Good CPU and case temps
 

I recently put togeather the PC listed below and I have a couple questions about CPU and case temps...

Under a full load the CPU temp is 45c (113f) and the board temp is at 22c (72f). Is this a decent temp or is it too hot? What temps are yall running at? At what temp should I pull the plug.

If it helps I am running stock voltage and speed on everything.

Abit NF7-S v2.0 nVIDIA
Athlon XP 2500+ "Barton"
WD IDE 80G 7200RPM 8M Cashe
ATI Radeon 9200 128M AGP8X
Geil Value Series 512MB DDR PC-3200
Sony 1.44Mb floppy drive
52X32X52 CD RW
G4 Atlas ATX-Midi case
CoolerMaster Aero 7+
5 case fansDF1208SM
@-Power 430W PSU EP-43057

That's a good temperature. I have an Athlon 2500+ too, and using the stock heatsink and AS3, the temp. under load always exceeds 55.

Make sure that your Power Supply is blowing out the back of your case (you'd be surprised how many mainstream PS's don't do this!).

Also another thing that I usually do is to use a dremel and cut out all the fan grills in the PC (the ones integrated into the case with the little holes) and replace them with the chrome wire grill ones. This allows more airflow and makes everything much quieter!

p.s. also when the warrenty runs out on your power supply use a dremel and cut out all the grills on it as well! It really makes a difference when the fans have less resistance to work against.

I took my case temp down 5c by removing grils and allowing more air flow, which in turn dropped my CPU temp by 2c. Also it's noticably quieter!

Awesome idea! I think I will do that for my next computer.

Where do you find out how hot your processor is running? Is there a program or application for this I could use?

Your temps are fine!

-Lasereth

I "cut the whistling mesh" on my G4 and much of that special "rushing-hiss-whoosh" sound that only comes from rows of 1/4" holes in plastic sheets 3/8" downwind of each other. Since the air exhausts into the gap between the aluminum box/ inner case and the plastic shell, I removed the corner screws and jammed the plastic side panel open top and bottom. I call it my "free-flowing exhaust method". My temps are something like 7.5 degrees Fht. cooler now. Currently my CPU is at 110.9F and my video card is at 108.2F. Thanks for the post. I was wondering about temps as well.

MSI boards usually ship with a prog called Fuzzy logic, Asus, Abit, and most other high end boards do as well. Just check the cd that came with the board or the company website's DL section.

A nice 3rd party prog is Motherboard Monitor, get it from download.com

Yeah, just use MotherboardMonitor. I use it and love it.

http://www.pcextreme.net/mbm/mbm5360.exe

sisoft sandra all the way. my temps are 110 or so, 86 for the mobo.

I hope you mean fahrenheit Dant :rolleyes:

AIDA32 is the system diagnostic tool. It will tell you everything you could ever possibly want to know about your hardware and software, and some things you didn't want to know.

Mine's about 44 (cpu) 36 (case). Naught bad, even for a pentium.

i use speedfan, but basically any monitoring program will do the trick.
45C load is a nice temp. i hit 52C load in the summer on my 1.33 t-bird =)

Those temps are perfectly fine.
My CPU idles at about 50C, and under load its been known to hit almost 70C...

How do you use SisSandra to check your temps? I opened my copy and looked for something resembling a temp check and couldn't find anything. Could someone direct me to the correct icon? Thanks and cheers

Well, I cranked up my FSB and my CPU voltage from 166*11 at 1.66 volts to 205*11 at 1.75 and I got my under load temps to 24 case and 52 CPU. I went from 1831MHz to 2266MHz thats a 24% increase. Not bad for the first time overclock attempt. :)

yeah, except 205 isnt synced with any sort of ram, so youre experiencing a huge slowdown.

#1 mistake of all new overclockers: the speed of the RAM MUST match the FSB of the CPU. use multipliers and voltage to OC. Even if the actual "clock speed" of your cpu falls a little bit, your overall system performance will increase.

I'd like to bring my cpu temps down just a bit. When idle its about 52C and when gaming it goes up to about 58C. I'm trying to decide between installing a new heat sink or getting another case fan (two more can fit in the back).

Getting the heat sink on in the first place was a bitch. I don't think taking it off and installing a new one would be that easy either. It seemed like it required WAY to much force to get the hooks to clip to the socket. Therefore, I'd rather just install another case fan in the back, but if it wont make much of a difference I might go for the new heat sink. The fan would be under $10, so that's a huge plus.

My temps aren't that bad, but it's not summer yet and I don't know if it will stay as cool in that location in the summertime (I live in Phoenix).

Any advice?

He probably has his RAM/FSB ratio set to 1:1. That means anytime you increase the FSB, your RAM goes up with it at the same speed. Of course, this requires very nice RAM and a motherboard that has RAM/FSB ratio options.

-Lasereth

Also check that your BIOS is reporting the right temperature.

I have a Gigabyte board that tells me it's at 63 degrees C while idle! When I first turn it on after it's cooled down the BIOS says about 43 degrees, in a room that's about 20 degrees cooler, so I'm hoping that the BIOS is off by that much.