How do you tell if your Heat Sink is properly installed?

[Qualtran]

Hello,
I have a 1.4 oc'd to 1533 using 1.85 volts and my cpu has been running really hot, as you can see in the attached image. I've tried cleaning the HS, reapplying Arctic Silver II in thin layer, but my temps still remain high. I'm using a Global Win WBK38 hsf with powerful 50cfm fan. I'm wondering how I can tell if the heatsink isn't installed correctly? How am I supposed to see if it is making good contact? Are there any tricks?

[Microsoft]

probably be the heatsink and fan

make sure the fans sucking the air off the heatsink and not blowing it down.

and look at ambient case temps and how your airflow is

[Maximus Nickus]

what do u mean sucking it off? its meant to blow down!

[o¢r*Aiwa]

You are running 1.9V Vcore (!). These temps aren't surprising at all if it's warm in your room or the in-case airflow isn't perfect.
What are your ambient temperatures? Don't forget to measure the temperature of the cooling block itself. If it's 50°C under full load your temperatures are fine.

[o¢r*Aiwa]

Just saw you are running overclocked as well. Imo your temperatures are normal for aircooling a 1.4 GHz T-Bird. Anyone stating he runs that thingie overclocked with VCore 1.9 on 40°C is a liar or got bad thermistor contact / bad motherboard.

If you want to get below 50°C at these setup you probably have to switch to watercooling or get an immense airflow and/or cool ambient in your room.

[el]

take the mobo out and look with a flashlight to make sure you aren't half way on the socket lip cuz that is bad and will cause the temps to be very high. I have never seen a temp of above 51C under load with my 1.2@1.4 and 1.9volts(NO AC in the summer) so I think your hsf is not on correctly. try using a very small amount of thermal compound too. your mobo an asus cuz they always have wrong temps so check in bios too!

[o¢r*Aiwa]

Originally posted by el
take the mobo out and look with a flashlight to make sure you aren't half way on the socket lip cuz that is bad and will cause the temps to be very high. I have never seen a temp of above 51C under load with my 1.2@1.4 and 1.9volts(NO AC in the summer) so I think your hsf is not on correctly. try using a very small amount of thermal compound too. your mobo an asus cuz they always have wrong temps so check in bios too!

Still a *big* difference between running a 1.2 GHz TBird overclocked and a 1.4 GHz TBird overclocked.

I once got a 1.2 one myself and switched to 1.4 (hehe) and got a temp increase of at least 10°C at same cooling. Seems like these 1.4 babies get kinda hot :eek:

[Qualtran]

Well, I know the temp inside my case is just fine as I have very good case cooling. I included my motherboard monitor 5 readouts which have my mobo temps listed. As you can see they are right at room temp. I've also tried taking the HSF off, using very thing layers of AS2, then placing it back on the chip, but still no luck after doing that about 5 seperate times, so I would think the HSF would have made good contact at least one of those times. Everything on my system is perfectly stable though; I can run the most graphic and processor intensive games for hours and I never stall or crash, so SHOULD I REALLY WORRY ABOUT THESE HIGH TEMPS?

[Qualtran]

Here are my mm5 readouts

[SavageHenry]

Try laying your PC on its side, so gravity is pushing the HSF down onto the die, not trying to pull it off. If your see much of an improvement, then your HSF needs to be mounted better.