Heat

[Jripper]

Sorry for the long essay about to follow but thought I'd make it detailed.

I bought an amd athlon II x3 435 around 2 years ago. 2 months earlier I unlocked it into a phenom II x4 B35 processor. It was stable and I tested it for long hours(6-8 hours continuous running), as well as with passmark,cpumark, Cinebench and Sisoft sandra and cpu hungry games like gta 4. It ran fine without any problems.
However around one week ago, the pc shut down automatically while I was playing modern warfare 3. I restarted and it worked fine so I didn't pay any attention to it. This morning when I was trying to compress a 7 gb iso using winrar it shut down again. I restarted and tried compressing again and it shut down yet again. I used speedfan and noticed that the processor was reaching temps of 76 degrees and then the pc turned off. I stopped the compression and saw the idle temps were around 50-52 degrees( fans were off in the room but c'mon its winter). So I cleaned the heatsink and the blades of the cooler(there was a lot of dust). Upon starting up the pc the temperatures were 39 degrees. So I started the compression and again it jumped to around 70 degrees(the cabinet was open at this time. The side panel was not closed.)
At the moment of typing this the cabinet is still open and the compression is going on alongside. The temperature is at 69 degrees. I'm worried about closing the cabinet. Any solutions to reduce these temperarutes? Is it a problem because of the extra unlocked core? Please advise.

My specs are in the signature and my Psu is a crap one(frontech 450-500 watt one. el cheapo. pathetic one. will change soon.)

 

[OSxSnowLeopard]

I think shut down at 70c is too soon. You must check your bios Temp. config. for this.

 

[coderunknown]

time to buy some quality TIM. yes the unlocked core & maybe the 6Mb cache (if there is any) is contributing to the heat. have you tried undervolting. also AVOID SPEEDFAN. use HWMonitor.

 

[Jripper]

@Sam Didn't get the "TIM" And no there isn't a 6mb L3 cache. Just the extra core.
No haven't tried undervolting. there weren't any problems so didn't try(also never tweaked with the voltage settings before so not really sure about doing it).
And okay will stop with the speedfan then.

@OSxSnowleopard Yes I think that temp is too low for shutdown as well. Btw it was around 76 degrees.

That compression program is still running in alongside chrome at the moment and speedfan(will uninstall) is showing 66 degrees now. cabby is open though.

 

[coderunknown]

well, the faulty core can be the very reason for shutdown. see what "may" happen is the 4th core was locked for a reason. reason is quality check. it may have failed to run stable with 4cores at higher clock (AMD's testing clockspeed. certainly higher than 3Ghz) & hence it was disabled. you turn in on & use. pc runs stable at first. now when you tested it on heavy use & cause of old Thermal Insulating Material (TIM) enough heat is unable to pass to the HSF, heating the processor, specially the bad core. 4th core "may" fail to run stable at higher clock/high temp & it gives up. pc reboots. but this is what i feel has happened. problem can be with other parts too.

 

[Jripper]

Hmm possible. But I haven't overclocked the processor. just unlocked it. That is the max frequency is 2.9 Ghz.
Will try applying some thermal paste though. Can you suggest some good thermal paste which doesn't rip a hole in my pocket?

BTW idle temp is 32 degrees now(with cabby open)

 

[topgear]

Get CM thermal Fusion 400 - price should be around ~500 bucks

 

[Jripper]

Okay will try getting that. BTW one more thing I noticed fan speeds never crossed 3400-3500 rpm(HWmonitor). Is that normal or should the fan be running at higher speeds?

Something strange just happened. I disabled the 4th core again so its back to how it was before. That is it is an athlon II x3 435 again. But while running prime95 it reached 77 degrees again and shut down. :O What could be the problem?

 

[coderunknown]

ok its a HSF problem i feel. old tim got out through the edge of the HSF.

 

[topgear]

@ Op - remove the HSF - clean it throughly - remove the old tim from the botton of the Heat Sink and from the top of the cpu ( if possible clean the cpu by removing it from mobos cpu soclet ) - get the new Tim ( the one I've suggested ) - Install the cpu properly on mobo - apply one or two rice grain sized Tim on the top of the cpu - Mount the HSF properly on the top of the cpu - start the pc - check temps and post in here

 

[Jripper]

@Sam and topgear.

Will certainly do as suggested and post back the results as soon as I get my hands on some new TIM. Thanks for the suggestions

20.12.2011:-

Bought a tech com hard disk enclosure(425 bucks) and CM thermal fusion 400(500 bucks).

SLightly off topic but the hard disk casing isn't working :S The power light isn't switching on. any idea how to make it work?

Will post spu temps soon after applying thermal fusion.

21.12.2011(12.38 am):-

Ran prime95 for 45 minutes after applying coolermaster thermal fusion 400. The temperatures were 37 degrees on idle and at full load it stayed somewhere around 52 degrees. after a while it went to 60 degrees and stayed like that. In the last 2 minutes of the 45 minute test the temperature went to 64 and came back down to 63 degrees.

Is this normal?

And also,the hard disk case bought from m.d.computers(tech com) doesn't work. The driver cd came broken(though its not needed) and the power led is not showing any activity when i turn on the power. :\

ANy suggestions(on both topics)?

 

[topgear]

^^ get that hard disk enclosure replaced

using a stock cooler and a unlocked cpu the temps looks good - try some games for 1-2 hours - the temps will remain under 60c

 

[Jripper]

^ I compressed an 8 gb iso using winzip using ultra compression method. Took about one and a half hours. Temperatures never crossed 46 degrees Will test it some more today with games and stuff.
This thermal paste is awesome! And btw, I locked the 4th core again. I'll run with 3 cores as long as it doesn't throw up any issues. :\

And M.D usually replaces their faulty hardware right? Even the drier disc that came inside the box was broken.

Okay played dirt 3 and fifa for 2 hours with chrome and hwmonitor running in the background. Temperatures refused to go beyond 45 degrees
Thumbs up for thermal fusion 400 B-)

 

[sukesh1090]

the tim will take some time to settle.so the temp will decrease further.have you tested it with unlocking the core or is it in normal mode only?
Btw it is better not to unlock that core.as told by sam it will be locked for some reason mostly because it will not be working properly.

 

[Jripper]

No I kept that 4th core locked. Its a tri core now as in normal mode at stock settings.

 

[topgear]

^^ why are you running the CPU with 4th core locked ?? The new TiM should keep the temps in check even with the 4th core unlocked and your siggy still reads Phenom II X4 B35

 

[Jripper]

Well I'm planning on trying out the cpu with the 4th core unlocked to see if its stable or not.so didn't change the siggy.

10.07 am:-

Unlocked 4th core again. Ran prime 95. Noticed something. The cpu temps astay fixed at 22 degrees and the TMPINO in Hwmonitor is rising. It went upto 64 degrees in about 10 minutes but stayed that way for a long time. Uploading pics.

*i39.tinypic.com/w20vow.jpg

The part in red is the part where temperatures are growing. In the previous posts(before applying the CM thermal fusion 400),the temperatures of the red part went up to 78 degrees and pc shut down.
The cpu temps as shown by hwmonitor stay fixed at 22 degrees if 4th core is unlocked and stay at 16 degrees if 4th core is disabled.

Any suggestions/comments?

And also out of curiosity I went to bios again to see if I can overclock the athlon. The snap taken from my phone is:-

*i42.tinypic.com/12375s9.jpg

The values of the 4 cores(unlocked phenom) are set to -2%. Should it stay that way or do I need to change it? What does value of a core mean anyway?
Also somehow can't seem to increase the fsb. no window is opening even after hitting enter after selection. :S Any ideas?

Err..any help people? (I know its busy times with the 7970 but still )

 

[topgear]

looks like HWmonitor is not able to properly show cpu temps - try HWinfo 32 for temp monitoring - also enter in bios / stay there for 5-10 mins and check the temp from there ( every bios has some sort of system/volt/temp monitoring features ) - use that to know the actual cpu temp.

I don't have much experence about ACC - but I've seen ACC value varies when it comes to unlock the dormnant core of the cpu - so you have to play with that and find out the appropriate setting for your cpu.

You can change the CPU FSB using pageup/pagedown or +/- key on the numpad

BTW, are you using the latest Bios version ??