I just put together my second box though I'm something of a newbie and it's the first time I've had to install a heat sink.
A friend's Volcano7 keeps his slightly overclocked XP2100 in the low 50C range at idle so I expected to do at least as well temperature-wise and much better noise-wise when I invested in a PAL8045/Panaflo L1A combo.
Well, it's quiet anyway...
This is a brand new Abit NV7-133R with an XP2000 and two sticks of Crucial 512MB PC2100. I'm getting temps of 66C within 10 minutes of POST with the box just sitting in BIOS doing nothing. I'd think the thermistor was faulty but the amount of heat coming off the fan is significantly hotter than what I'd felt from my friend's 2100/Volcano7 setup (which frankly didn't even feel warm.) Restarting after installing Linux?this was before I realized how hot the CPU was running?the BIOS reported CPU temperature of 69-70C. In both cases, the motherboard was installed in an open case, no fans, no panels, in a well air-conditioned room (~75F) sitting on top of a desk. The system temperature in all cases is substantially lower, 43C, so I assume the lack of fans is okay at least for testing purposes.
I installed the Alpha twice, Originally I used a very thin layer of Arctic Silver III and turned each of the heatsink's four screws, a bit at a time, until the springs were fully compressed and the screws stopped turning. I did observe a slight tilt (very slight) from left to right and from front to back but figured that it would be okay since all four screws were fully engaged. The PCB of the motherboard isn't perfectly flat after all so there must be some tolerance, I reasoned. The second time worked maniacally hard to make sure that there was no tilt at all in either direction. I also put down a somewhat thicker layer of AS3 to compensate for any bias I couldn't see. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made any difference.
So is there a trick to installing the Alpha? A setting in the BIOS I need to change? (Apart from setting the FSB to 133MHz the board has all the default settings.) Have I got a bad CPU?
Thanks in advance for any comments, questions or advice...
A friend's Volcano7 keeps his slightly overclocked XP2100 in the low 50C range at idle so I expected to do at least as well temperature-wise and much better noise-wise when I invested in a PAL8045/Panaflo L1A combo.
Well, it's quiet anyway...
This is a brand new Abit NV7-133R with an XP2000 and two sticks of Crucial 512MB PC2100. I'm getting temps of 66C within 10 minutes of POST with the box just sitting in BIOS doing nothing. I'd think the thermistor was faulty but the amount of heat coming off the fan is significantly hotter than what I'd felt from my friend's 2100/Volcano7 setup (which frankly didn't even feel warm.) Restarting after installing Linux?this was before I realized how hot the CPU was running?the BIOS reported CPU temperature of 69-70C. In both cases, the motherboard was installed in an open case, no fans, no panels, in a well air-conditioned room (~75F) sitting on top of a desk. The system temperature in all cases is substantially lower, 43C, so I assume the lack of fans is okay at least for testing purposes.
I installed the Alpha twice, Originally I used a very thin layer of Arctic Silver III and turned each of the heatsink's four screws, a bit at a time, until the springs were fully compressed and the screws stopped turning. I did observe a slight tilt (very slight) from left to right and from front to back but figured that it would be okay since all four screws were fully engaged. The PCB of the motherboard isn't perfectly flat after all so there must be some tolerance, I reasoned. The second time worked maniacally hard to make sure that there was no tilt at all in either direction. I also put down a somewhat thicker layer of AS3 to compensate for any bias I couldn't see. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have made any difference.
So is there a trick to installing the Alpha? A setting in the BIOS I need to change? (Apart from setting the FSB to 133MHz the board has all the default settings.) Have I got a bad CPU?
Thanks in advance for any comments, questions or advice...