Temps when overclocking

[Capper]

Every system and situation is different 50C is a good easy to remember number that should be fine under any situation. TAT or CoreTemp are the most commonly used applications, but some people tend to use motherboard specific apps, and some can be extremely inaccurate.

As to probes, the problem with most of them is that while they measure temperatures accurately, you just can't place them where they need to be to get temperatures that mean anything

[Computer-Ed]

It has been a long time since I overclocked, a LONG TIME. However even the Intel Rep told me this chip would overclock great. I must admit however to feeling a bit out of this.

I backed the system down to default speeds except for the CPU timing. Under full load with ITAT I am running at 59C max. At idle I am at 34C. This is with stock cooling, a 120 exhaust, a 120 on the PSU, an 80 front intake and a CPU duct that runs just a hari above the CPU fan.

I am running with smart fan disbaled, I have tried running with Smartfan and the Intel fan determination system and all seem to have similiar effects except for the idel temp is lower with fan control off.

[Quakindude]

You shouldn't be getting 59*C at stock speeds and voltage. Something ain't right. Check all your fan air flow directions, easy to do if you smoke cigs like I do, and tell us how you installed the stock cooler if you built this system yourself.

The stock cooler is a great cooler for its intended purpose. However, if you plan on seriously overclocking, I'd go with an after-market air cooler.

[Computer-Ed]

Stock cooler installation was straight out of the package, put it on the CPU, pushed in the pins and was done, nothing fancy. All the fans are blowing the right way..

[Quakindude]

So you took the plastic cover off the bottom of the CPU cooler? I can't recall if the Intel coolers have a cover or not. Did you leave the thermal interface material that came on it on there, or did you add your own? If you added your own, did you remove the stock stuff?

I understand that you're not new to these things, but there's a reason your stock temps are that high. If everything is just right, the only thing I can come up with is this. I have seen CPU's from time to time that were run above temp spec for some time that never did run at lower, more common temps once returned to stock settings.

[Computer-Ed]

Yes there WAS a plastic cover and I removed it. The scarey part was I had to think about it for a second. There was thermal material on the bottom so I left it and used it. Normally it is a pad but this was three strips of a more goo like material.

I just did a quick and dirty build with this. When the new case and heatsink come in I will do a more complete job. My idle temp is running 33C which is pretty good I felt.

[Gig-O-Ram]

While playing an intense game, or when running a stress test, I have never seen a temp higher than 42°C on my overclocked 3700. I attribute this to my cooling setup and AS5, my chosen TIM. On the lower end, my CPU idles in the low 30s, and under normal circumstances never goes higher than 38°C.
When the room temp goes to the low 70's F, I can get Idle CPU temps as low as 27°C - if I turn all my fans up, that is. Right now, with fans turned down, Everest reads 34° with room temp at 25C.

Anyone planning to overclock should definately take the advice given here and use aftermarket cooling of some kind. Shoot, my wife doesn't OC at all, and I ditched the stock cooler on her machine, in favor of a Zalman CNPS7000Bcu. I prefer something made with a lot of copper, but it's up to you.

[Computer-Ed]

Okay found a great article on Toms Hardware forum, the just of the discussion was that ITAT was designed for mobile processors and reads the numbers differently.

Using ITAT as your guide you are safe all the way to a 70C core. At 80C in the core the processor will throttle down and at 85C the processor will shut down. In their discussion 65C was considered the sweet spot to shoot for.

Also ambient room temp lays a huge role in all of this, right now my ambient temp is around 70F and my CPU using speedstep is idle at 33C. When I cranked up the CPU load using ITAT the core jumped to 54 and held there, which BTW is the change the guide suggested is normal for the CPU, about 20C when under load over idle.

Remember these are pure ITAT temps and in each case I am reading only the hottest core. I find that a lot of people read their temps in a lot of different ways, so if we standardized the read I think we would find a better way to help people with the overclock.

[polobunny]

While ambiant temperatures do account into those temperatures and different processors have a different TDP and whatnot, I think I should note my Athlon X2 overclocked to a modest 2.4ghz from 2ghz never gets over 43C at the core when my cooling is clean (dust bunnies are my worst ennemies, those are full load temperatures). Ambient temperature: 73.4F
Cooling is air, Thermaltake Big Typhoon. Idle it drops to around 35C right after stopping stress and it can easily go down to 32C after a short while.

From my past experiences with C2Ds, 65C in TAT while not totally impossible seems quite high. What you want to acheive technically once you have a good idle temperature is reduce the difference between the cores and the CPU temp under full load. It is impossible to completly remove it obviously, but once you observe a reduction in this difference you can safely say things are under control and that you are improving your cooling. Less drastic changes denotes an adequate cooling, heat transfer being at it's best. :)
I'm not sure exactly why they accept 65C as the sweetspot, if it's only because of the reasons they mention or if they're only starting to accept the IHS problems.

[screwballl]

I have my bios set to start beeping at me when it hits 60ºC. I can put full load on both cores and TAT will say it is running 53-55º yet speed fan and every other temp monitor says exactly 5º cooler than TAT does. Also when I was having issues with my E6400, my mobo would not start beeping until TAT said 65º, not at 63 or 64, but once it hit 65. So TAT is off for my system.

Right now using F@H SMP with both cores at 100%, speed fan says they are running 45ºC. This is at stock 2400MHz. So I may kick it up some this weekend to see what I can get from it.