1. Put together a new i7-920 D0 in an Asus P6TD using a Titan Fenrir, in a stock Antec 1200, fans all at medium.
2. Boots up fine, temperatures seem a little high at 34C. Run some benchmarks and get 100+ FPS for a while in Bad Company 2. Max temp is mid 50s.
3. OC it to 3.8Gig, boots at 40C, run some benchmarks and it peaks at 72C. Start running Prime95 and it shoots up to over 90C. Immediately close Prime95 and closedown PC.
4. Give it a while to cool down and reboot. Temp in all 4 cores stays around 40C.
5. Fault has developed that a minute after boot the multiplier cuts roughly in half, with the relevant reduction in CPU speed.
6. Close down and cool off the system. Take off the Fenrir and remove the CPU from the Motherboard.
The fault is that the Fenrir has retained a small amount of Arctic Cleaner in between the base heatsink and brass rods that run through it when I have cleaned it prior to installation. A small amount of fluid has run down in between the base of the heatsink and the top of the CPU mixing with the Antec Formula 5 thermal paste.
a) Clean off the CPU and the Fenrir. Reseat using Arctic Silver 5 (not important but being as detailed as poss).
b) Boot system and it detects the newly seated CPU as a new one; I select to set BIOS options to auto. BIOS resets to initial state except that instead of going to Auto Multiplier sets itself to 21. Thus, once booted, CPU is running at 2.8 Ghz instead of 2.66.
c) Temps look stable at low to mid 20sC across the 4 cores.
d) Under no load and at these lower temps, the multiplier stills cuts itself after running for a minute to 12 from 21, reducing the CPU speed from 2.8Ghz to 1.603Ghz.
Questions :
1) What is causing the multiplier to reduce itself ?
2) Is the CPU likely to blame and now 'fried' or faulty?
2. Boots up fine, temperatures seem a little high at 34C. Run some benchmarks and get 100+ FPS for a while in Bad Company 2. Max temp is mid 50s.
3. OC it to 3.8Gig, boots at 40C, run some benchmarks and it peaks at 72C. Start running Prime95 and it shoots up to over 90C. Immediately close Prime95 and closedown PC.
4. Give it a while to cool down and reboot. Temp in all 4 cores stays around 40C.
5. Fault has developed that a minute after boot the multiplier cuts roughly in half, with the relevant reduction in CPU speed.
6. Close down and cool off the system. Take off the Fenrir and remove the CPU from the Motherboard.
The fault is that the Fenrir has retained a small amount of Arctic Cleaner in between the base heatsink and brass rods that run through it when I have cleaned it prior to installation. A small amount of fluid has run down in between the base of the heatsink and the top of the CPU mixing with the Antec Formula 5 thermal paste.
a) Clean off the CPU and the Fenrir. Reseat using Arctic Silver 5 (not important but being as detailed as poss).
b) Boot system and it detects the newly seated CPU as a new one; I select to set BIOS options to auto. BIOS resets to initial state except that instead of going to Auto Multiplier sets itself to 21. Thus, once booted, CPU is running at 2.8 Ghz instead of 2.66.
c) Temps look stable at low to mid 20sC across the 4 cores.
d) Under no load and at these lower temps, the multiplier stills cuts itself after running for a minute to 12 from 21, reducing the CPU speed from 2.8Ghz to 1.603Ghz.
Questions :
1) What is causing the multiplier to reduce itself ?
2) Is the CPU likely to blame and now 'fried' or faulty?
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speedstep is a power consuming thing, reduces the multiplier from 21 to 12x and the temps drop ofc. nothing to worry about 
