Do I need more cooling? Temps of 40oc

ThomasC

ThomasC

ThomasC

Associate
Joined
20 Nov 2010
Posts
68
Hello guys.

I'm getting 40oC for my CPU, hard drive and motherboard while idle.

Is this bad?

I'm having problems with my graphics card at the minute. It is working, but it doesn't display a temperature in Speccy. My old graphics card showed a temperature so I'm confused now.

What's going on? My old graphics card was the 9600GT and my new one is Gigabyte 460 GTX.

In regards to cooling, I have my PSU fan, graphics card double fan and CPU fan. So three fans in total. Do I need more?

Thank you. :)
 
Operating System
MS Windows XP Professional 32-bit SP3
CPU
AMD Phenom X4 9650 41 °C
Agena 65nm Technology
RAM
4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR2 @ 200MHz (4-3-3-9)
Motherboard
ASRock N68-S (CPUSocket) 40 °C
Graphics
W2243 @ 1920x1080
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460
Hard Drives
977GB MDT MD10 EACS-00ZJB0 SCSI Disk Device (Unknown) 41 °C
Optical Drives
Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200A
Audio
No audio card detected
 
Do you not have any fans on the case? If not then that's probably the problem. I always have one on the front pulling air in and one on the back pushing the hot air from the case out. Make sure your cables are tidy to ensure good airflow.
 
My cpu is at 70 degrees while idle at the moment. It's not ideal, but it's working ok anyway. Idle temperatures aren't anything to worry about.
 
JonJ678 said:
My cpu is at 70 degrees while idle at the moment. It's not ideal, but it's working ok anyway. Idle temperatures aren't anything to worry about.
Click to expand...
70c idle jon, thats extremely high for the watercooled setup you have, my loads are hitting 64 at this time of year on air. What are your loads like if you dont mind me asking?

Btw, nice to see you back on again mate.:)
 
It just switches off under load. It's good for basic things like word processing, and it'll cope with matlab if I'm careful. It wouldn't be a good thing for f@h though. Troubleshooting is logged here, next step is pulling the entire loop apart and starting from scratch. Which I may do now thinking about it, no time like the present.
 
Seen that thread, sorry to hear. I still have a load of barbs and tubing that i got for mine, however the watercooling idea has been put on hold, sli gtx 470's put a bit of a dent in that idea tbh, i had gtx 275's in sli, however as im gaming a bit more now i blew the cash on more modern gpu's.
 
Load temps are now down to 45 ish at 3ghz, but as the loop isn't bled yet this is a good sign. Certainly a hell of a lot better than it was.

@OP, idle temperatures don't mean very much as they're very much influenced by room temperature. Load temperatures suffer from much the same problem, except that load temps are what matter for stability. Load - idle is normally called delta and is a good indication of how well your cooling system is working. I currently have a delta of 20 degrees, which is fairly good for air but poor for water.
 
True, i keep the system in a pretty cool room, though in summer time i can expect a rise of 5-6c or so, now that its a bit cooler i might try to hit 4.2ghz, dont care if it's stable, wanna try it for a few benchmarks tbh.
 
4.2ghz would be nice on air jon tbh, but wether my megahelims could cope im not sure, the voltage jumps get very excessive, may hold onto those barbs and tubing yet, but to watercool this rig at the minute would cost a fortune.
 
Maybe, maybe not. Second hand watercooling can be had pretty cheaply if you're not too fussy about what parts you start with. Towards the summer is probably better timing, as you value water more when it gets hotter outside.

I'm not sure if better than 64 load on air is realistic, depends on where the thermal bottleneck lies and I'm not sure whether it's the heatsink or the cpu - heatsink gap. Have you given the standard lapping & increasing mounting pressure a try? If so, relapping both and playing with liquid pro (or equivalent) may be worth trying despite it's bad rep on here.

My loop is stripped down to pretty much the bare minimum at the moment, and I've been very careful with mounting so hopefully should have a good delta to show for it. Time to sleep now I think, bleeding and reorganising the loop can wait for tomorrow.
 
Im running the megahelims at standard, non lapped, my old TRUE black, (lapped) was a good cooler as well, tbh i wouldnt consider the pre made watercooling setups, such as the liquid pro or H50/H70. My dual 470's overclocked to a modest 570mhz were hitting the mid 80's in games, sorted them with a 1500 rpm yate loon stuck behind them.

IMG_1620.jpg


Not pretty, but it works, i can use auto fan and still keep low temps.
 
40c in idle from a 95W CPU is a tad high, ok i have a different CPU (Athlon 445 X3) but its the same wattage and im sat at 23c on air with the ambient temp at 15c

Oddly ive just re read and you have the same graphics card. what that at?

Fan wise im running a 12cm in slatted slides 12cm exhaust and the 12cm PSU fan. Arctic freezer rev2 and the GELID Icy vision all the fans are at the minimum speeds and its nigh on silent What coolers are you using? and as asked previous what case cooling

Speedfan shot below for you i know the fan speeds are odd i dont think the sensors like very low RPM's an the 40c im still trying to find!

fanspeeds.jpg
 
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Idle temps, while an indicator of cooling performance, are pretty meaningless because the temperature sensors are only designed to be accurate under load. So chips running the same real temperature at idle can report different values. Load up prime 95 or even better linX and tell us what temps you get after 10-30 minutes.
 
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