Just for laughs A.K.A. complete cooling overkill

[canadiantrex]

The other day I was swapping out the video card in my wife's PC and cleaning out all the dust. She usually gets the old parts from my PC's, and that day she was thrilled to be upgrading from a GT 210 to a 7770.

Wait, no she wasn't. I'm the computer geek, she just wants it to work. She was rather irritated with me that I had taken her computer apart.

She's got a cheap OEM Asus tower that we picked up a couple years ago from Best Buy on sale. Socket AM3, a dual core 2.8 Ghz Athlon II in it. The stock heatsink was filthy with dust, started cleaning it off. Then inspiration hit. :hmm: Hmmmm, this is socket AM3. My PC is socket AM3+. When I built mine, I slapped on a closed loop water cooler on the 8320 from the get go. I never used the factory cooler. :sneaky:

A few minutes of digging in the closet, and I have this:

Still has the thermal compound from AMD on it, plastic cover over it, never been used. Designed to sink heat from the blowtorch, I mean processor, that is Bulldozer and Piledriver, it should have no problem with this budget dual core.

Wife is doing this: and this: D: right about now, because I'm busting out a screwdriver, her processor and heatsink are on the table next to the computer and I am laughing maniacally. :sneaky:

Clean off the old goop, replace the heatsink brackets with the proper ones, throw everything back together, admire the new shiny, then hook it all back up.

The damn dual core now idles on the desktop at ambient temperature (72*F) and doesn't even hit 80*F while she's playing her games.

Oh, and she still isn't impressed. With the heatsink or the GPU. But I had fun. :thumbsup:

 

[laputan machine]

Now that's a nice upgrade, and death to those awful gt 210s
I went from a gt 210 (via hd1000) to a 7750. It's night and day, I'm sure she really does even notice it on very light gaming.

 

[NTMBK]

lmao, so much truth in this post. The gf gave me this "what are you doing to my poor PC?!" look when I ripped it open and installed a graphics card... plus now she knows just how much dust collects inside the thing, she keeps wanting to clean it

 

[canadiantrex]

The only real "game" my wife plays is Wizards101. Some sort of Harry Potter-ish MMORPG. Not demanding at all. The old integrated graphics on her motherboard could drive that game 1080p at close to 60fps.

But I got her trained to run a litecoin mining program whenever she isn't using her desktop, so slightly extra money, heh.

 

[jaqie]

I couldn't stand the noise that heatpipe cooler you pictured made, so until I could get a tower cooler, I improved mine for noise and cooling like thus:

note the pic below shows it's replacement and the quad core cooler from another am3 cpu I own for difference in scale.

This one shows the original fan and the cooler AMD ships with their 95w and lower TDP CPUs.

And yes, I am female. Not all women are like that. Attend a makerspace some time!

 

[SPBHM]

looks like a good opportunity to run this "Regor" at 4GHz
(well, probably the MB does not allow you that, and for the described use it looks useless anyway)

but the overkill default cooler reminds me of my C2D e6300, it was a dual core at 1.8GHz (65w, but probably the real TDP was lower), which came with the same cooler basically as the Q6600... I even used that very same cooler with an overclocked xeon kentsfield (130w+- with the 65w TDP CPU Intel cooler lol)

 

[jaqie]

looks like a good opportunity to run this "Regor" at 4GHz
(well, probably the MB does not allow you that, and for the described use it looks useless anyway)

but the overkill default cooler reminds me of my C2D e6300, it was a dual core at 1.8GHz (65w, but probably the real TDP was lower), which came with the same cooler basically as the Q6600... I even used that very same cooler with an overclocked xeon kentsfield (130w+- with the 65w TDP CPU Intel cooler lol)

Odd. I have a core2 quad 9650 here (got it in goodwill computer store for $50 woot) and the core2 quad hsf with copper core seems to let it overheat even at default volts and clock, same as my q6600 did, which is why I upgraded my old q6600 to a tower heatpipe hsf in the first place. you must have quite a good case cooling or something...
Admittedly I had retrofitted a core2quad oem hsf onto a 90 watt am2 dual core a while back and it kept it cool under stress, and same with my 3.33ghz and 3.5ghz wolfdale core2 duo OCed cpus at default volts...

 

[SPBHM]

Odd. I have a core2 quad 9650 here (got it in goodwill computer store for $50 woot) and the core2 quad hsf with copper core seems to let it overheat even at default volts and clock, same as my q6600 did, which is why I upgraded my old q6600 to a tower heatpipe hsf in the first place. you must have quite a good case cooling or something...

this one?

that's what I got with the e6300, and it was able to cool my x3210 at 3GHz (around 1.25-1.30v), the fan could get seriously loud under load (like running linx), but it was not a problem, the temp running linx was high, but with no throttling at all, and for regular use it was good.

considering I got it from a 65nm 1.8GHz dual core box, using it with a 65nm 3GHz quad core looked quite nice.


I'm probably going to try using it with my 45nm xeon quad core soon

 

[Zap]

Odd. I have a core2 quad 9650 here (got it in goodwill computer store for $50 woot) and the core2 quad hsf with copper core seems to let it overheat even at default volts and clock, same as my q6600 did, which is why I upgraded my old q6600 to a tower heatpipe hsf in the first place.

Something must be wrong. Intel's stock heatsinks ALWAYS work at stock volts/clocks. If you've always had this problem with Intel stock heatsinks, perhaps you are not installing them right? :hmm: I've often seen them with one push pin not done correctly (pushed down, but not actually through the hole all the way) even by experienced builders.

 

[jaqie]

zap, it works, but the temps get over what I am comfortable with and so do the noise levels. I should pull the motherboard and cpu back out to get the exact numbers, though. The system was a negative pressure one with an arctic cooling F12 120mm fan for sole exhaust besides a FSP 500w PSU with 120mm and an evga geforce 9800gt.
IIRC it got to 70c. As for installing it properly? I cleaned off the old thermal compound, applied ceramique as per instructions on the site, and then ran win7 64 bit and the newest prime95 64 bit in max heat mode parallel with furmark in maximum burn in mode. The temp was shown via coretemp.

 

[SPBHM]

70º C for the Intel CPU core is what I consider pretty good if it was running linx, prime95 or something.

 

[jaqie]

anything over 60c is overheating to me no matter what is running... >.>

 

[SPBHM]

anything over 60c is overheating to me no matter what is running... >.>

that explains why you were unhappy with the Intel cooler!

For me it's not really a problem if the core temperature is around 80º while running linx, it's probably going to be 10+ lower when gaming or something... and if the CPU will only start with thermal throttling at around 100... it's no big deal.

as Zap have said, the stock heatsink will always be adequate without OC, they wouldn't give a 3 years warranty otherwise I guess..

 

[jaqie]

the higher the temp, the shorter the life of the semiconductor. IIRC it was like, half the life for every 10c or something.

 

[Ayah]

anything over 60c is overheating to me no matter what is running... >.>

well, I sort of expected a 1500W cascade for non-benching when I read the "complete cooling overkill" title

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

bunch of the usual stuff...

And yes, I am female. Not all women are like that. Attend a makerspace some time!

 

[SPBHM]

the higher the temp, the shorter the life of the semiconductor. IIRC it was like, half the life for every 10c or something.

the thing is, most CPUs don't run at 100% usage or anything near most of the time, so the average temp is normally much lower, and the normal life of a CPU is so long that... it doesn't really sound that important, just look at the laptops, most run with high CPU temp for many years, and I personally never had a CPU failing, if 70-80 was so bad (core temp from a current Intel CPU), I think thermal throttling would start working at a much lower temp.

 

[Puppies04]

the higher the temp, the shorter the life of the semiconductor. IIRC it was like, half the life for every 10c or something.

Really depends what you are doing with your CPU, if you see those temps 24/7 then your chip might only last 6 years or something . If they spike up there under heavy load and spend the rest of the time lower then the chip will last until windows 20 is released.

 

[jaqie]

thing is I have a 386, if somehow I am still alive in 20, 40 years (have a terminal illness but am already past the terminal normal date by two years) I want this stuff to still be around and working perfectly. I know there are other problems too, like RoHS shortening the usable life of the stuff, but I can control the temps so that's one more thing upping the chances my stuff will still be around.

 

[VirtualLarry]

70º C for the Intel CPU core is what I consider pretty good if it was running linx, prime95 or something.

I have an aftermarket CoolerMaster HyperTX2 HSF on my Q9300, slightly overclocked to 3.0 (from 333 to 400Mhz FSB), and my temps running DC are 65-68C. I think that the other day when it was warmer out, they reached 73C.

Still, considering the load, I consider those temps pretty good. I've been running this rig for several years, and no degradation that I can see.

 

[canadiantrex]

I'm used to running an fx-8320 @4.2Ghz with temps in the mid 40's. So I guess my opinion doesn't count when it comes to overheating?

 

[SPBHM]

I'm used to running an fx-8320 @4.2Ghz with temps in the mid 40's. So I guess my opinion doesn't count when it comes to overheating?

how comparable are those temp readings (compared to the core temperature from intel CPUs) I wonder?

I have an aftermarket CoolerMaster HyperTX2 HSF on my Q9300, slightly overclocked to 3.0 (from 333 to 400Mhz FSB), and my temps running DC are 65-68C. I think that the other day when it was warmer out, they reached 73C.

Still, considering the load, I consider those temps pretty good. I've been running this rig for several years, and no degradation that I can see.

I had even higher temps (under extreme load only) with my DC 45nm Pentium for a couple of years and I never noticed any problems, OC performance was always the same.

thing is I have a 386, if somehow I am still alive in 20, 40 years (have a terminal illness but am already past the terminal normal date by two years) I want this stuff to still be around and working perfectly. I know there are other problems too, like RoHS shortening the usable life of the stuff, but I can control the temps so that's one more thing upping the chances my stuff will still be around.

but realistically how often do you run older PCs under heavy load for multiple hours? at some point it's simply not going to make much sense to use the hardware as much as you use newer hardware, and the old hardware is going to suffer less load, run for less time at a high temp.

but anyway, I'm more careful when it comes to graphics cards, because I had quite a few VGAs failing over the years, even if the GPU can probably work fine at 80-90ºc I will try to keep it under 70 when I can, and to have additional cooling for my old Voodoos and such :biggrin:

I consider CPUs to be probably the most durable parts of any PC, so that's why I'm not to worried, anyway, it's nice to keep the CPU cooler when possible, it normally gives you also slightly lower power usage and such, taking good care of the parts is certainly not the "wrong" thing to do, but I still don't see 70-80 as "critical".

as for your health problems, I'm sorry to hear that

 

[canadiantrex]

how comparable are those temp readings (compared to the core temperature from intel CPUs) I wonder?

I have no idea. This whole module crap from AMD is odd. IIRC (at work tonight, not at home, and it's been a couple weeks since I've actually bothered to check my CPU temps) the 8320 just reports a voltage reading and generic processor temperature reading in CPUID Hardware Monitor. Then there is a "package" temp reading, which I ignore because it is below ambient usually.

On the other hand, my wife's Regor dual core reports temps for each core individually. The same with my Llanos laptop I'm typing this on.

I got my 8320 on sale for Black Friday for only 160, so I'm not complaining about the price or its performance. But there's something screwy going on when the processor is reporting 41*C and the "package" temp reading for the chip is 17*C. Nothing to see here, move along. :whiste:

 

[SPBHM]

I have no idea. This whole module crap from AMD is odd. IIRC (at work tonight, not at home, and it's been a couple weeks since I've actually bothered to check my CPU temps) the 8320 just reports a voltage reading and generic processor temperature reading in CPUID Hardware Monitor. Then there is a "package" temp reading, which I ignore because it is below ambient usually.

On the other hand, my wife's Regor dual core reports temps for each core individually. The same with my Llanos laptop I'm typing this on.

I got my 8320 on sale for Black Friday for only 160, so I'm not complaining about the price or its performance. But there's something screwy going on when the processor is reporting 41*C and the "package" temp reading for the chip is 17*C. Nothing to see here, move along. :whiste:

that's why I asked, my newest AMD CPU is one Brisbane k8 from 2007 and the temp reading is really.. strange, I can't get anything reliable, the only thing I know is, the heatsink seems to indicate a lot higher temperature than what I'm seeing on those readings.

 

[NTMBK]

And yes, I am female. Not all women are like that. Attend a makerspace some time!

Sorry, I in no way meant to imply that women can't be just as technically minded (and talented) as men. Simply that non-technically minded partners (male or female) care less about how we've overclocked it, and worry more about if we've broken it again this time