Hello All, I get a number of emails asking "My Duron/T-Bird runs at 45-50-55-60-65 C; is this too hot?" In my faq, anything over ambient is too hot, a great goal but not realistic for air cooling. For an answer, I took a look at some AMD specs to see what AMD recommends. I'm going to look at two areas: AMD's recommended temps and the difference between cooling Durons and T-Birds. AMD's absolute temp maximum is 90 C up to 1000 MHz and 95 C over that. Anyone even close to these temps is one step away from a toasted CPU. AMD's specs contained in "AMD Thermal, Mechanical, and Chassis Cooling Design Guide" (p. 13, Publication # 23794 Rev: B Issue Date: October 2000) gives the following guidelines: CPU up to 48 watts: C/W of .55 CPU up to 55 watts: C/W of .41 CPU up to 70 watts: C/W of .32 C/W means that for every watt the CPU radiates, the heatsink is supposed to cool the core by C/W x watts plus ambient temp. AMD specs system temp at 45 C, which is on the warm side. What all this means when you run the numbers is the following: CPU up to 48 watts: 26.4* + 45 = 71.4 C CPU up to 55 watts: 22.6 + 45 = 67.6 C CPU up to 70 watts: 22.4 + 45 = 67.4 C So if you just adhere to AMD's spec, anything over 67 C is not recommended. Hopefully you do better than 45 C case temp, so you should knock at least 10 and better yet 15 C off the 45; this gives you something like 50 C, assuming a 30 C case temp. That's about the upper end of "acceptable" from my perspective. It's no surprise that we are seeing a lot of heatsinks coming with Delta 38s - how else can they deliver cooling temps that we consider acceptable with older heatsink designs? This new crop of "screamers" is pushing C/Ws into the 0.25 range; this means, with a case temp of 30 C, CPU temps of 47.5 C at 70 watts is achievable. But if you are really concerned about your core temp and your case temp, I would suggest you get a 50+ watt peltier and not worry about your processor being too hot anymore.... and worry about your processor being too cold... :) I happen to have a MSi K7T Turbo-R Limited Edition, and as most of the overclocking community knows that this motherboard is a power hog. This is it's current output... 8/21/2001 | 1:46:16 PM | 1207 MHz | 72° C | 30° C This is using a 1.2 ThunderBird 266FSB Boxed CPU and Stock Cooling... Yeah not too fun... I am forced to use peltiers on this board... because it's very hot... I've used this CPU in Abit Kt7-Raid and had Temps at 55@idle and 66@full load, and on this board I have this temp range 62@idle and 75+80@ full on a hot day, with no ac running... Right now it's at 67, while I am writing this and working in Gimp and Running X and Bunch of other Stuff... but not at full load. And it's stable as a rock... I think it's all depends on the motherboard you are using and how close the temp probe to the core of the cpu... i have one of those flat ones and It's right under the cpu... # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ####################### <--- Heatsink *******^^^^^^^^******** <--- Copper Shim and Thermal Tape with CPU Core !@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@! <--- Socket A, and Cpu Sensor As you can see from my crappy asci art... yeah I know I am not good at it I get more accurate temp readings by having the sensor touch the back of the cpu core... and thats maybe why it's shows it at being hot... I also have a Digital Doc 5 that monitors my Case Temp and My Heatsink Temp... And it says that the Temp on the CPU heatsink is 43C@ Full and 35C@Idle... So for everyone who thinks that your CPU is running too hot, it's probably is running too hot... So if you are really concerned about it... put a Peltier on it and you won't have to worry about it being too hot... but you might have to worry about it being too cold... :) If you have any questions feel free to email to me.... or call or page... and even use snailmail if you really like to :) --Roman PS: If anyone has an old Abit KA7-100 and still has all the manuals and a box... would you please email me... abit won't accept my stuff withought the box... If you really want to know what happened to it... I melted the capacitors and they are nice and brown looking... I think I am one of the 5 people who did it... I think I deserve some kind of a prize for that... On Tue, Aug 21, 2001, The Purple Tiger wrote:
Hey all, Just a quickie - On the old AMD thread of things:
I have an AMD Athlon 1GHz on a K7VZA mobo.
This is linux related as I run linux on that machine - but is more of a hardware question.
If the computer has been on for any length of time, there is about a 90% chance the following will happen when I turn the machine off and on again: The machine doesn't "turn on" - We have power, but it doesn't get to the Graphics card init, and the processor QUICKLY heats up![I turn it off in a matter of seconds, and the heatsink is difficult to hold due to the temp]. If I remove the heatsink and cool it down with a desk fan and then refit it, then about 80% of the time it will work straight away when I turn the machine on... And then if I go into BIOS temperature readings, the temperature rapidly decreases as the heatsink does its job... it has been as high as 70 degrees!!! Otherwise the CPU runs at about 34 deg Celcius after running Linux or Windows for hours on end. Oh, the case is open and has a desk fan blowing into it until I get to the shop for a few case fans! "System Temperature" stays at around 25% celcius at the moment.
And ideas?
Flaky mobo or procesor maybe? I hope not as I can't really afford to shell out on a new one!!! If needs must though....
Thanks,
Jon Jeffels, the Purple Tiger
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