EMERGENCY: Is My Q9400 Overheating... What Can I Do?

[knoober]

Thanks for the replies!

Should I re-apply the thermal paste today because I'm worried I didn't apply enough thermal paste?

Well your temps appear to be okay so you could probably just leave it alone. I think it would benefit you to see the kind of difference it makes in your temps when you keep trying for a perfect application of paste. What I mean is: you should keep trying until you think you have it perfectly applied and then evaluate whether you are happy with your core temps in relation to how much work it was to clean the heat sink /cpu and reapply the paste

 

[Johan45]

Just as most are saying. Use your computer it's fine. I would even let it run at stock 2.66 the way it is.

 

[cdawall]

It is fine just leave it alone.

 

[GreatUSA]

Awesome, thanks!

Now I understand that my temps are fine for the long term, BUT what about leaving the Q9400 CPU at the underclocked speed of 2.00Ghz instead of the stock 2.66Ghz?

 

[trents]

yeah, neither do i. i just bought it for the first two bits��

Do you mean bytes?

- - - Updated - - -

Awesome, thanks!

Now I understand that my temps are fine for the long term, BUT what about leaving the Q9400 CPU at the underclocked speed of 2.00Ghz instead of the stock 2.66Ghz?

Won't hurt anything at all. But you would have more impact on temps if you lowered the core voltage.

 

[Mjolnir]

These threads have gone back and forth over similar issues. First with maybe an OC, now overheating, looking at a new CPU cooler.

Maybe consider making a single thread of 'Can you please help with my computer as a whole'? I think you've got like 4 running that all amount to the same answer quite frankly. Save up and get a new computer. Your titles are always 'HELP' or 'URGENT' as well. We appreciate you need help. But most of your threads more or less cover the same topic.

EDIT: after reading a bit more of this thread, you've asked the 'are my temps ok' question about 20 times. And you also re-posted half a day after a first post regarding a question. As I'm sure I, or others, have mentioned before, this is a free/open forum. No one here is paid to give you advice. Especially when the advice you get here a lot of the time can be easily googled. LGA 775 has been around a long time, and thus information about it is also plentiful. I respect chatting to people on a forum can give you more direct answers, but please reconsider your questions/whether they have been answered before.

Not trying to be mean at all, but you need to be realistic. You were told your temps were fine. Then asked about a video to apply paste (google can aid here), then changed it, made them go higher, now asking again if you should re-do it. Just do it if you feel you didn't do enough/too much. Or just leave it as temps are fine, and Prime95 is also a much higher workload than you'd normally run. So don't worry about your temps. Worry about saving your pennies for a substantial upgrade.

Even a G4560 Pentium Kabylake CPU on a budget build would probably be a good upgrade for you at this point... There are budget machines out there, and people here can definitely help with a budget machine/build as well. (Contrary to my above comments, if you do want to go this route, and plan to buy soon, THEN start a new thread in builds section )

 

[cdawall]

You can leave it clock at whatever clockspeed doesn't affect temps like core voltage does if core voltage is left stock/auto nothing will really change with loaded temps. I would bump it up to 2.66ghz because that chip is old and any performance available should be eeked out of it.

 

[GreatUSA]

Thanks, but how do I lower the core voltage?

 

[trents]

It's a setting in bios. It may be labeled something like "CPU voltage."

Did you downclock the CPU in bios or did you use some kind of Windows program to do it?

 

[GreatUSA]

I booted into the motherboard's BIOS and downclocked it to the current 2.00Ghz from the stock speed 2.66Ghz.

This is my motherboard rev 1.0: http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-P35-DS3R-rev-10#ov

 

[wingman99]

I booted into the motherboard's BIOS and downclocked it to the current 2.00Ghz from the stock speed 2.66Ghz.

This is my motherboard rev 1.0: http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-P35-DS3R-rev-10#ov

How much temperature reduction did you get with down clocking the CPU?

 

[GreatUSA]

I just felt A LOT of fear because I realised that I posted the temperatures in Celsius, which gives much lower numbers than Fahrenheit.

These are the numbers when converted to Fahrenheit:

CPU Temperature: 149F = 65C
Core 1: 159.8F = 71C
Core 2: 161.6F = 72C
Core 3: 163.4F = 73C
Core 4: 158F = 70C

 

[trents]

Celcius is standard reporting method around here. It's an international community so that works better.

Why don't you experiment with setting your CPU frequency back to the stock speed and check your temps with whatever stress testing method you have been using. See if they are much higher when you do that. I think you will find there's not more than a couple of degrees difference.

Here's a page from your motherboard manual that shows the section in the bios for doing that. I have the line items highlighted that you would need to be concerned with.

Enable CPU Host Clock Control and type in the value 266. I imagine you have that value at 200 as of now.

On the other hand, if you want to lower voltage to lower temps, go down to CPU Voltage Control and enter a manual value, something lower than what is currently being used. You can check the current value in the free program CPU-z with the CPU tab of the program interface. If you lower the CPU voltage too much the system will either not boot or will be unstable in use.

Actually, to return everything quickly to default values just hit the F7 key while in bios.

 

[Dr. McCoy]

These threads have gone back and forth over similar issues. First with maybe an OC, now overheating, looking at a new CPU cooler.

Maybe consider making a single thread of 'Can you please help with my computer as a whole'? I think you've got like 4 running that all amount to the same answer quite frankly. Save up and get a new computer. Your titles are always 'HELP' or 'URGENT' as well. We appreciate you need help. But most of your threads more or less cover the same topic.

EDIT: after reading a bit more of this thread, you've asked the 'are my temps ok' question about 20 times. And you also re-posted half a day after a first post regarding a question. As I'm sure I, or others, have mentioned before, this is a free/open forum. No one here is paid to give you advice. Especially when the advice you get here a lot of the time can be easily googled. LGA 775 has been around a long time, and thus information about it is also plentiful. I respect chatting to people on a forum can give you more direct answers, but please reconsider your questions/whether they have been answered before.

Not trying to be mean at all, but you need to be realistic. You were told your temps were fine. Then asked about a video to apply paste (google can aid here), then changed it, made them go higher, now asking again if you should re-do it. Just do it if you feel you didn't do enough/too much. Or just leave it as temps are fine, and Prime95 is also a much higher workload than you'd normally run. So don't worry about your temps. Worry about saving your pennies for a substantial upgrade.

Even a G4560 Pentium Kabylake CPU on a budget build would probably be a good upgrade for you at this point... There are budget machines out there, and people here can definitely help with a budget machine/build as well. (Contrary to my above comments, if you do want to go this route, and plan to buy soon, THEN start a new thread in builds section )

Brilliantly summed up and I have to agree - I noted within the very first post how big of an "Emergency" it was after running it that way for 12 months...... THEN they suddenly decide it's a problem and it was only then they had to ask?

Not anytime sooner? Really?
I mean it's an emergency..... Right?
C'mon.......

 

[GreatUSA]

These threads have gone back and forth over similar issues. First with maybe an OC, now overheating, looking at a new CPU cooler.

Maybe consider making a single thread of 'Can you please help with my computer as a whole'? I think you've got like 4 running that all amount to the same answer quite frankly. Save up and get a new computer. Your titles are always 'HELP' or 'URGENT' as well. We appreciate you need help. But most of your threads more or less cover the same topic.

EDIT: after reading a bit more of this thread, you've asked the 'are my temps ok' question about 20 times. And you also re-posted half a day after a first post regarding a question. As I'm sure I, or others, have mentioned before, this is a free/open forum. No one here is paid to give you advice. Especially when the advice you get here a lot of the time can be easily googled. LGA 775 has been around a long time, and thus information about it is also plentiful. I respect chatting to people on a forum can give you more direct answers, but please reconsider your questions/whether they have been answered before.

Not trying to be mean at all, but you need to be realistic. You were told your temps were fine. Then asked about a video to apply paste (google can aid here), then changed it, made them go higher, now asking again if you should re-do it. Just do it if you feel you didn't do enough/too much. Or just leave it as temps are fine, and Prime95 is also a much higher workload than you'd normally run. So don't worry about your temps. Worry about saving your pennies for a substantial upgrade.

Even a G4560 Pentium Kabylake CPU on a budget build would probably be a good upgrade for you at this point... There are budget machines out there, and people here can definitely help with a budget machine/build as well. (Contrary to my above comments, if you do want to go this route, and plan to buy soon, THEN start a new thread in builds section )

Hey man, I appreciate your post.

My questions are definitely sincere.

 

[GreatUSA]

I just felt A LOT of fear because I realised that I posted the temperatures in Celsius, which gives much lower numbers than Fahrenheit.

These are the numbers when converted to Fahrenheit:

CPU Temperature: 149F = 65C
Core 1: 159.8F = 71C
Core 2: 161.6F = 72C
Core 3: 163.4F = 73C
Core 4: 158F = 70C

I don't mean to be demanding, but could someone please tell me if these temps I'm getting are safe and fine for the long term?

 

[kittusiva]

Better as all the members suggested above clean the motherboard once and clean the CPU top with Iso propyl then apply a good thermal paste like artic silver then you can mount the cpu either with the intel cpu fan . In a test case of room temperature with 28 degrees your system temperature of the core's should't be greater than 57 degrees. You can test this on the BIOS of the motherboard in the hardware section. If results don't improve better use an afterarket coolers there are many for socket 775 motherboard choose the better , I use Deepcool Neptwin which cools my cpu better and I never ran more than 57 degrees on a heavy game like crysis 3 .

My RIG:
INTEL Q9450
ASUS P5KC Motherboard
Deepcool Neptwin cpu cooler
8GB DDR3 (Tweaked)
HDD500GB mechanical drive.
Sapphire 260X graphic card
Corsair VX450W SMPS
Corsair Rage cabinet

 

[Tech Tweaker]

Better as all the members suggested above clean the motherboard once and clean the CPU top with Iso propyl then apply a good thermal paste like artic silver then you can mount the cpu either with the intel cpu fan . In a test case of room temperature with 28 degrees your system temperature of the core's shouldn't be greater than 57 degrees. You can test this on the BIOS of the motherboard in the hardware section. I hope this helps

Arctic Silver 5 isn't really that good of a paste (if you were referring to AS5, if you were referring to Ceramique, it's even worse), it's been probably ~5-6 years since AS5 was among the top pastes (or more). Arctic Cooling MX-2 or MX-4, and Prolimatech PK-2 beat it in performance and easier clean up (and they aren't electrically conductive or capacitive), among other pastes.

Checking the CPU temperature in the BIOS of the motherboard isn't really a good test. The BIOS itself isn't putting much of a load on the CPU, so this isn't a relevant test since what we're interested in is core temperatures under full load (and the BIOS normally gives the socket temp as far as I know).

 

[Tír na nÓg]

I don't mean to be demanding, but could someone please tell me if these temps I'm getting are safe and fine for the long term?

Man, we are all talking in Celsius, have a beer, listen to some music and call it a day!

 

[GreatUSA]

I've still got the Q9400 CPU underclocked at 2.00Ghz, but I'm thinking about just putting the Q9400 CPU back to its default clockspeed, which is 2.66Ghz.

How much of a temperature increase can I expect?