Just a little question

Hey guys, on sandra 2003, under CPU Information, theres a header called

POWER RATING(S): and under that there are 2 more headings:
Core Power: and
Cooling Thermal Resistance:

Could some1 here please be kind enough to explain what this mean. I can kinda know what it means and I kinda dont 2. So, plz dont start saying what a n00b and all that stuff..

The other reaon why im askin this is because on my main rig, I get the following information for it:

Power Rating(s)
Core Power: 91w (estimated)
Cooling System Thermal Resistance: 0.07-0.09

On My 2nd Rig I get the following:
Power Rating(s)
Core Power: I think it was 66-70w (Sandra is not showing me nemore, its telling me that I need to install new mdac or something, btw, could some1 plz tell me where i can get the updated mdac?)
Cooling System Thermal Resistance: 0.26-0.33

All my details are on my sig. But as you can see, im kinda confused here since on both of my machines there are big difs on the cooling system thermal resistance readings. So if some1 here could plz be kinda enough to explain what this means, it'll be greatly appreciated. tnx

Welcome to the forums!!!
what sandra appears to be telling you is that you cpu core - estimated to be putting out 91W of heat, is at a certain temperature - read from an on-die diode, and therefore must have a cooler on it with X amount of thermal resistance. X being in this case .07 - .09 degrees c per watt. The calculation for this is a little complex, but Sandra might be getting it wrong, unless you've got an extremely good water cooling rig on it. To do this calculation yourself, note the ambient temperature (A) and the CPU temperature (P) - P is for processor as C would stand for celcius in temperature terms... Ok, A for ambient, P for processor temps, and then the difference between them is P - A. When you do this, you get your "delta" (D) or how much above ambient your CPU is. Now, with the delta, you need to determine how much power you're trying to cool; Say your processor in this case is 91W - and that sounds a little high to me - and your delta is 20, that is your CPU is 20C hotter than room temp, or ambient, divide the delta by the watts to get the degrees C rise per watt of your cooling solution - hey presto - 20 divided by 91 is .21 - that is, for every watt your CPU puts out, the CPU temperature rises .21 degrees C. I said a delta of 20 for a couple of reasons. You posted in the general cooling, so I assumed you had air cooling, and also it assumes a CPU temp of around 40 for a room temp of about 20, fairly average from what I can tell. So .21 gives you a reasonable rating for an air cooled solution. I think Sandra might be getting it a bit wrong is the basic gist of my reply here though - although all sorts of factors apply when making these calculations. From your sig, yeah, one PC is at 146, the other at 157, two different heatsinks and cpu's; There's alot of factors there to consider.