Good evening Camp AMD! I have just put together a string of upgrades for my girlfriend, with an AMD Phenom II 955 BE (stock clocks), 4GB DDR3 ram, a Gigabyte motherboard (GA-MA78LMT-US2H) and an Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 cpu cooler. Also in the case is 1 HDD, A 4850 with a Vortexx Neo cooler and 2 120mm fans, one at the front and one at the rear of the case. What I didn't realise when I ordered the Freezer 13 is that with the retention plate of the AM3 motherboard, the HSF fan is blowing air out towards the top of the case. The case used is an Antec Sonata III. So the air is blowing out right into the PSU fan. I've just finally got Windows 7 installed and running, which has all been fine so far, and idle temps according to CoreTemp are 31C. (all the fans are going full-speed at the moment). (Cool n Quiet and C1E are activated in the BIOS). The problem sets in as soon as the CPU is stressed. In gaming (borderlands is the only game tested so far) the computer lasts about 3mins before the 60C alarm starts ringing. In a Blend test in Prime95, the temperatures rocket from 31C all the way to 60C in 30seconds. I can't see a way to tighten the cpu HSF any more, nor is there much space for any more fans. I have a feeling that the orientation of the HSF isn't helping, but has anyone got any ideas as to why the temperature rockets up so quickly? I'm at my wits end as to why this is happening. Please help!!
60ºC? sounds like your alarm is set too low? I think it should be set on 75ºC Also check the thermal paste and also if the cooler is sitting properly on the CPU, sometimes there's a little gap between them and it gives that kind of problems
I set the alarm at 60C as I read that the max temp is 62C so I thought that'd be about right? It's a C3 revision, in case that's relevant, looking around online it seems to be one of the first questions people ask. The paste is the one that came applied to the HSF out of the box, which apparently is Arctic MX-4. It is definitely making good contact, I removed the HSF and then clamped it down again, and the paste has all squidged around nicely, and it took some fair effort to clamp the HSF back on, and it's all clamped down properly, I believe... Thank you for the response Death_Lord, it's much appreciated!
i think the problem is that the temp inside the case is too high, you can try to turn the cooler in order to push the hot air at the back of the case, if you can't do that try to turn the rear fan and let it blow the fresh air into the case
How much thermal compound is on the proc? Too much can cause it to get to hot. It should be a THIN layer, just enough to evenly cover the proc. Thin thin thin. You said it was "squidged" (lol nice word), does that mean theres a ton of it? you might want to check that.
The way I see it you have roughyl 2 options. You can "deal" with the temp. for the time being by laying off the CPU stress load. Or you could change out your HS for a Cooler Master Hyper 212. I will never stop raving about this cooler. Ambient room temps are around 65-70f, and CPU never goes over 35c even under load. Also the mounting bracket allows you to orientate the cooler in a vertical OR horizontal postition. Prices start around 15-20 USD. Oh Edit: BTW TJ max for this CPU is 62c supposedly.
I had similar trouble with my Vendetta II cooler and a Tsunami case, where the hot air would either be pushed into the power supply or reversed to blow onto my GPU. My temps weren't nearly as bad as yours, but it prevented me from OCing as much as I had wanted. My solution was to spring for a new case. I got the Antec 902 which puts the PSU on the bottom and a fac at the top. Now the CPU fan blows the air right out the top of the case and my temps are 5-7c degrees lower.
My case is a Antec 900, my HS blows the hot air from CPU out the back, I could not angle my HS in the horizontal position though to have the air blow up, or down due to the cooler's size covering my #1 memory slot. My temps are also 5-10c lower than with stock cooler. But let me tell you the case upgrade isnt a bad idea either. 1st case: stock cooler 35c Antec 900: stock cooler 28c Antec 900 + CM212 19-20c
The good thing about a case like this is if you're blowing air out the back, or out the top due to the type of cooler you have it accommodates either option. Some coolers are great with an Intel because they can orientate any of the four directions in the case, but are limited to two directions with the AMD style of clamp. I would really suggest seeing whether you can either get a cooler for the CPU that will blow air in the direction you need for the case's airflow, or get a case that accommodates the cooler you have. Usually the heatsink is cheaper to replace, but if you are looking for a high end part, the case may wind up close to the same cost.
My HSF blows the hot air inside my PSU which consequently blows the air out of the case and have never had any problems. My idle temps are 25-30C and my load temps are ~40C during gaming and 60C on Prime/Linx. Problem with OP's pc is either bad HSF installation or hot air not being blown away from the case. OP try to run the PC without its side cover see if it changes things drastically or not.
The OP said he has reapplied thermal paste and reinstalled the heatsink. Assuming that all went as he said, poor airflow is the culprit. The bottleneck the airflow, or rather lack of it, between the cpu fan and psu fan to actually push the air out the case. the freezer 13 has that odd shape to the sides, otherwise I would suggest trying to jerry-rig clips to secure the fan in another direction.
^^ Or instead of jerry-rigging, you could buy the cooler master due to as I stated before, you can mount the HS in EITHER horizontal, or vertical postions.
I agree with you. I was just stating the impracticality of jerry-rigging due to the cooler shape, not promoting it. Sorry for the confusion.
Good evening all! Thank you very much for all the replies. I have spent all evening fiddling, and I have fixed the problem. The retention bracket on the motherboard wasn't screwed down properly, which I didn't notice initially (as I didn't think to look, I guess, until I went over every inch of the pc trying to figure this out). So I screwed that down properly and I have also removed the included TIM (with some unscented nail-polish remover) and reapplied some spare Arctic Silver 5 I had laying around. Also for good measure I have undervolted by -0.150v which appears to be stable after 3hrs this evening. Temperatures are now 28C idle (room temp is 23.1C according to the thermometer on my desk), wavers between 49C and 50C when running Prime95 Blend test (test ran for half an hour, cpu reached 49/50C after about 10mins and stayed solid there) and while playing Bad Company 2 online for an hour, the max temp reported by CoreTemp was 46C. Much improved, I think! Thanks again for all the help people have given, it's much appreciated
Sorry to double post, but I'd just like to make sure this gets seen. Spent about 3hrs on this new build this evening, and something odd is going on with the power supply. I was installing some windows updates when I got a bluescreen (I can't remember the file, it was something mgr.sys, to do with hard drive a google told me before my phone battery died lol), so the machine restarted and began to load windows as usual. On the "Starting Windows" screen it sat there doing nothing, so I waited a while, and nothing happened. So I turned the machine off, waited 30secs or so, and then attempted to turn back on. When I hit the power button, nothing happend. I could hear some whining from the PSU (very quiet, had to put my ear to the case to hear it), and when I hit the button the pitch would change slightly, but otherwise, dead. After about 10mins I hooked a paper clip up to one of the green and black wires on the motherboard connector and the PSU fired up as expected and was fine for a couple of mins. So I reassembled everything and tried again. The machine has now booted up fine and I'm writing this message all fine right now. One thing I have noticed is that the 2 red LEDs on the underside of the 4850 usually flash once very quickly when the machine turns on, but since this little hiccup with the PSU, they flash a couple of times, and then the machine POSTs as expected. The PSU is not hot to the touch, and the system has not been under any stress this evening, as all I've been doing is things like installing Office, downloading Windows updates, that sort of thing, no games or benchmarks. Could this be to do with the Freezer 13 blowing directly into the PSU, or perhaps the PSU isn't strong enough? I checked on that PSU calculator online, as well as looking at reviews of the 955 to see total system wattage, so I chose the Corsair 430CX, which is a 430W PSU with 28A on the (single ) +12V rail. Or is it perhaps just a duff PSU that's taken a couple of days to show its weakness? Has anyone got any recommendations for PSUs if the one mentioned above is not powerful enough? The complete system is: Phenom II 955 (rev C3) + Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 2x2GB OCZ Gold DDR3-10666 Gigabyte GA-MA78LMT-US2H (rev 3.4) Sapphire 4850 with Vortexx Neo cooler 1x Seagate 500GB sata hdd DVD+RW drive 2x 120mm fans USB Wireless Dongle I thank everyone once again for any help they can give I apologise if this should be posted in a separate section. Edit: After writing that message, I shut the pc down, to see if it'd turn on OK afterwards. The pc shut down properly, then a minute later I attempted to turn back on again, and as mentioned before, nothing happened at all when the power button is pressed. The fans don't spin up, nothing lights up, nothing happens at all, it's like it's not even plugged in... I hate computers!
AMD calls for a maximum of 62C, so a 60C alarm isn't "too low" it's too toasty. The system is correct to go off. deltatux
Thanks for the reply deltatux. I have managed to get the temperatures in check now, and this is no longer the problem. I am concluding this morning that the PSU is most certainly dead. Having had about 6hours to cool down over night, with the PSU unplugged entirely. I thought I'd try the machine again before going to work. Plugged it in and turned it on, and the machine got as far as the "Starting Windows" screen before shutting down. I waited a minute and turned it on again, and the fans etc span up, but the machine didn't even post. I'm ordering a new PSU now so that I can get it delivered tomorrow so I can still give the pc back to my girlfriend this weekend. I'm ordering the OCZ Stealth Xstream II 600W which, having read the Guru3D review, looks to be a winner. Now just fingers crossed that I didn't kill anything else in that build when the PSU went...
