Massive temperature drop, no reason?

Phenomenologica

Phenomenologica

Phenomenologica

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Further edit: Problem has been resolved by OcUK support. Thanks everyone for your help. :)

Edit: Discovered later on in thread that the overclock that was applied with the bundle when bought from OcUK has for some reason stopped working, hence the processor temperatures have dropped. Advice would be very much appreciated.


I've something of a minor mystery on my hands. I've had my i5 2500k and the cooler installed for a week or so now, and the whole time (Up to and including yesterday) it was idling at about 38-40 degrees. I've just turned realtemp back on and it's now idling at about 30. My usage pattern hasn't changed, I've made sure I have all my normal programs up in the background, and the room temperature is only about a degree or two below normal, nothing like the 8-10 degree difference.

Does a small drop in ambient temperatures cause such a large drop in system temps, or is something else going on here? I'd expect it to be a roughly linear relationship whereas this would imply it is roughly cubic, which makes no sense to me. What factors could drop the idle temperature so much?
 
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Was it a new install? Windows tends to do stuff in the background on new installs which bumps the "idle" temperature up a few degress.
 
cjgardens said:
Wish mine would drop lol. Have you moved your computer. Could be that the TIM You used has cured
Click to expand...

I thought about the TIM, but overnight after a week or so? Seems very unlikely. Computer hasn't moved at all, all the fans are at fixed speeds except for the graphics card one which runs proportionally to temperature. GPU temperature hasn't dropped more than the ambient temperature.

Jokester, it was installed about 10 days ago when the PC was set up. Considering all the reboots etc since I'd imagine windows would have finished fiddling surely? Although having said that, it IS XP. :p

Edit: Further information, the core temperatures are running much closer together than normal, either all in parity or with only a degree difference. Though I'd expect there to be less variance at lower temperatures so maybe it's normal.
 
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I was thinking more Vista/7, don't think XP does much after installation from what I can remember.

TIM curing doesn't make that much difference, also the TIM on the stock cooler seems to be really good from the testing I did, on a par with the expensive stuff.
 
Jokester said:
I was thinking more Vista/7, don't think XP does much after installation from what I can remember.

TIM curing doesn't make that much difference, also the TIM on the stock cooler seems to be really good from the testing I did, on a par with the expensive stuff.
Click to expand...

I'll be installing 7 tomorrow so that will prove interesting. And I'm running a non-stock cooler with a different thermal paste. Something like Arctic 5 if I recall, came with the cooler kit from OcUK. The CPU is overclocked to 4.4Ghz, although actually it might be worth checking that's still applied, the temperature drop could be in line with losing the overclock.

Edit: Yep found the culprit, the overclock has, for some reason, given up the ghost. It was pre-set from OcUK when I bought the motherboard bundle, and whilst I know a bit about overclocking myself I could use some advice on how to re-set it.
 
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