I recently purchased a thermalright ultra 120 extreme in the hopes of achieving lower temperatures on my overclocked E6400. Before I started, I took some baseline readings with the heatsink that came with my alienware. It looks like a Masscool 8WA741 cooler. At a 400FSB and a multiplier of 6, I was getting about 46 deg C idle and 65 deg C under load. Obviously this is a very tame overclock and the E6400 can go much higher than 2.4 GHz.
After mounting the ultra 120 extreme, my temperatures were only 44 deg C idel and about 63 deg C under load. For consistancy, I used TAT for temperatures and load simulation. I confirmed the load temperatures with coretemp but coretemp said my idel temperatures were about 2 Deg C high in TAT. I checked the ultra 120 extreme and the Masscool's surfaces with a razor blade to make sure they were flat. The Masscool's was flat and there was an ever so slight concave surface on the thermalright but almost imperceptible. The finish on the thermalright was also very good and not what I expected from some of the horror stories I read about poor quality.
Now, to finally get to my question, obviously bot heat sinks are of good build quality. I have tried remounting the ultra 120 extreme about 5 times with different orientations and different amounts and types of themal compound. All had minimal effect on temperatures. Since I am seeing almost identical performance between these 2 coolers, is it possible that my heat transfer is limited somewhere on the E6400 itself? Is it possible the motherboard clamp is impeding a good contact with both heat sinks and thereby limiting heat transfer? Has anyone seen a similar problem with their E6400 or other core2 duo's?
I'm interested to see if anyone has had similar problems and how they solved it. I thought about lapping the processor but believe I might only get marginal results at best if there truly is a problem with the heat transfer of the cores to the spreader.
After mounting the ultra 120 extreme, my temperatures were only 44 deg C idel and about 63 deg C under load. For consistancy, I used TAT for temperatures and load simulation. I confirmed the load temperatures with coretemp but coretemp said my idel temperatures were about 2 Deg C high in TAT. I checked the ultra 120 extreme and the Masscool's surfaces with a razor blade to make sure they were flat. The Masscool's was flat and there was an ever so slight concave surface on the thermalright but almost imperceptible. The finish on the thermalright was also very good and not what I expected from some of the horror stories I read about poor quality.
Now, to finally get to my question, obviously bot heat sinks are of good build quality. I have tried remounting the ultra 120 extreme about 5 times with different orientations and different amounts and types of themal compound. All had minimal effect on temperatures. Since I am seeing almost identical performance between these 2 coolers, is it possible that my heat transfer is limited somewhere on the E6400 itself? Is it possible the motherboard clamp is impeding a good contact with both heat sinks and thereby limiting heat transfer? Has anyone seen a similar problem with their E6400 or other core2 duo's?
I'm interested to see if anyone has had similar problems and how they solved it. I thought about lapping the processor but believe I might only get marginal results at best if there truly is a problem with the heat transfer of the cores to the spreader.