Concern over Core Temperatures

dat789

dat789

dat789

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19 Mar 2013
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Location
London, UK
Hello fellow overclockers,

To begin, here are my system specs (1 month old, so, they're all fairly new):
- Intel Core i7 3770K 3.50 GHz
- Corsair Vengeance 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Unbuffered CL9 DIMM Memory
- Coolermaster Hyper TX3 Evo
- OCZ 750W PSU
- Asus P8Z77-V LX Motherboard
- OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB SSD

I'm fairly new to Overclocking. I've done very little at BIOS a few days ago and noticed from using RealTemp_370 that my CPU is clocking at 4.2 GHz.

Today, after reading "The Beginner's Guide to overclocking" thread I downloaded the suggested Prime95. Ran the stress test for 2 minutes, all of the i7's 8 cores were max'ed at 100% and I noticed temperatures were at 100Celsius for all of them.

I hope this will not sound too dumb -- is 100 Celsius acceptable??
It's idling at the moment and current temperature is at 40 celsius.

Any comments? Much thanks. I'm still learning.
 
Hi and welcome to the forums.

Those are very high. Are you using auto cpu voltage, or what vcore have you input. And is the cooler mounted securely with just a small rice grain sized drop of thermal paste?
 
100c is extremely high, especially for 4.2ghz.
I'd recommend resetting your bios back to defaults and retesting your temperatures. If the motherboard has an Auto-OC function (Could either be a bios setting or a motherboard switch) then turn it off.

If your temperatures are still high, then It will be an issue with the seating of the CPU Cooler.

You said that you're new to Overclocking - Post the settings that you changed to achieve your overclock and the values that you set them to and somebody here will explain any issues and optimizations if you need them.
 
About thermal paste -- good thing you brought it up -- I remember applying and now I think back it was too much. some of the paste were pressed out.
I didn't know at the time, as I thought the more paste the better as heat won't transfer. But i guess that too much of paste also means that the cooling (from fan) is not able to cool the CPU down accordingly.

OK. I'll check these out over the weekend.
 
dat789 said:
About thermal paste -- good thing you brought it up -- I remember applying and now I think back it was too much. some of the paste were pressed out.
I didn't know at the time, as I thought the more paste the better as heat won't transfer. But i guess that too much of paste also means that the cooling (from fan) is not able to cool the CPU down accordingly.

OK. I'll check these out over the weekend.
Click to expand...

The paste is actually to aid heat transfer from the cpu to the cpu cooler, the metal surfaces alone won't make full contact so the paste "bridges" the two so heat can transfer more efficiently :)
 
@Deceptor
Thanks for the response. Understand better now on the purpose of thermal compound/paste.

Oh no! Some residual gunk on my fingers went onto 3 golden spots on the back of the CPU! I've gently scraped them off with credit card. those 3 spots were almost covered in grey but now i can see 3 round circles again. I dont think it's that clean but it's the best.
Does that spell out trouble?

Help!
 
dont use a credit card to clean paste or anything of especially on the cpu, you could damage it. You should use a lint free cloth or something like coffee filters and as said use 90% isopropyl alcohol.

Also remember if you take the cooler of you need to remove the paste from the cooler and the cpu and reapply.
 
Firstly, all I see under "I'm getting these items" is a grey line.

Secondly, your sig is way too large. 4 lines of text maximum. See the forum FAQs :)
Better fix it before a mod comes and fixes it for you :p
 
What have you set the voltage to? 100C is close to the shutdown protection, I'd try to stay under 90C (preferably 80C if possible).
 
OP, the Hyper TX3 is a good cooler if you want to keep the chip at stock but it doesn't respond well to overclocking - believe me, I've tried.

If you want to get a big overclock, you can't rely on a cooler which has push pins as the contact between the processor and the heatsink won't be sufficient and there is minimal pressure applied by the heatsink resulting in poor contact between processor and heatsink.

I would suggest looking for another cooler which has a bracket to attach it securely to the motherboard. Something like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 or the Arctic A30 would be a good place to start. These are budget coolers around the £30 mark which provide excellent performance and great value.

If you want to go all out, then you can look at an NH-D14 or an all-in-one cooler.
 
Guys
@Rooster212, mmj_uk, deceptor, setter, et al.,

I've just cleaned with lint free cloth with isopropyl alcohol on both the heatsink and the CPU top, applied new paste -- Arctic Cooling MX-2 -- and ran Prime95.

Load Temperature Results:
All core temperatures now averages 77.4 celsius.
Max: 83 celsius.
Min: 71 celsius.

Idle Temperature Results:
Average: 36.5 celsius

This is a massive difference from before, which at load temperature was at 100 celsius!
 
ArchAndroid said:
OP, the Hyper TX3 is a good cooler if you want to keep the chip at stock but it doesn't respond well to overclocking - believe me, I've tried.

If you want to get a big overclock, you can't rely on a cooler which has push pins as the contact between the processor and the heatsink won't be sufficient and there is minimal pressure applied by the heatsink resulting in poor contact between processor and heatsink.

I would suggest looking for another cooler which has a bracket to attach it securely to the motherboard. Something like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 or the Arctic A30 would be a good place to start. These are budget coolers around the £30 mark which provide excellent performance and great value.

If you want to go all out, then you can look at an NH-D14 or an all-in-one cooler.
Click to expand...

@ArchAndroid
Thank you for your response. It's an insight I now understand better. I've just posted the temperature reports, and CPU is at stock clock.

You are right on the heatsink. I don't quite like the pins onto the board. Will update this thread once I get the Noctua NH-D14.

At least the actions done to date since joining this forum have been positive and convinced to be on the right track! :) :D

Thank you all!
 
what you might want to try is get some arti clean 1 & 2. Number 1 cleans of the paste like isopropyl alcohol and 2 is supposed to prepare the surface of the cooler and cpu for maximum heat dissapation and transfer. I use it all the time.

With my last cpu which was an e8400 core 2 duo my max temps were 48 in summer and 58 in winter when all the heating was on. My current cpu is clocked to 4.5 and with IBT with all the heating one of my cores goes to 69 and prime 59. Havent got to summer to check what those temps will be like though.
 
Keep in mind it takes time for the paste to set in properly, seen some guy say it took around a month till he seen decent temperatures on his h100 cooler.
 
Suarez7 said:
Keep in mind it takes time for the paste to set in properly, seen some guy say it took around a month till he seen decent temperatures on his h100 cooler.
Click to expand...

This is certainly great to know whether or not true (could be a coincident). But I guess to rule out any coincident and have a more confident reading, check again in a month or 3.

By this time I'd have acquired the Noctua NH-D14 based on the recommendation from this thread. :) :p
 
Additionally, I have just 'channelled' air travel near or past the processor area as they are near the exit fans and the temps are a few degrees cooler...every little bit helps
 
I found the tx3 great for overclocking a 2500k. At 4.6ghz with 1.33v it topped out at 73 degrees on coretemp with prime95.

Make sure you're pushing the push pins in properly so there's good contact. The ivybridge cpu's do run notoriously hot compared to sandybridge because of the use of TIM between the cpu and ihs. I still think you should be seeing better temperatures though.

Oh and make sure the fan is spinning at that it speeds up when temp increases.
 
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