My dad just did a build with a phenom II 945, with the stock cooler, at stock speeds, in a thermaltake case with 2x12cm fans and a duct for getting air to the CPU. Arctic Silver 5 was used with the heatsink. He's got temps as high as 49C at idle when he was messing around with the BIOS (no OS yet), which seemed way to high to me. He reapplied the arctic silver, and it looks like the same result... 44 degrees and climbing. Am I correct in thinking this is too high of a temp for idle? What might be the cause of this, and what should be done?? Thanks, Jason
Oh boy you got it all wrong my friend. Firstly the temp you see the BIOS show you is not idle, its not throttle but its load. Soo if it says 49c thats excellent. that equals to 34c when you look with the app u use for temps.... You should run prime and the load temps should be 60's c some 50's c If its in the 70's celcius that is ok but pushing it. However from my experience these CPU's live forever they never die..... once it reaches 70's c just make sure it stays there and doesnt go to 80's c .. Once it reaches a specific temp the comp should shut down if it has that option...... I dont know what phenoms is, but intel is 85c ,, Anyhow looks all ok, Just dont judge the temp from the bios that is not accurate and is on load. Let us know what your load temps are... other then that your ok,,,
@ 70c I'd still be worried as thats 8 degrees above the operating temperature according to AMD specifications, IMO for load temperatures I'd recoomend trying to stay around 55c to be safe, and to avoid risk of losing your processor. You can get Prime95 here: http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft/
Well... if the temps are going to 45c just sitting there in bios and looking at the temp reading, i would have to assume that under full load, or a stress test, that the temps would head north of 55, wouldn't they? I'd just like to see if this is a standard reading for other people that have the 945 on a stock cooler and check their temps in bios.
My 945 is around 35C just browsing the web. Granted I'm using a Zalman 9500 heat sink and fan instead of the stock cooler. I used the stock cooler for about a week because my Zalman fan died and, if I remember correctly, it idled just north of 40C or so. I have the 95W TDP version of the 945 if that makes much of a difference. Also, it's been a fairly cold winter for where I live so ambient temps have been relatively low. If it gets much above 60C or so under stress testing I'd get a better heat sink.
http://www.pctechblog.co.uk/2009/12/practical-guide-to-idle-and-load.html That may help you, understand idle and load temps better than I can explain it.
thank you for the link, thats helpful. We do not yet have the win7 software, its on its way, so there is currently no OS, and no way to check the temp through software. Can anyone tell me if ~45C is a normal reading for a bios temperature? It seems high to me. My athlon 64 3700+ shows 32C in the bios reading, although i know it is a very different processor. I'll be starting my build with the specs listed in my profile today, and more info on this would not only help out my dad, but me as well.
The max temp on that processor is 62 degrees. If you stay below that, you should be fine. My 955 idles around 31 degrees but, I have an aftermarket cooler.
Well, we put on the cooler from my 965 BE, the cooler with copper heat pipes, and temps are much lower. Haven't run prime95 yet, but after my dad had spent time installing windows, etc, I rebooted and checked in the BIOS, and it was only at 39C, versus the 45C it had climbed to when just sitting in BIOS before. Its definitely a more noisy fan though....
