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I live in sunny California. It's hot most days.
I have an AMD 9850 quad core which is rated at 125W. I recently put in an HTPC case and had to use the stock AMD heat-sink / fan because of the height restriction.
It idles in the 50s and heats up to 70+ under full load with all four cores maxed out.
Is this normal? Have I misapplied the thermal grease? Any advice? Thanks.
With a zalman 9700 it idles at 40 and maxes at 50ish (with the lid unsheathed since I can't make room!).
While that is a bit high, it's impossible to tell what exactly is causing it without more details. the 9850 shouldn't get above 70c, so if you're hitting that often you should probably do something to fix it(honestly, the 9850 is not a very good choice for an HTPC as it runs hot and has a low(ish) temperature range).
What case are you using, and what kind of case fans does it have?
What thermal paste?
I'm assuming it's not overclocked, right?
What other components?(a hot video card can cause just as many problems as an insufficient cooler)
You may want to consider getting a smaller aftermarket heatsink such as the CM GeminII, and some AS5.
Good questions.
I'm using this case:
Newegg.com - hec Black 0.7mm Thickness SECC 7K09 Micro ATX Media Center / HTPC Case - HTPC / Media Center Cases
Also, I'm not trying to make this an HTPC I could have used a much lighter chip. Is it that it's a 125W chip? I could replace it with a lower power consumption quadcore? What is the difference between the AMD Ath II quadcores and the Phenom I/IIs?
I'm using Zalman Super Thermal Grease.
Not overclocked.
Also, I'm using the onboard video card. Is it the PSU? The PSU is a 270W supply driving my motherboard, cpu, one DVD burner, one SATA HDD, and one USB all-in-one floppy drive card reader. Thanks for this info! I've been considering other heatsinks too.
I've got about 120mm of clearance before butting into the CD ROM drive. So I can't use my blue orb II, and my stock HSF is too hot. I'm considering the CNPS7000 from Zalman.
I'm having thoughts that it might be because of the pressure the clip applies to the HSF / CPU contact because the Zalman clip has a lot more tension. Ideas?
It could be, higher pressure means more efficient thermal transfer. But unless the stock cooler is very loose then this alone shouldn't cause that much of a difference I think.Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleanti
And on a side note, my old Athlon XP3000 often got close to 85-90C after an hour or two on full load. But besides the fact that I didn't need any other heating in that room during the winter I don't think it suffered any permanent damage from it.
Nah, it being 125w isn't the problem. The original Phenoms were very inefficient and, as much as I adore AMD, were pretty poor processors in comparison to the awesomeness that was the Athlon64 & 64x2.Quote:
Originally Posted by doubleanti
If you're not using this as an HTPC, why use such a tiny case? Surely there are better options out there? I wouldn't put anything that requires more energy than a low-mid end i3 in there. It only has the one fan as an intake, with no real place for it to go. I would definitely consider installing an exhaust fan on the top vent(if you stand it vertically).
Another option is underclocking that processor. I have a Phenom II X4 955, with a CM Hyper 212+ cooler(utilizing two 120mm fans). It's default clock is 3.2Ghz with a power rating of 125w. I can overclock it to 3.8, using about 156w, easily without much temperature increase(31/40 stock, 32/48 overclocked - idle/load), though when I'm not doing anything that requires the processor I have it underclocked to 2.0Ghz using about 65w with temps at around 24/30.
I would bet you'd see a good 5-6 degrees Celsius drop by switching to AS5, as I've never seen anything work nearly as well. I don't know why the cooler manufacturers even try any more.Quote:
I'm using Zalman Super Thermal Grease.
Not overclocked.
Also, I'm using the onboard video card. Is it the PSU? The PSU is a 270W supply driving my motherboard, cpu, one DVD burner, one SATA HDD, and one USB all-in-one floppy drive card reader. Thanks for this info! I've been considering other heatsinks too.
I've got about 120mm of clearance before butting into the CD ROM drive. So I can't use my blue orb II, and my stock HSF is too hot. I'm considering the CNPS7000 from Zalman.
I'm having thoughts that it might be because of the pressure the clip applies to the HSF / CPU contact because the Zalman clip has a lot more tension. Ideas?
The CNPS7000 should do much better than the stock heatsink/fan, though you may also want to consider the 7500 and 7700 if you think you'll have enough space for them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by _Mike
The old Athlons were much closer to Intel's in terms of their thermal envelopes. Lately, it seems, with each iteration AMD is making the processors thermal peaks lower and lower. Also it varies from cpu to cpu. You could have two AthlonXP3200+'s with different revision numbers where one could handle up to 75c and the other could handle up to 95c(I use this as an example because I had a higher rated 3200+ back in the day, and did a good amount of research on them back then).