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Zorlond

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'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« on: February 01, 2005, 11:55:58 AM »
Anyone happen to know this? Just that I'm dealing with some tech support and it's becoming increasingly obvious that he's just feeding me a line. (yeah, big surprise, will wonders never cease )  
"Don't you dare call me irrational! You <i>know</i> that makes me <b>CRAZY!!</b>"

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TheHerald

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2005, 01:19:14 PM »
Depends on how you define "optimal". If you mean the "Right" or "Normal" temperature of a P4, I'd have to do some searching on the net, myself (but I think the answer is "NO such thing"). If you mean the "Best" temperature, once again, "No such thing", BUT the cooler the better! CPUs have an upper limit where they "meltdown", and the closer to that limit the more common lockups will occur. Overclockers are stretching the limits of how fast they make a processor run by cooling it as much as possible (plus other tricks).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, a CPU can run fine within a RANGE of temperatures, but doesn't really have one "optimal" temperature. At one end it starts locking up and eventually frying and at the other end, you are limited in how much technology can cool it.

So what's the "line" the tech support been giving you?  
Thank you for your patience as I indulge my need to share.

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Zorlond

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2005, 01:31:29 PM »
I don't overclock, but my processor's a 3.06Ghz P4 with HT. On a normal day, it'll run between 160-165F (71-73C). On the warm side, I'm sure, but I haven't had problems until very recently, and ONLY with one specific program (everything else ran just fine). The tech support guy insisted that I cool things down.

So I'm sitting there, in front of my computer, wearing my winter jacket because the window's wide open to the New England Winter, with the side panel off the side of my computer. The temp reading creeps down to 140F (60C) and sulks there. AND THE PROGRAM STILL LOCKS UP WITHIN MINUTES.

Want another dollop of truth? This afternoon the devs for said program released a patch. Downloaded, applied, ran. Got up, closed the window, shucked my jacket, and put the side panel back on. Temperature creeps back up to 160F by the time I'm done (half an hour later, far longer than any other attempt in the last 3-4 days). Not a single problem.

I hate tech support...  
"Don't you dare call me irrational! You <i>know</i> that makes me <b>CRAZY!!</b>"

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MrHHH

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2005, 04:18:06 PM »
Optimal temperature for CPUs? I think it's around -100C

70c is kind of hot though. Is it a home built PC?

(I'm not sure if you called tech support for the PC or the program.)

 

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Zorlond

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2005, 04:44:24 PM »
For the program, actually, and the forums for that program have actually been more informative than the tech support. I did call the PC maker's tech support, though, trying to get them to talk me through some stuff... Who were unable to help because they "couldn't get an image of the CPU on the screen"... *sigh*

This is why I don't like dealing with official Tech Support. Get told it's too hot, but not told what to aim for, just kept told it's still too hot. Like I'm talking to a parrot. (Too Hot! Too Hot! Polly Wanna Cracker!!) Nice way to convince people you're there to help.

So now I've got the tower on it's side with the panel off, cleaned a crapload of dust out of the CPU heatsink, shut down the SETI@home stuff I had running (which kept CPU use at 100% at all times), got some heat-sink re-seating compound coming in the mail shortly (silver-based stuff, heard that was the best), and until then just using my system significantly less. Temp's been hanging around +40C, +50C when the system's busy. No problems now.    
"Don't you dare call me irrational! You <i>know</i> that makes me <b>CRAZY!!</b>"

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MunchWolf

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2005, 07:53:22 PM »
Just rebuilt MGs machine with a P4 .. thought I saw somewhere you don't want to go above 64-70ish ... it was overheating at 75 with the socket 775 fan ... fitted the motherboard with a socket 478 bracket, and attached one of those fans (more common to find and less annoying to attach), and managed to drop the temp down to the 50s ... and the machine hums fine ...

oh .. also added a case fan to the back ...

-Munch "which adds a nifty blue glow under the desk" Wolf

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Struik

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2005, 05:54:30 AM »
When you're opening the box up again to apply the new compound, you may also want to reroute and bundle all the cables and get them out of the airflow as much as possible. On my AMD Athlon machine it made a huge difference.

From the day I bought that system it had alway been running at about 70-75 C (I think having read somewhere that AMD always run at a slightly higher temp than Intel) but two weeks ago temp went more in the direction of 80 C with peaks of 84 C (max rated temp = 85 C). So I opened up the box and did the same as you: removed a lot of dust from the heatsinks and fans. Also rerouted the cables and noted a broken northbridge fan. Didn't worry too much about it since it probably had been runnin without it for months. Ordered a new one anyway. Closed the box and temps were around 65 C - lower than they had ever been before.

Yesterday I installed the new northbridge cooler and since I had it open anyway, also replaced the phase change material of the processor. Now the temps are around 58-63 C but the best part is that the power fan and chassis fan are running at only half speed, while they had been running at full speed before. And still the temp is maintained very well. It now also is more in line with temperatures reported by others. You can compare temperatures here: http://www.3degs.net/mbmcfg/index.php?page=browse&core=intel_478_view
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Trace

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2005, 06:52:34 AM »
Little things do help sometimes.  One thing I did, that may not have made too much difference but couldn't have hurt, is swap out the standard ribbon cables for my floppy, hard, and optical drives for "cobra" cables (the round cables that flare out at the ends to provide FDD and IDE connectors) to improve airflow.
-T
===
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"That word is 'Nazi.' Nobody cares about their motives anymore."

- A.R. Moxon

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Struik

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2005, 08:51:34 AM »
Those round cables certainly help. In my PC the square cables were the main item blocking the airflow. With the help of some tyraps made sure they were out of the way and presto, temp was 10 degrees lower.  
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SwitcherX

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Palomine

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #10 on: February 17, 2005, 11:03:18 PM »
Quote:

'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?




Room temperature (i.e.: off).

Sorry! Couldn't resist... too inviting! Not meant in anything other than good fun. Hope you get things worked out.

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Zorlond

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #11 on: February 18, 2005, 09:30:35 PM »
Coming along, anyhoos. Re-seating the cpu heatsink didn't make any significant improvement, poked around a bit more, found that the heatsink on my video card (which apparently doesn't have an accessible sensor attached) was often burning hot to the touch. (okay, okay, the 'program' is a game, City of Heroes to be specific, and it -is- very graphic intensive) No doubt the video card's heat was flooding the whole system causing the main cpu to downshift wildly, and CoH couldn't handle that, hence messy crashing.

So far, the 'solution' is to leave the side panel off and turn off most of the high-power graphics options. Not sure that'll hold once summer comes, but at least that's a long ways off...
"Don't you dare call me irrational! You <i>know</i> that makes me <b>CRAZY!!</b>"

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Whink

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #12 on: February 18, 2005, 10:12:19 PM »
I was thinking 3500 degres Kelvin, as in "on fire"...or burning...

LOL, I couldn't resist either!!


Thanks to Morphemor for the latest Avatar!

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Chronicler

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Re: 'Optimal' temperature of an Intel P4?
« Reply #13 on: March 01, 2005, 02:06:59 AM »
This might seem silly, but did you try resetting the CMOS? I'm far from an expert in this area, but I just encountered a situation where bad CMOS settings were creating voltage problems; unanticipated load on various parts of the system causing overheat. Problem was a fan that the BIOS thought was there, but wasn't, so it was sucking too much juice to begin with, and starting out hotter than it should have been so any normal usage could cause it to shut down unexpectedly.