P4 3.4GHz Temp

Hi all.

I have a 3.4Ghz Prescott core P4 processor with a 1MB cache. I know that they usually run hotter than their Northwood equivalents. My BIOS reports a temperature of 64-ish C at rest. Is this too hot? It seems a little warm to me, but the system is stable, and has never crashed. What temperature is too hot for my processor?

Oh, and I do have fan, heat sink, thermal paste and all that gobbeldy-gook on it. (just so you don't think I'm an idjit)

Cheers

P.S. Sorry if this is the wrong forum-- my first time here and there are other temp. related questions here too, so scuse my ignorance.

You are in the right place now, and welcome to dev shed
I'm going to assume you are using the stock intel heat sink and fan. The temperature range I've seen mostly are in the 50's idle and 70's load (C), but it varies depending on ambient temperature and what cooling you're using (not just heat sink and fan, but case fans, airflow through the case, and where the case is located). I've read that the temp you see in bios isn't quite the resting temp: if you have monitoring software for your board that works in windows try that too, as a check.
HTH

Hi Karsh

Thanks for putting me in my place!

Anyway... I am using a Speeze 70mm CPUfan/heatsink. I forget volume/minute rate, but it is a 3600 RPM motor. I might have used too much thermal paste, as I had no clue how much to put on it, and I read here somewhere that too much can be bad. That and my case is a little tight around my motherboard so I'll try to rearrange my case.

Can you recommend a good CPU fan? My motherboard (Gigabyte GA-8KNXP Version 2.0) has Windows based monitoring tools, but it wont report the temp. Is there any good 3rd party monitoring programs out there?

Sorry for all the questions. I am new to all this as this is the first computer I have ever built from scratch. I decided to loose the training wheels (Dell) and get what I wanted.

Sincerely,
Christopher Messick

how come i wasn't greeted like that when i first came here sounds kinda like me when i first got here though i still have questions every now and then...like now. karsh, remember how i said i overclocked my 2600+ and it was running stable? well it turns out a game i was playing kept crashing of late until i turned the speed back to 2600+, but the temps were never extremely high(topped around 60C i think) where i thought this to be the cause, why would the game keep crashing if the cpu temps were never extreme? like messic, i also think i might have used too much thermal paste, or too little...i dont know so i will check on that again to see if i can get my temps down more if necessary.

If you just want a fan, get the largest you can, thermaltake, coolermaster, and vantec are a few good brands. If you want the heatsink/fan combo I like the zalman cnps7000a-cu, recommend it to everyone. I've also heard many good things about Thermalright. Basically you want the biggest copper heatsink you can get.
Thermal paste-wise, you want to apply a small amount, maybe the size of a BB, and spread it smoothly to cover the whole chip. I use the edge of an old credit card for this. Then place the heatsink on the cpu and take it off again to see if there are any places that are not contacting the thermal paste. Add a small amount of paste to those areas, then attach the heatsink. To clean off the existing thermal paste if you want to re-mount your heatsink, use a soft cloth or paper towel and a little acetone (alcohol will also work).

@constant_fie: temps are just one cause of instability. If you have reasonable temps, try bumping up the cpu voltage. You might also use memtest to check your ram. I don't call an OC stable unless it can run memtest a few hours with no errors, and run prime95 at least overnight with no errors.

yea when i upped the voltage by 6%, windows wouldn't load, and then it seemed fine at 12%, but there is also a 14% option (the highest) which i will try to see how it works

See how it works, but be aware that overvolting will most likely reduce the life of the cpu.

yea i dont mind that much, as i dont look to be keeping this cpu for another 4 years as long as it can last me maybe 2.5 years, then i dont mind. i might be upgrading sooner than that anyways.

Just FYI - here's a link for one method of applying thermal paste to a P4...

http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_...nstructions.htm

Note the size of the CPU core.

OK....


Well as usual it helps to upgrade the BIOS-- I was using an old one with a clock multiplier of 14 (14*200 = 2.8GHz) which is why it was running slow-- turns out I was overclocking the FSB to 970-something MHz to get it to go 3.4GHz. upgrading the BIOS got me a clock multiplier of 17 (17*200 = 3.4GHz ), and a temperature in the mid to upper 30 degree celcius range at "rest". And I am using a program called speedfan to get the temperature readings as opposed to the BIOS now.

Oh, and thanks for the link, lnxgeek! I redid the thermal paste-- that was part of my problem as well.

just wanted to say these post helped me immensely.
I couldn't find the info anywhere else on the web.

thanks!

Glad these posts helped you out.

Oh, and Welcome to Dev Shed.