cujo

[bushwack]

Durrr, I was thinking 1% of 150 was 15. So it is a 6% increase, not too bad for free I might actually get up to 10% after 2.5 but still I don't like the added noise.

 

I am just used to back in the day when I had a Pentium 75 running at 100, a Celeron 300A @ 450, a 533A @ 800. The gains of overclocking were massive. I still play with my old 300A system to this day with a pair of Voodoo2 in SLI, man is the old GlobalWin's twin fans are loud, the're worn out. A tech told me long ago not to overclock, I'll kill the chips. The 300A still runs over 7 years laster.

 

Yeah as winter and UT 2007 approches I may try to run mine around 2.5, but I just want quiet and stability. If I cant achieve both at the same time I will throttle it down again.

 

For Christmas I thought about getting another gig o' ram and another 7900GT but I think I'm going to shoot for one of those new LoCS widescreens for the living room.

[Cujo]

from 2 to 2.8ghz is a big gain for me. haha. my system isn't silent but it's mostly air noise that you hear. the fans and drives don't make any annoying noise.

[dragonfly]

sorry guys, net was down all day yesterday.

 

Ok, thanks for the info Cujo - I'd guess its my hdd making noise then. Actually, that makes a lot of sense.

 

I used 1280x1024 res (max for my monitor), 4xAA and 16xAF (or other way around, cant remember, but i liked the 4x better than the 8x), everything else maxed. That's what I used for my vid stress test for CS:S. I should also note that before I OC'd I was getting about 139ish (if i remember correctly). I do have background services running too, like InCD, Norton, Logitech, stupid pirated windows thingy i cant get rid of. Dunno if that makes a difference or not. Oh yeah, and asus ai booster for temps. BTW, I also did this test with EVERYTHING maxed, and got within 2 fps of with AA on 4x, so it didnt really hurt it at all - i just like the looks better.

 

Bush: have you enabled AA and AF for ut2k4? If so, have you noticed any glitches ever?

 

Temps are not idle at 28-29. After gaming for an hour, they're at 34ish.