Cooling 1 1.4Ghz Athlon ?

[Dunga Bee]

Hello all. First time poster here so pre-apologies for any silly questions.

I have been doing a bunch of reading here as this Athlon is my first AMD and I do not want to fry it. Problem is, I can't find anywhere that tells me what are acceptable 'normal' temps.

At idle I am in the mid 40s and at load (running Prime95 for 1 hour), I am at 50-51 and holding.

Are those temps acceptable?

My case has 1 intake in the front and only the power supply fan on the rear. I am looking at mouting a rear fan because there is a place for it, but have not yet.

Thanks everyone for your input.

Here's the details on my rig (I am buliding it from a retired P2 450):

EPoX 8KTA3 MB
Athlon 1.4 G @ 1.4
ThermalTake 6cu HSF (Ordered a WBK 38 but they sent this)
Standard goop on bottom of HSF
128 MB PC100 (Waiting for my 512MB of PC133 to arrive)
Viper V550 (Upgrading Later)
2.1 GB Drive for Win2000
9.1 HP GB SCSI
32X CD
4X Ricoh CD-RW
SB Live
NetGear NIC
USR Modem

[Rob Cork]

Welcome to the forums! Don't worry, it's not a stupid question - how are you going to find out if you don't ask?

50-51C is perfectly safe - generally anything below 60C is 'safe' in that it won't kill your cpu, but of course as overclockers we want temps as low as possible. Adding an extra exhaust fan as you suggested will probably help - what would be best would be to cut out holes for the fans and put grills on them, like you've probably seen on loads of cases. Just check out the case gallery in the Alternative Modding (http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=20&daysprune=) section of the forums to see what I mean.

If you want to overclock, I'd try and get cooler though before trying. Although 50C isn't even nearly dangerous, it probably will affect your stability and limit any overclock - and of course, as you raise the speed and voltage your temperature will rise, maybe to 'dangerous' levels (like over 60C).

I don't know what heatsink that is you've got, but ThermalTake are generally better than standard retail heatsinks, though they're not the best out there by a fair way. The WBK38 you ordered (but didn't get) would definitely be a better cooler, though it's also very loud. If you do want to upgrade the cooler, and want performance but low (lower than the WBK38) noise, the Millennium Glaciator, Thermalright SK6 (with a slower fan - you can get it with the Delta 38, the same loud fan as the WBK38 has), or the Swiftech MC462. Read up a bit about them here (http://www.overclockers.com/tips519/).

Hope this helps :)

[Da Whip]

Welcome to the forums, Dunga Bee. Rob's advice is dead on.

[YMAN]

I agree with Rob,
However I beleve the temps should be between
40-50C Load!
Thay say every 2 degrees makes a cpu last 100% longer!
Welcome to the forums!

[Dunga Bee]

Thanks for all the replies. I really appreciate it.

I just installed my exhaust fan. This gives me.

1 Intake
1 Exhaust
1 HSF
1 on the power supply.

Hopefully that will keep things cool.

I'll need to get better cooling before any Oc'ing.

How much do you think it would improve my cooling using ASII or the Radio Shack stuff vs. the stock goop that came with the HSF?

Thanks again,
Dunga Bee

[Amedeo602]

Using AS2 will probably lower your temps anywhere from 2-6 degrees (C). Just be sure to read the instructions at the arctic silver website. (http://www.arcticsilver.com)