Expectations for factory Xeon cooler?

[HankB]

Hi folks,
I'm shaking down a new to me Socket 1156 Xeon X3460 system on a Supermicro motherboard. One of the tests I'm performing is to load up the processor (Rosetta in this case) to see if the cooler can handle it. During assembly I did repaste the CPU cooler which itself is singularly unimpressive. I'm not sure if it has a name, but if I had to name it I'd call it a pancake cooler. It consists of a copper slug surrounded by aluminum fins and to which a fan is attached.



I believe that's an 80mm fan. On the plus side, it is very quiet.

The limit I can run Rosetta is 4 threads (4 cores, 8 thread processor.) At that load temperature runs between 75°C and 85°C. If I load 6 or 8 threads, temperature climbs into the 90s and in a few minutes I hear what I presume is a high temperature alarm. With the system idle, the cores are at about 30°C. Ambient temperature is about 75°F (~24°C.) Other case fans are not yet set up but the case is wide open.

The other thing I don't care for on this cooler is the mounting arrangement. I don't have a high degree of confidence that there is good contact between CPU and cooler.

For a consumer CPU I expect that the included cooler to do an adequate job with the processor at 100% load. Perhaps that's wrong. Should I expect the factory cooler in this situation to support full load? It doesn't look like adequate cooling for that but again, I could be wrong.

Can I get confirmation on this one way or the other?

Thanks!

Edit: I just looked at the box my I7-4770K came in and it has the exact same cooler (which remains unused.)

 

[yoadknux]

This is called a stock cooler. It is usually enough for everyday uses and gaming as long as there's no overclock, pretty bad for CPU intensive tasks.

I have no experience with Rosetta. Can you try running CPU-Z stress test? It's not the most stressing test but it should give some indicator. I also have no experience with Xeon processors, is it possible they heat more than the standard i7s?

You could try mounting the cooler again... But to be honest you shouldn't expect much of a stock cooler. By the way, it shouldn't be quiet under load. You should hear it ramp it up like crazy on high temps

 

[EarthDog]

Thats the stock intel cooler.. its fine at stock and can handle some overclocking. How much, as you really already know, is a crapshoot and depends on the cpu, ambient, airflow, etc...

Its also sometimes tricky to mount properly.. but it should be able to run all threads at 100% and stock speeds at least.

 

[HankB]

... By the way, it shouldn't be quiet under load. You should hear it ramp it up like crazy on high temps

That's a hint. I checked fan RPMs and found it at ~1500. It remained there regardless of CPU loading. I read the manual (Yeah... last resort ) and found the following description:

Fan Speed Control Modes
This feature allows the user to decide how the system controls the speeds of the
onboard fans. The CPU temperature and the fan speed are correlative. When the
CPU on-die temperature increases, the fan speed will also increase for effective
system cooling. Select "Full Speed/FS" to allow the onboard fans to run at full
speed (of 100% Pulse Width Modulation Duty Cycle) for maximum cooling. The
FS setting is recommended for special system configuration or debugging. Select
"Performance/PF" for the onboard fans to run at 70% of the Initial PWM Cycle for
better system cooling. The PF setting is recommended for high-power-consuming
and high-density systems. Select "Balanced/BL" for the onboard fans to run at 50%
of the Initial PWM Cycle in order to balance the needs between system cooling
and power saving. The BL setting is recommended for regular systems with normal
hardware configurations. Select "Energy Saving/ES" for the onboard fans to run at
30% of the Initial PWM Cycle for best power efficiency and maximum quietness.
The Options are: Full Speed (@100% of PWM Cycle), Performance (@70% of
PWM Cycle), Balanced (@50% of PWM Cycle), and Energy Saving (@30% of
PWM Cycle).

(Emphasis on "... the fan speed will also increase for effective
system cooling".)

I went into the BIOS settings and found the CPU FAN setting at "Energy Saving" I switched it to "Full Speed" and rebooted. At idle the fan is now at 2160 RPM. At load it remains at 2160 RPM. It seems that there is no speed control for this fan, it just runs at a fixed speed regardless of CPU temperature. However I'm now up to 8 threads and CPU temps are holding at about 80°C

No ability to run CPU-Z since I'm running Linux but Rosetta puts on a pretty heavy CPU load. The program that calculates primes (name escapes me at the moment - age taking its toll...) would load it a little more and that's what I use for validating overclocks. The BIOS does not support overclocking and I'm just interested in stability at high loads.

... but it should be able to run all threads at 100% and stock speeds at least.

And it seems that with the correct BIOS settings it does.

For reference, the I-4770K is rated for 84 Watts TDP and the Xeon at 95 Watts. With Rosetta at 100% CPU/core utilization the system is drawing 142 Watts at the wall.

Surprisingly the fan is still fairly quiet.

Thanks!

 

[trents]

What do you mean by "correct bios settings"? Are you overclocking the CPU?

From Wikipedia:
The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often the CPU or GPU) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate in typical operation. Rather than specifying CPU's real power dissipation, TDP serves as the nominal value for designing CPU cooling systems.[1]

The TDP is typically not the largest amount of heat the CPU could ever generate (peak power), such as by running a power virus, but rather the maximum amount of heat that it would generate when running "real applications." This ensures the computer will be able to handle essentially all applications without exceeding its thermal envelope, or requiring a cooling system for the maximum theoretical power (which would cost more but in favor of extra headroom for processing power).[2]

Some sources state that the peak power for a microprocessor is usually 1.5 times the TDP rating.[3] However, the TDP is a conventional figure while its measurement methodology has been the subject of controversy. In particular, until around 2006 AMD used to report the maximum power draw of its processors as TDP, but Intel changed this practice with the introduction of its Conroe family of processors.


So the stock cooler would be adequate for "typical operation" but apparently not for demanding applications like Rosetta which must fit outside the "real application" category, as would Prime95 for instance. It's not designed for that. You really need to get a better cooler. That much is obvious. No sense in theorizing about what the stock cooler should do.

Do you know if Rosetta uses AVX/AVXII?

 

[HankB]

What do you mean by "correct bios settings"? Are you overclocking the CPU?

The BIOS has four settings for fan speed. At present fan control is not working under Linux. If I set the fan to the highest level (resulting in about 2150 RPM reported speed) I can run Rosetta on 100% of the CPU - 8 threads at 100% utilization - and CPU temp remains about 80°C which is well within the limit.

No overclocking available - this is a server board with relatively simple BIOS.

So the stock cooler would be adequate for "typical operation" but apparently not for demanding applications like Rosetta which must fit outside the "real application" category, as would Prime95 for instance. It's not designed for that. You really need to get a better cooler. That much is obvious. No sense in theorizing about what the stock cooler should do.

The stock cooler is adequate for crunching Rosetta at maximum capacity 24x7. Based on my experience with Prime95, it would probably run a little hotter with some of those tests but it still has 15°C headroom so it might support that as well. My purpose was to see what factory cooling is capable of and it is surprisingly capable.

Do you know if Rosetta uses AVX/AVXII?

Based on what I see in this thread, no.

 

[trents]

Is the noise objectionable when the fan is on high setting? If it is a server board I don't know that you have other cooler options.

 

[HankB]

Is the noise objectionable when the fan is on high setting? If it is a server board I don't know that you have other cooler options.

At the moment I have two case fans plugged into motherboard connectors. I think that all are driven at the same PWM duty cycle so they're going full blast as well. The noise from them is certainly more noticeable. It doesn't bother me. Much.

The fan is identical with the one that came with my I7-4770K so I would think that any fan that would work with that would work on this board. But that's moot since the factory fan provides adequate cooling without a lot of noise. No overclocking option so no need for additional cooling.

 

[trents]

Are you sure the bolt pattern is the same as for socket 1155 etc? Yeah it is. I looked it up.