HELP! 55*+ with NO load!!

a friend of mine sent me to this site in hopes that i can find a cooling solution to my little 'oven' sitting next to me.
so far ive found alot of hints and tips on how to get it cool and keep it cool. but no one has talked about EXTREMEs, ive read "yea 35* was too hot, now its down to 22*" im dealing with 55* with no load, forget running any sort of graphics. when booting up WinXP it often tops over 60* right now it is sitting 'cool' at 55.4*
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onto the fan set up.
i have 2 60mm fans set in the back for exhaust, and one 60mm fan directly across from the HSF blowing room air into the case.
unfortunatly i dont have any place to put front fans in an effective manor (i have mounts for 4 60mm`s, but there is no front vent to get cool air in.
here is a pic of the case:

i have a Thermaltake HardCano 10 dual adjustable fan controller with alarm and LCD temp display. Fan1 is set to the CPU fan, and Fan2 are the exhaust fans.
right now they are both on at full blast.
if i turn one down, the temp jumps 1.5*
i know AMDs hate heat, and i dont want to buy a new processor anytime soon!!
HELP!

AMD's do not hate heat, and 55°C is not even close to being dangerous. As long as your system is running stable, temps are meaningless. If your system is unstable, then you may want to look into a solution, but if misreported temperature readings from a motherboard sensor is your only basis for concern, there's nothing to be worried about. Could you give us some more details about your system, though? Like processor, motherboard, psu...

AMD's pump out quite a bit of heat so 55C is not a dangerous temperature for air cooling but if its going that high when idle under full load the temperature could be spiking fairly high.. I suggest you take a closer look at the heatsink, its possible its not making good contact with the cpu, also if you havent don so yet try using some thermal compund some heatsinks bring thermal pads that are absolute crap.

also you could try lapping your heatsink if you see that it looks too bad ... i lapped a cooler master hhc-001 once and the temps dropped by 4-5 degs ... lapping is not hard and fine sandpaper can be found in any autopart, I know autozone sells 2000 grit sandpaper for like 3 bucks a pack of 5

Hmmm... What would you say a dangerous level for AMD processors are then? I've always made up a number of 55 in my head as being too high, but I guess I don't have any idea.

I know the max core temperature for my processor is 85 degrees, but obviously I don't want to get near that value. Do I just have to wait for instability before knowing what the true danger point is?

personally i agree with you that 55 is a bit too high but by "not dangerous" i mean its not going to burn ... i have seen many people running xp's at 50+ temps without a problem

as i said before i suggest you put some good thermal compund and try lapping that heatsink ... lapping a heatsink is cheap, easy and will tend to give you good results

also adding some better fans as exhaust will help out with the temperature problem ... 60mms are very small and dont push much air and if you dont have GOOD circulation of air in your case the hot air from the heatsink will be sucked back by the heatsink itself

doesnt matter how awesome a heatsink maybe.. without fresh air its going to give you horrible temperatures

its an AMD XP 2000+
on a BioStar M7VIQ mainboard
and i have a POWMAX 400w PSU

im not taking readings off of any board sensors, i have a seperate unit.

im going to try ducting because the intake fan is right across from the chip.

Stock AMD Blanket... ER.. "Heatsink"?

I have an Athlon T-bird 1.1GHz running at 58°C idle and 63+°C loaded, but I haven't experienced any crashes yet. Before I applied AS Ceramique and cleaned 2 years worth of dust off my HSF my temps would hit 70° w/o any problems.

AMD processors are rated to run fine at up to ~95°, depending on model, I thought.

BTW first post here, very nice msg board

edit: using stock HSF

TAU_NEUTRINO----WELCOME TO THE FORUMS AND ENJOY UR STAY!!!

Is it a Palomino or T-bred?

Palominos run HOT, T-breds run much cooler. I would suggest a couple things, Check your bios for the correct setting son speed and voltages. Some bios set the default Vcore too high. Also look to see if your board needs to be flashed. I know my KD7 board would run my t-bred HOT, until I flashed it to the newest revision. They added a function to disconnect cpu when idle. I see ABSOLUTELY no speed difference and my cpu idles at 32C and loads at 42C. I am running alot more juice through my cpu also. Good luck.

The four things that will help:

Better thermal paste
Better Air flow
Better heatsink
Better flatness (lapping)

If this is a Tbred-A I would not be suprised to see this temp being normal. Has he said what kind of HSF setup he is using? I havn't seen it mentioned.

Yes Tbreds do run hot, but I'm not all that surprized at the temps because of the use of the stock AMD heatsink which cools the chip but not that well. If you really want to lower the tems think airflow and heatsink. Your fans it seems dont circulate air all that well. The cfm of those 60mm's is marginal (unless they're deltas) and 1 intake/2 exausts can suck in more dust that normal try seeing if things are coated (my temps went down 5 degrees after i blew out my case). I suggest mounting more fans or fans with more cfm, also try to obtain positive air pressure inside the case, more cfm's in than out. I suggest a good thermalright heatsink depending on your budget (which 80mm are much better than 60mm fans). You can search for a lapping guide using search the greatest tool on these forumns.

I was the one who referred him over here guys to help get some info, I haven't taken a look at his set up yet, but here are the specs as I have gathered ... now I did not build this so I cannot take any credit or blame for any problem he is experiencing ...

• PowerMax 1347-SEL Mid-Tower Case (NO FRONT INTAKE FAN, 1x60 mm side fan, 2x60 mm exhaust fans)
• PowerMax 400w PSU
• ThermalTake HardCano10 Fan Controller + Temp Sensors
• AMD Athlon XP2000+ (1.67 GHz/266 FSB) Socket A CPU (pretty sure he has a Palomino-core) w/ a Galaxy GC19 HSF Combo (generic fan)
• BioStar M7VIQ MoBo (Bios Revision VIQ0515B)
• Floppy Drive (he wasn't descriptive enough to know what kind)
• 19 GB Hard Drive (he wasn't descriptive enough to know what kind)
• CD-RW Drive (he wasn't descriptive enough to know what kind)
• AGP - GeForce4 MX440 64MB Video Card
• PCI - SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 Soung Card
• PCI - Linksys 10/100 NIC

Bigger Image Of His Case:


Pic of his Heat Sink (fan is just generic cheapy black fan, not one pictured:

My suggestions would probably be as follows to him (and I probably have made them but he was just too stubborn to listen to me):

• Lap the heat sink and put some Artic Silver on it (if not replace the HSF combo with a better combo)
• Better intake (not the generic ones he pulled out of other PC's) and exhaust fans
• Location of the PC ... does it allow airflow
• Rounded cables for inside the PC to allow better airflow

He seems to think that my going rate of $75,000 per hour of work is too expensive for his tastes ...

he should take the side off his case to test his airflow...

if the cpu temperature drops considerably (5-10° C ) then he will get improvement in cpu temps by improving the fans/cutting out blowholes/etc

if the temperature doesn't change all that much, and he's dead set on improving his temps, he HAS to get a better HSF... the stock or generic coolers simply suck