newbie question : temp to high??

[nexus]

i was pokeing around a bit in my bios set up of my P3 550 VH6-II maun board
and under the pc health status box it sayd that the cpu temp was 36 degrees celsius and the system temp was 29 degrees these seem high to me, ive only had the board for 1 month and had an integrated compaq previously so i am unsure of standard temperatures etc...

any suggestions

[outhouse]

your running about normal if it was under full load but if thats idle temp I would suggest you do some cooling modifacations before you go any higher, do you have case fan's? have you lapped your HSF do you have a good thermal compound or sticky stuff? you can take the side cover off and see if that drops your temp some,ive installed a duct from my HSF to my case cover to draw in cold air this helps quite a bit and looks much more proffesional then having your case cover off. Also if you overclock to high you might want to get a better HSF for your northbridge, now you have the green HS wich has no thermal compound on it at all, you can ad compound that will help i found a HSF at a computer store and cut it down ti fit perfect [ 5 bucks]

[nexus]

great thanks alot , but i do have a few remaining questions which are , what is an HSF? what is that "sticky stuff"? and i am not sure what you mean by full load

i have an atx case (ithink) i'm not to sure if that type helps for cooling or not, most everything is still factory

thanks again for your help :O)

[outhouse]

HSF= heat sink fan. the sticky stuff is a bad thermal compound that is like tape it does not do near as good a job as arctic silver, if you dont want to wait to order some Arcticsilver go to radioshack and get there thermal compound its only a couple of bucks and is almost as good as arcticsilver under full load means like playing games or running Seti or graphic typer of benchmarks. as far as your case i'm sure there is a place to put a fan in front drawing cooler air in and a place in back to put a fan to pull warmer air out, fans that will fit in the stock opening will set ya back about 10dollars for each one.

[Super]

I have Celeron 600, and ABIT VH6, and after about 3 hours of using it (most of the time playing Unreal Tournament) my CPU temp was 37 and the board temp was 32.

[nexus]

ok, thanks i guess its normal then

what do you generally use tomoniter the temps?
also i was wondering if there is any software i might get that would help to regulate the temperture? i have seen some that advertise this but i dont know if they really work

[Super]

I use VIAhm to monitor my CPU temperature, board temp, and the fan speed. Check the CD that came with your motherboard, its supposed to have it.

[Miknow]

That aint high I got a new board 1 week ago and at full load its 37 not o/c

[outhouse]

With your MB as Super said you should have VIA hm to keep track of temps the trick here is to make sure that the thermal temp probe that sits under your proccesor is just touching the proccesor but not keeping it from sitting down in the socket completly you can use a small amount of thermal compound imbetween the thermister and the proccesor to make sure your getting as close to your real temps as possibly. Now there is a program called Rain that works great to keep your temps down at idle. You can get it at www.tweakfiles.com when you said your temps were at 37c was that at idle temps or full load?

[nexus]

i'm not really sure if that was full load or not because i check it through the bios when i restarted, so i guess it would have taken the temp from when it was at full load, i havelots of stuff running usually, icq, adaptec, zone alarm, scanner etc...

i'll check out that rain program to thanks

i installed via hwm from my cd an it works ok but it keeps saying my cpu fan is low for some reason i checked the fan and it seems to be working fine

[Super]

It lets you select the speed at which the fan should work in order for the alarm to go, so where it says FAN SPEED, in the white text box type 0, and than click on Save Settings or something like that.

[outhouse]

you can set the adjustment for the fan speed and you will no longer get the warning :) i'm pretty sure Your not under full load Now with your VIA installed play a game such as Quake or run Seti, or run the burn in on Si Sandra and after 10 minutes check your temps then you will know what your temps are under full load. The programs your running are hardly streesing your CPU that much

[nexus]

can someone explain to me how a piece of software can physically decrease the temps, ie.. rain, this doesnt make sense to me why then do you need a fan?

[Super]

As I understand it, when you don't use your CPU much, the program sends a code for it to turn off some parts of it (the ones that you don't use), and therefore the CPU gets cooler.

[outhouse]

Remember Rain only decreases your idle temps it does not decrease your temp under full load thats why you still will need a good heatsinkfan. Rain just helps ta keep your temps pretty low mine equals my system temps at idle, surfing on the net ect ect.

[Pleiades]

For some unknown reason, Rain and CPUidle don't work in my system, they instantly give me blue screen once I loaded them up. Any idea what's wrong?

I have a Celeron 633 oc 903 @1.78V
Room temp average 30C
Idle temp is 38C
On full load is 40C
System temp 34/35C
Using VIAhm

The difference between idle and full load temp is only 2C.... is that normal?? Kinda odd to me...
Idle: sitting at Windows desktop doing nothing.
Full load: hours of looping Sandra burn in and 3DMark2001.

Thanks :)

[outhouse]

I know amd does not like rain, i'm not sure about cellies, sounds like instead of turning off parts your not using rite now its turning off parts you are. why? i'm not sure maybe something to do with cache i think the p3 runs different cache and when i get a blue screen it usualy has to do with memory. just my 2 cents

[Pleiades]

Memory problem? That's what I suspect.....
When I revert back to default 633, CPUidle is happy and running. But it doesn't like my 903...instantly blue screen! I forgot the exact error msg it shows, I think it's something like blah..blah...xxxxx.VXD...
Rain is even worse...it seems OK when I loaded it up, but a mouse click gives me blank screen!! Darn scary...have to reset the system.
But everything else seems working fine! I've been doing regular stuff with it, surfing, gaming, Sandra burn in, 3DMark etc.

At 903, things are running within specs, AGP/PCI bus, memory bus...except for the higher than rated FSB, clock speed and VCore.. :p

Anyone actually using CPUidle or Rain on a oc Celeron 900 or more on VIA 694X platform and Win98SE? Would be interested to hear any feedback. Thanks! :)