x58 i7 920: 40C idle. Is the cooling right?

[Darker]

I just finished building a new system and I'm trying to see how hot its running. Im still running it at stock settings.

Right now, idling on the OS (Windows 7 RC) the EVGA tuning Utility is saying the CPU cores are resting around 50 C (cpu at 40). When running prime95 max heat/power mode the cpu jumped up to 83 C within a minute and the cores were running at 93 C. Its 25.5 C in my house.

I'm not really sure whether that is good or not, though I thought it might be a bit cooler. I'm starting to fear I may have used to much thermal paste, cause it be a pain to reset it after just getting it set up. But I'm not sure how hot these things run normally. Or maybe its just because its a cramped case...

Any advice as to what i should expect to see and what I'm doing wrong with cooling would be appreciated.

My system is:

Motherboard: x58 SLI LE
CPU: i7 920
GCard: GTX 280
Power Supply: 750 Watt Ultra
Case: Ultra X-Blaster Mid-T Case (Ultra X-Blaster Black ATX Mid-Tower Case with Front USB, FireWire and Audio Ports ULT33178 at TigerDirect.com)

For cooling, I went out and got

2x: 120mm fans (Newegg.com - COOLER MASTER R4-L2R-20CG-GP 120mm Green LED Case Fan - Case Fans)
XIGMATEK Dark Knight (Newegg.com - XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler - CPU Fans & Heatsinks)


I have one of the 120mm fans on front blowing into the case, and the other in back blowing out. The dark Knight just cleared the cover of the case (as usual) and is pointed so the fan is on the front side, blowing through the heatsink, to the exhaust fan in back. There are also the vents on the side, above the CPU and Graphics card which have some exhaust from the fans right below them.

Am I doing it right? Or is there something going on that's going to warrant taking apart and rebuilding my case?

[ShyguyXPC]

not 100% sure, but it sounds right.

sounds similar to how mine is set up, CPU cooler and case fans. (except on mine, the front intake fan is just a bay or so lower from the CPU cooler and exhaust fan, so its more or less a straight shot through the case from front through one of the HDD cages to the RAM/CPU and then out the rear. also have a 92mm top exhaust, PSU exhaust and a 92mm rear fan behind the rear HDD cage.)

I just got my i7 920 system fully up and running tonight too, and it idles around 37-40C with the same cooler you have & IC Diamond Thermal paste.

Running the MSI X58 Platinum board (crossfire only ), 3GB DDR3-1333, one Radeon 4870 for now (Win7 is giving me fits when I insert the 2nd card)...

Corsair TX-750 750W PSU, Thermaltake Armor Full Tower case (had to resort to using the stock side panel since the optional 250mm fan side panel won't close due to the CPU cooler being just a bit too tall).

running 5 SATAII Drives, 250GB 32MB Cache Seagate, 2x 250GB 16MB Cache WD Caviars in RAID 0, 500GB 16MB Cache WD Caviar, and a 80GB 8MB cache 7200RPM Fujitsu 2.5" drive. plus 1 SATA DVD Burner and 1 PATA DVD Burner. and a Rosewill 3.5" bay Flash media reader.

right now while running Folding@Home GPU console Client the system is sitting at 42C.

[Aaron_8015]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darker

When running prime95 max heat/power mode it jumped up to 83 C within a minute and the cores were running at 93 C. Its 25.5 C in my house.

If its hitting those temps you will need to re-mount your heatsink.... Even the stock cooler can beat those temps......

What are you using to monitor temps?

[ShyguyXPC]

didn't see that part, but yeah.

this cooler is a bit tricky to install as I found out.

but yeah that is hot.

I'm Running F@H on the i7 at 75% of the CPU and only hitting 42C tops with that cooler and stock speeds.

[Flying JJ]

Running the same mobo, an i7-DO oc'd to 3.8 and 3-gtx-275's (lot of heat). I have a Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme cpu cooler. It is in a ThermalTake Armour+ with lots of fans (4in,2out,2cpu,2memory,2internal,3gpu).

Idle temps. look a little higher than mine.
The running temps. look too high. Funning F@H up to high 90% (avg. 85%) and F@H on the 3 gpu's (again lots of extra heat in the case) my cores go to the low/mid. 50C range. Max for about the past 3 days has been 59,58,57,57C on Real Temp 3.00. Min. @ idle has been 32,31,31,29C. Room temp. the AC is set to 20C. The min. temp. in the case is 21.1C @ the front HDD's ( right after an intake fan), max. in the case is 47.5 and 49.3 between the gpu's pcb's.

I had higher temps in the case but used my 2 Scythe fan controlers with the 8 temp. probes and a smoke test to get some air flow issues figured out. Had some stagnant air pockets right below the cpu cooler. The gpu's were getting too hot, I corrected this with a bigger rear exhautst fan and it brought the cpu temps. down too.

Try resetting the cpu cooler, but also look at how you are cooling the case. As I found out, a freezing cold room doesn't do much if the air isn't flowing through the case right. Remember get enough exhaust, and proper flow through where you need it.

[Darker]

Are you supposed to look at the CPU temp or the core temps?

I was using both the EVGA monotiroing software and RealTemp. I was going by the CPU monitor in the EVGA monitor though. The core temps are listed closer to 50 idle... The GPU in Real temp is listed as around 40-50C I think, I'll have to retest that.

Is there anything around the house I can use to get the thermal paste of the chip, or do I need to order/store buy some professional cleaner?

what is H@P? (typo: meant F@H)

Is the way I have the fan set up on the Dark Knight correct? (Blowing through the heat sink towards the exhaust)

I'm using Dynex thermal paste from best buy. I've heard Arctic is better, but I've also heard that only makes a 1-3C difference which dosen't seem to be my problem.

Re seating is going to be a pain but oh well... (Can't screw in heater without removing fan. Can't remove fan without sliding out power supply...)

[Flying JJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darker

Are you supposed to look at the CPU temp or the core temps?

I was using both the EVGA monotiroing software and RealTemp. I was going by the CPU monitor in the EVGA monitor though. The core temps are listed closer to 50 idle... The GPU in Real temp is listed as around 40-50C I think, I'll have to retest that.

Is there anything around the house I can use to get the thermal paste of the chip, or do I need to order/store buy some professional cleaner?

what is H@P?

Is the way I have the fan set up on the Dark Knight correct? (Blowing through the heat sink towards the exhaust)

I'm using Dynex thermal paste from best buy. I've heard Arctic is better, but I've also heard that only makes a 1-3C difference which dosen't seem to be my problem.

Re seating is going to be a pain but oh well... (Can't screw in heater without removing fan. Can't remove fan without sliding out power supply...)

CPU temp. is usually the average or highest temp. out of the cores. There are 4 physical (4temps.) and 4 virtual cores that make up the cpu.

The GPU is your graphics card. If you have more than 1 GPU, Real Temp. only shows one of them, usually the first one. Your GPU temp. is OK. Mine hit high 70's under a big load. EVGA's precision download is nice, gives you all the GPU's info. and can oc it from there too real easy.

H@P is really F@H=Folding @ Home it is a way to help out. It would take a long time to explain, but you can go to the Distrubited Computing section and look around. With an i7 and good GPU, you could really help the team here at TIMO.

Wipe good, the residual won't hurt, just get as much as you can off. Make sure you put on just the right amount.

Blow through the fan or blow and suck. Just don't try to blow/suck from both sides. Best way is to blow the hot exhaust to an exhaust fan and out of the case.

Arctic Silver and IC Diamond do work better and that 1-2 degrees is if both are applied correctly. None will work if on wrong or not spread/compressed correctly. They do hold up better over time with the heat cycles from what I read a while back, but you should be good with the Dynex.

Reseating does suck, then again so does buying a new processor and installing it. Same as reseating but more expensive.

Post back and let us know how it goes. Take a look into F@H. There is usually a thread started to just bull crap in too. Some of the more senior guys can probably answer questions better than I can, check it out, say hi.

[Darker]

Thanks for the info. Mind if I ask about the seating process so hopefully I only have to do this once?

What went wrong:
When I was first putting it together, I was putting the dynex on the cpu, but since it was a new syringe, more squirted then i meant to when I was first applying it. About half a pea size instead of a beebee... 3-4x more then I intended. I then tried to use the card that came with the paste to scrape up and remove the extra, as well as spread the paste around. I found the card awkward though and it wasn't spreading well...

I then went and got some plastic, so that I could use my finger tips to spread it around evenly and hopefully wipe up some more of it. Eventually got what I thought was a thin layer all on the card (could read the text on the chip). I then tried to spread some paste on the heat sink to fill the crevices between the pipes, but ended up with another film layer on the copper part as well which i tried to wipe off a little but...

After that... I ended up getting distracted with other things and walked away from the rig for a few minutes (3), then came back and THEN put the heatsink over the CPU and screwed it in. So... yeah...


What I might do next time.
I've got some Isopropyl 91% from the drug store and some cotton balls to wipe off the existing paste on the cpu and heatsink.

I'm then going to try applying two thin lines on the heatsink on the two dividers between the pipes, and then push it down on the CPU and screw it in.

Question: Can you lift the heatsink back up again to see if it spreads right and then put it back on and screw it in?

Or are you supposed to leave the heatsink on the cpu after first contact with the paste? Meaning you'd have to wipe and reapply paste after you figure out if its going to distribute properly...

[Aaron_8015]

After you place the sink down chances are if you pick it back up again you won't put it back in exactly the same place. I would clean it all off and figure out how to mount the heatsink properly as that was probably the reason it got so hot. Then when you have figured it out just place a small rice sized 'dab' of paste on the centre of the cpu, and place the heatsink on top, you should'nt lift it off again to check.

[Darker]

New Numbers.

I did several trial runs of putting down some thermal, and screwing the heat sink on to see how the paste would spread.

Placing the dot in the middle of the cpu hardly even covered the middle though. Two lines on the heat sink between the pipes didn't look to have nearly enough coverage either and was taller then long. So neither seemed to be evenly distributed at all. Plus it looked like it was still thick (grey and goopy as appose to a translucent layer)

I eventually did similar to what i did the first time, placing a bit in the middle of the chip and using a coffe filter to spread it around so there was a light grey layer you could still see the chip through. Then I put the Heat sink immediately on it this time, and screwed it in tight. Then i ran some numbers.


This time I used the Everest Ultima trial version to stress test the machine, as well as the Prime95 (blend and full heat). Note I only ran the test for a few minutes, not hours.

Before I reset my heat sink, the core cpu temps after the machine had been running for 20 hours were
Idle: 52C
Everest stress: 78C
PrimeFull: 93C

After I reset my heat sink the core cpu temps after 2 minutes were
Idle: 52C
Everest strees: 74C
Prime Full: 86C


So there is some diffrence. Not as much as I'd like to have seen (and my seating technique still leaves a bit to be desired) but a little better then before. The full load test are a bit better to, so at least im comfortable with it now.

It might go down a few more C after the thermal settles. I was also getting idle times about 5-7C cooler with the case open. My actually work space probably is a little warmer as far as ambient temperature.

But until I actually have a need to overclock the cpu a bit, I don't think I'll worry about it again. It would have been nice to get it from 2.6 to 3.0 easy without having to worry about temps at all.