what does it mean when...

[ppe1700]

hi all, i have an AMD opteron 170. its OC'ed to 2.6Ghz (will go higher but i use the cool and quiet function of the motherboard to automatically lower the multiplier and voltage so that for most of the time, the only fan inside the machine that spins is the chipset fan. any higher OC and i cannot use cool and quiet as as soon as the bios lowers the multi the system crashes.)

i used to run this CPU under water, but now its on a thermalrite 120 (big ugly heatsink).

now, this never used to happen, but if i look at coretemp, both cores idle around 39c mark. at idle, the core speed is 1.3Ghz, and voltage is about 1.1v. the CPU fans are both turned off (and the pc is nice and quiet.)


when i get the PC to do work (open an application, start a virtual machine etc) the core temp shoots up to 55c. ive set my fans to come on at 50c in the bios, so at this point both fans immediately come on and stay on as long as the machine is working. some times the coretemp will go up as high as 62c.


weird thing is, the temp used to go up steadily, now it just rockets up a 15c jump.
i cant remember rightly, but i'm pretty sure the idle temp was low 30s last year when i put this HSF in.

any ideas?

 

[deadlysyn]

Have you checked the HSF for dust? It might be a good time to get out the can of air and just blow it all out. The dust creates an insulating layer over the fins, and basically trap the heat in them. Dust does really cause some problems with the efficiency of a heatsink, and I would be willing to bet that if you were to dust it out, your temps would return to normal.

 

[ppe1700]

Sorry for the late reply to you. I cleaned out the crap, and re-secured the HSF and it fixed it.
Motherboard blew last night after being powered off for 10 days whilst on holiday though

 

[Lavacon]

Motherboard blew last night after being powered off for 10 days whilst on holiday though

Like.... sizzle sizzle crackle crackle poof blew? Or blew more dust out?