Q on heat: My 3.0c P4 idles at 41-45c

Its running at 3.6Ghz now with 1.6v being fed to the chip, memory is at 240. Its running an XP-90 heatsink with a 90mm Panaflo on top of it. In the summer (now) I keep the case side off to aid cooling....so its idling at 41, with the case on it idles at 44 or so.

Its not quite PRIME stable at this speed (would be if I threw more volts at it) but games, benchmarks generally run fine and without incident.

My problem here is that two times in the past few weeks its done a soft reboot on itsself, which I can only assume was heat related.

At what cpu temperature would I begin to see heat-related problems occurring like soft reboots and such.....

whats the load temps? as long as it stays below 60C you should be fine. With two instances of F@H running, I idle at 44C so its not that bad

Running Prime95 (which appears stable, at least it did for the hour I was running it) it stays right at 56c with the side cover off my case.

I imagine gaming puts it somewhere in the same range...

gaming would put it higher. from what i have seen, if you can get it without any errors in prime for 4 hours you are somewhat okay. i have found out that getting it 24 hours prime no errors is way difficult.

Honestly I dont care if its prime stable or not...so long as it isn't locking up all the time....this is a gaming and email/web box.......so far its performed flawlessly, I think at 3.5Ghz its rock stable (Prime for more than 8 hours)...I can't remember if I tested at 3.6 back when I got it or not..I was running at 3.7 but its just not stable.

I could push this to 3.75Ghz, but I'd need to up the voltage to 1.65 or something, which I'm SURE would mean doom for this processor in the short term.......1.6v at 3.6Ghz seems stable enough, and I think thats the upper limit for this CPU's voltage tolerance.....someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Only recently have the two reboots giving me cause to pause....I must jsut be on that threshhold of where heat starts making things go wacky...

You are on the razor's edge with heat, vcore, and stability. I would say it might be better to back off the O/C just a little until the summer heat is over. Although, you would think that a XP-90 would cool a Northwood better than that. Panaflo fans are reliable and quiet, but they don't move much air. Maybe you need to get another fan that moves more CFM. The reason gaming will heat the system up a little more than Prime is the vid card throws off more heat when under gaming load. Prime works a CPU hard, but the vid card can relax.

I've removed and reseated the XP-90 more than once, and always with the same temperature results.......I chose the Panaflo because of the silence, I had a Vornado on there and it was just waaaaaay too much. I dont remember the temps being all that different either, to be perfectly honest....but theres no way I could go back to that thing, although maybe for the summer months....<shrug>

If I burned this up can I even find a 3.0c Northwood replacement? Or would I have to go with a 3.0Ghz Pressy or something.....

HeadRusch said:

Running Prime95 (which appears stable, at least it did for the hour I was running it) it stays right at 56c with the side cover off my case.

I imagine gaming puts it somewhere in the same range...

Click to expand...

did you run dual prime or just one?

...I run Win2000, no Hyperthreading, so running dual instances didn't seem like a smart idea for me...(????)

Win2k supports hyperthread, it's just not optimized as well as Win XP.

HeadRusch said:

...I run Win2000, no Hyperthreading, so running dual instances didn't seem like a smart idea for me...(????)

Click to expand...

win2k supports hyperthreading, did you disable it in the bios? if so, enable it. then run dual prime. if you want it disabled, then run one instance of prime.

HeadRusch said:

If I burned this up can I even find a 3.0c Northwood replacement? Or would I have to go with a 3.0Ghz Pressy or something.....

Click to expand...

I've got one laying around if you need one.
sSpec:SL6WK

Your motherboard would have to be prescott ready to use a pressie.

batboy said:

Win2k supports hyperthread, it's just not optimized as well as Win XP.

Click to expand...

WRONG .... The OS support HT perfectly .
The only think that pist me off , is that officialy INTEL advertize it. less than XP.

I believe that this have to do with the MS - INTEL conspiracy , to promote the XP as something new .
The trouth !! XP = Win2000 Pro Core

dylskee said:

I've got one laying around if you need one.
sSpec:SL6WK

Click to expand...

How much would you sell this for?

Hey, I didn't know 2000 supported HyperThreading....learn something new every day.
Anyhow, in that case, I guess I'd better go back into the bios and reinstall it.

Here's the deal......right now my system has been running prime (HT disabled in bios, 1 instance) with my 3.0c at 3.6 and 1.6 volts. My PC4000 Ballistix (2x512 dual channel) is at the max motherboard voltage of 2.8.

The monitoring software is showing me, with the side of my case off, that the VCORE volts are at 1.54 to 1.52 (so its using nearly a 1/10th of a volt under PRIME95 load. The VMEM voltage is 2.73 to 2.75.....so its drawing some power there too.

TEMPS: My CPU temp shows 54.5 to 55.5, and the sensor diode under the capacitors where the power hits the motherboard is showing 54 to 56c depending on the minute.

I can physically touch the XP90 and its cool...its barely warm, at least the fins are.

Do you think this is a case of the core of the P4 chip not having adequate contact with the P4 heatshield on the chip?? Could that be why I'm not seeing lower temps?

When I first set up the box, at 250Mhz this ram gives me MEMTEST errors (at least it did in single chip configuration before I had 1 gig)......so the chip was running at the full 3.75 and stock timings on the ram....I think that was throwing 1.6volts at it.

I never messed around with the timing on this ram, I have no idea how fast it can go.

It currently runs at 2.5 3 3 3 8 Or something like that.


So given my temps, am I maxxing out this chip, or are there things I should do at this point to make the thing go faster on the air cooling solution I have now.........is throwing 1.65 volts to a 3.0 northwood akin to chip suicide regardless of waht the temps are?

If I wanted to replace the CPU, 478pin, what is the smart overclocking "buy" right now....ie: wheres the most bang for the buck....

HeadRusch said:

My PC4000 Ballistix (2x512 dual channel) is at the max motherboard voltage of 2.8.

It currently runs at 2.5 3 3 3 8 Or something like that.

Click to expand...

I've a rig nearly a twin.
3.0c same code, ballistix, overclocked.
My chip refuse to BSOD, only lockup when too hot, I can push it at 1.55v at 242 but lockup pretty fast under load.
at 235-237 if keep under 53-52 C is rock stable (prime95 2x) and my ballistix keep 2.5-2-2-6 until 237 (with goldmemory, 241 Memtest) at 2.65v pretty sweet.
I've a old 7000AlCu but I looking for a new HSF to gain 3-4 C to keep in this HOT the CPU stable at 237, XP90 was my #1 choice but with my P4P800e it will install with the pipes parallel to the floor instead to the rear of the case, I fear that they'll not works at the best.

If this is an Abit motherboard those temps are fairly normal.

HT does not operate correctly under Win2K. It operates, but not correctly. Win2K supports SMP, not HT, and although the two revolve around the same priniciple they are not the same thing from the OS's standpoint.