How to Prevent Your Computer from Overheating (and Why It's Important)

I'm surprised that there was nothing said about thermal transfer paste (a very good read) and heat sinks. Although there were good and valid points, it's severely lacking without mention of the aforementioned.

Agreed, a very thin, even coating of silver based thermal paste between the CPU and heatsink/fan is crucial to avoid overheating problems.

Just got around to this test, and started to show results. But carriage returns aren't showing, so it was unreadable. Maybe later?

Just got around to this test:

I have a computer with an i7-930 processor.

This chip normally runs at 2.8 gHz at full load.

My system was overclocked by the manufacturer to 3.3 gHz, and has a liquid cooling system. For a little added money they'd take it higher, but its straight-forward to do myself.

There is a lot of guidance on overclocking to be found, but two key things are to have a program like Core Temp and to test at no-load and 100% load. It's also important to note that these temperature will basically ride, up-and-down, on the ambient temperature.

The chip speed is a combination of a base clock at 150 mHz, and two key multipliers. The first is 12, yielding a no load clock speed of 1.8 gHz. The upper multiplier is 22, yielding the 3.3 gHz at full load. The multiplier changes automatically as needed.

On occasion I will boost the base clock to 165 mHz. The same multipliers apply and the chip is pushed to 3.62 gHz at full load. It appears stable.

This is a quad core, multi-threaded (2) processor. Full load is running all 8 threads at 100%.

Some Test Temperatures (degrees C):

Room AC on No Yes Yes Yes

Room Temp. 29 24 24 24

Load (%) 0% 0% 100% 100%

Speed (gHz) 1.8 1.8 3.3 3.62

Core 0 Temp. 42 36 67 70

Core 1 Temp. 38 32 64 67

Core 2 Temp. 42 36 65 68

Core 3 Temp. 38 32 63 66

The full load test were run using a mathmatically intense multi-threaded

work program. Prime95 test results were maybe 2 or 3 degrees higher.

I did once hit 80 on Core 0 with Prime95, 3.62 gHz, and a warm room.

Show-off

I've built a few of those this year, the Gigabyte MOBO's make O/C simple but out of the box with a quad plus 4 virtual cores there's not much getting in the way.

I used the OEM heatsink and fan but the case has three 120mm fans + two 80mm fans and the PSU has two 80mm fans and all is very cool and very little noise too.

If the box were in a space and the ambient temp was above 95°C I'd consider water-cooling but would likely use a gas heatsink instead.

Yep, bragging a little.

But I guess the question is how to tell if a system is being pushed too hard. I forget whether it was the original article or something from elsewhere, but 80C was identified as a manufacturer recommended threshold for needing better cooling.

A friend's i7 ASUS laptop has similar temperatures to mine, at full load, so that's comforting.

Do you do something like the prime95 test on your builds? If so, what do you see your CPU(s) get to, temperature wise?

ps, fast and quiet, love it!

I use the MOBO features, if I want to let it all hangout I use the right stuff.

Ever tried out a server board?

Actually, until your reply I hadn't heard the term "server board".

At home, while we have 4 plus computers, the only think we're really sharing is a printer, and no critical data, or the need to share it.

For my occasional extreme number crunching, I looked a little at dual xeon motherboards, and the i-7 980x option, but those appeared to be too much money for the performance increments.

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=302&name=Server-Motherboards&Order=PRICE