Pre-built and pre-overclocked but something not right

D3lirious · 20 Jan 2007 at 15:36

I bought a pre-overclocked PC (from 2.4 to 3 Ghz) because I liked the idea of it all being warrantied as I've never overclocked myself. However I think it might be running too hot.
Whilst picking the parts for the PC I've done some reading up in the overclocking sticky. So although I picked parts which I believed would help with the overclock, I don't have any experience with doing it myself. Hopefully with some help though I'll pick this up.
The first thing I did was run orthos at priority 10 whilst looking at temperatures in TAT to see if it was stable. It went from 50 when idle to about 70 during the test which from what I can gather is not good. The test didn't give any failures but I turned it off after about 10 mins because I'm assuming it's too hot regardless. (I think someone on here mentioned throttling at about this temp)

So, as I'm new to this I was hoping that some helpful experts here could walk me through what to check that might be causing this.
I've opened up the machine and all the fans seem to be spinning as expected including the one on the side of the ninja.

Specs:

Antec P180
Corsair 620W
Asus P5B Deluxe
Core2Duo E6600@3Ghz
Corsair 2x1Gb 6400C4

Street · 20 Jan 2007 at 15:53

It sounds like a poor contact between the HSF and the CPU. Try taking the heatsink off, cleaning it all, reapply some thermal paste and then reseat it back on the CPU.

Do you know how many volts are being used through the CPU, that can be another contributer to heat.

Van Diemen · 20 Jan 2007 at 16:00

50 deg C is too hot for idle.

First I would see what the Vcore is set to in the BIOS. I f its any higher than 1.35v or so then lower it. If its on auto then lower it to about 1.25 & see if it boots. Change vCore if you need.

Once in windows run TAT to see temps, if your still hitting around 50 @Idle & high 60s under load, check the Ninja installation.

Post back when done.

Otherwise take it back to the builders

Junk · 20 Jan 2007 at 16:15

another E6600 idling at 50+ degress. like i said in my other thread, there seems to be a common theme here!

Have you got the fan on your ninja or is that fanless mode ?

the other people seeing this are running stock coolers, all be it temporarily. me included.

Street · 20 Jan 2007 at 16:59

I did read somewhere that Ninjas have a compatibility issue with the P5Bs, I had one on mine before I switched to water cooling and I was also suffering from poor temps with my 6300. Might be worth looking into that.. There is a thread around here somewhere showing you how to file the base away so it fits perfectly.

D3lirious · 20 Jan 2007 at 17:00

Thanks for the quick replies. The heatsink def has a fan which is spinning so not fanless. I've written down the below from the BIOS, which gives vcore as 1.35. So I will either need to re-seat the heatsink? How do I go about this, it seems pretty big and there's no obvious clips that I can see...

AI Tuning: Manual
CPU Frequency: 333
DRAM Frequency: DDR2_833MHz
PCI Express Frequency: 100
PCI Clock Synchronization Mode: 33.33MHz
Spread Spectrum: Disabled
Memory Voltage: 2.10V
CPU VCore Voltage: 1.3500V
FSB Termination Voltage: Auto
NB VCore: Auto
SB VCore (SATA, PCI E): Auto
ICH Chipset Voltage: Auto

Memory Remap Feature: Disabled
Configure DRAM Timing by SPD: Disabled
DRAM CAS# Latency: 5
DRAM RAS# to CAS# Delay: 5 Dram Clocks
DRAM RAS# Precharge: 5 Dram Clocks
DRAM RAS# Activate to Precharge: 15 Dram Clocks
DRAM Write Recovery Time: 6 Dram Clocks
DRAM TRFC: 42 Dram Clocks
DRAM TRRD: 15 Dram Clocks
Rank Write to Read Delay: 15
Read to Precharge Delay: 15
Write to Precharge Delay: 15

Junk · 20 Jan 2007 at 17:02

it has 4 push-pins at the bottom which need carefully twisting with a very long screwdriver, or a small one and patience.

Van Diemen · 20 Jan 2007 at 17:52

If I were you I would take it back to the ppl that built it.
You have paid for a service.

Also I would lower the Vcore to 1.3

D3lirious · 20 Jan 2007 at 20:59

You're right of course but I don't really want to ages for them to do it. I will have a look at the heatsink tomorrow as I have some arctic silver in my drawer waiting to be used.

Had a quick look earlier but couldn't see the pins described. I'll see if any heatsink instructions came with the package.

D3lirious · 1 Feb 2007 at 23:15

OK an update to this:

I've flashed the BIOS to the latest version (1004) and restored all defaults so I'm running at stock. I've then changed all the [AUTO] settings to specific speeds and voltages to see how the temp looks and to have some known base settings to start from.

FSB: 266 (therefore CPU @266*9=2394)
DDR2-533MHz (1:1)
PCI: 33.33
spread spectrum: disabled
mem: 2.1v (I got this from the Corsair specs)
cpu vcore: 1.25
(for the next four I don't know what to set as I've no idea what [AUTO] would have been set to, I took a guess for FSB and NB but it seems to work

)
FSB termination voltage: 1.3v
NB vcore: 1.45
SB VCore [AUTO]
ICH Chipset: [AUTO]

I've re-seated the ninja about 4/5 times using arctic silver, and have even cut away the part of the base plate that presses against the capacitors. Temps are the best I've been able to get now:

Idle: 42
100% TAT: 55

So I'm going to start raising the FSB. Before I do, can you give any pointers for what the voltages other than CPU should be (which I assume I raise one notch if it becomes unstable). and when should i stop in terms of max safe volts and temps? Plus are there any other BIOS settings I should change first?

D3lirious · 2 Feb 2007 at 21:47

I'm running 413x8=3304 at the moment, with vcore on 1.45.

I'm up to about 35 mins in Orthos now, but my temp is about 69. If orthos continues for a few hours without probs, can i get away with this temp? I don't think the system will cope with a vcore drop at this speed. This CPU seems to need a huge boost in volts as soon as I try anything over about 3GHz, which of course then gives me these high temps.

FreeStream · 2 Feb 2007 at 22:02

70C is still hot TBH

The max I could get my E6600 to on a stock cooler was 430x7 at 1.4V (1.35V actual)

Get a better cooler tbh.

The stock one gets overloaded at 3+ghz and 1.4+V

armstrong06 · 2 Feb 2007 at 23:04

well ive had my pc for ages it was a packard bell celeron 2.2ghz socket 478,swapped that for a pentium 4r northwood core even though its registers at 1.9ghz and with the stock cooler and new asrock p4 motherboard and a new 550 watt power supply 1gb of ddr 266mhz which registerd at 133mhz and a geforce 5500fx im up to 2219.4 on the p4 and 133mhz-148mhz on the mem does anyone think thats good for a beginer,oh and im getting an artic cooling fan and one of the fans u point around in side the case should i point it at the vrms or the mem or the cpu block.

sja360 · 3 Feb 2007 at 02:14

armstrong06 said:
well ive had my pc for ages it was a packard bell celeron 2.2ghz socket 478,swapped that for a pentium 4r northwood core even though its registers at 1.9ghz and with the stock cooler and new asrock p4 motherboard and a new 550 watt power supply 1gb of ddr 266mhz which registerd at 133mhz and a geforce 5500fx im up to 2219.4 on the p4 and 133mhz-148mhz on the mem does anyone think thats good for a beginer,oh and im getting an artic cooling fan and one of the fans u point around in side the case should i point it at the vrms or the mem or the cpu block.

its probably the ram thats going to limit you, also your probably best making a thread about this rather than posting in someone elses.

Raikiri · 3 Feb 2007 at 02:29

Concorde Rules said:
70C is still hot TBH

The max I could get my E6600 to on a stock cooler was 430x7 at 1.4V (1.35V actual)

Get a better cooler tbh.

The stock one gets overloaded at 3+ghz and 1.4+V

He is using a Scythe Ninja, looks like the IHS is concave/convex (or the heatsink).

I am getting lower temps than he was at stock clocks, with a worse cooler so something is definately up.

D3lirious · 3 Feb 2007 at 10:35

I've come down to 3.2 GHz now which has allowed me to bring volts down a few notches from 1.45 to 1.4
I'm not 100% on stability as I need to run a long test, but orthos failed after about 35 mins at the next notch down.
CPU is idling at 48-50 but it still creeps up to 70 with TAT on 100%

Raikiri said:
He is using a Scythe Ninja, looks like the IHS is concave/convex (or the heatsink).

I am getting lower temps than he was at stock clocks, with a worse cooler so something is definately up.

Yep, I've lost patience with it now so I will contact the supplier to see what they can do. They have been helpful so far - they sent out an engineer to fit an arctic freezer 7 to it. But although my temps dropped a fair amount from the insane levels they were originally, the freezer was really loud compared with the ninja, and I have got the ninja to a similar performance since I've messed about with re-seating it and modifying the plate that surrounds CPU.
As has been suggested, lapping might be the only help at this point but I'm not prepared to go that far. I guess it could also be bad case air flow although there's 3 fans in it, 1 at the top, 1 at the back and 1 at the front.
I'll let you know how I get on with supplier.