PIII 933 temps? (No OC)

[Arse]

I'm running a PIII 933 FCPGA (can't be bothered to check any further details of it right now) on an ASUS CUSL-2 board. It's not overclocked, and all the voltages etc. are as they should be. The cooling I have is a Golden Orb and with some AS2 paste in between there. However, the processor seems to be running slightly hotter than I think it should. Asus' own monitoring program reports 35-36'C idle, and up to 46'C under heavy loads such as playing a DivX video, or Quake3. Since it's not overclocked and I have decent cooling, in my opinion it shouldn't go quite this high.
I was thinking that a possible cause could be bad case cooling, I get about 33'C as my motherboard temp. Is it too high? Another thing that could be is that the contact between the heatsink and processor is bad. I had problems with this with my previous heatsink when there also was no thermal paste.

[Yodums]

Are you sure those are correcct temperature readings?
My P3 500 goes to about 45-48 Degrees Full Load (Like mainly any other P3) and I have their default HSF(Sad I know :( ) which is preventing me from overclocking.. heh

[Yodums]

By the way you might wanna try reinstalling your heatsink and fan and reapplying the Arctic Silver ..

There could be problems where your heatsink or fan is not making proper contact which is heating :/ Make shure when you apply the ASII that everything is very even.. and to fill your heatsink spots wit the compound and while everything off in the base of the heatsink ... Juss my $0.02

[It_The_Cow]

Actually, it's just about right for your cooling. An orb has a c/w rating of either 0.91 or 0.98 depending on which model. Yours is at 0.53 (Probably the ASII) The only way you could change it is to lower your case temperatures, or get a new heatsink. Reapllying ASII periodically helps as well

[Arse]

Well, I applied the AS2 yesterday... maybe I didn't do all that well, I'm not too experienced in that. I think I put a bit too much of it though.
The case temps go up to 35'C sometimes, under long periods of higher loads, so I think that's where the problem is. What should be a good case temp?

[It_The_Cow]

It depends on what kind of airflow you have. Good airflow should keep it at or a few degrees above room temperature. No airflow will keep it around 10°C (maybe, personal experience) above room temperature. The temperatures you're getting is consistent with what you have

[Arse]

Thanks... well, all I really wanted to know was whether it's bad for the processor if the full load temperatures are 46-48'C? It never exceeds 50 even under long sessios of Quake 3 or whatever.
I know that the lower the better, but is 48'C still alright? It's below 40'C when idle, or doing things like surfing the web or playing mp3s. I'm not looking into overclocking, at least not right now, and the voltages are the default ones.

[Yodums]

Well,
As long as you put enough so there are no gaps between the heatsink and CPU .... BTW you shure that would be the average temp.. considering the fact he bought a new HSF wouldn't it decrease by a whole lot? Just wouldn't make much sense to buy another HSF would it... So you can run it at the same temps?

[It_The_Cow]

We're talking about orbs here :p THe only good one is probably the dragon orb. In my opinion, golden orbs aren't much better than retail heatsinks.

A load temperature of 48°C is fine. My chip starts to get unstable aound the high 50's. The chips are rated around 60°C, I think

[Arse]

What happens when you say the processor gets unstable at high 50's? Blue screens, etc? Your cpu is a PIII 750 @ 862... have you changed the voltage, or anything like that?
Before I changed heatsinks, this one went over 80'C sometimes momentarily, but then I always shut it off right away before it crashed... do you think it could have caused any damage? It was that way for only a week or so. And besides, don't Coppermines have a built-in mechanism that shuts them off if a critical temperature is reached, to prevent damage?