My Q6600 idles at 58C?

northshorefiend · Post by **northshorefiend** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:51 am

I have a Q6600 G0 on an ASUS P5W64 WS motherboard with DDR2-800 crucial balistix that I build yesterday.

I am not trying to overclock at the moment, just trying to get a very stable platform to compile code on all day and night, without too much headache from noise.

Problem is I get the BIOS bleeping at me telling me the CPU is overheating.

If I boot from cold, looking in the BIOS the CPU temp is 58C.

I have no windows licence, so I can't give any details using windows tools, this is a gentoo linux machine!

I have the stock intel cooler on: I verified all clips were secure this morning. (snaps clearly heard at all corners) This improved things from 67C to the current 58C on boot in the BIOS.

I'm very disappointed that after 2mins of compilation I get the BIOS bleeping.

I have 120mm inlet fan at the bottom of the case, 80mm exhaust under the PSU, 80mm exhaust over the EN8600 Silent. I have another 120 inlet for the front I haven't mounted yet.

Seems to me 58C is too high for doing nowt in the BIOS?

Any advice on what is wrong?

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 7:15 am

Searching for your motherboard, I found a review from 14 months ago. Try updating the BIOS, it's probably very old, and might not have a clue about how to read temperatures from the Q6600.

gb115b · Post by **gb115b** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 10:42 am

i have the same CPU and m/b cooled by a thermalright 120 idle temp is 45C

reseat the heatsink...(plus get a new one, the intel stock is fine for idle normally though...)

northshorefiend · Post by **northshorefiend** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:10 am

@Matija True, I thought it might be the bios not knowing the correct temps, so I flashed the bios as soon as I could to the latest. The G0 is rated pretty high at 71C. Thanks

@gb115b Thanks for the reading of 45C. I think I will get some arctic paste tomorrow and clean everything off and reseat the heatsink.

Thanks

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:24 am

if you have a Razor lying around [not a shaving razor, but a removeable razor] you should take out the CPU and carefully check the IHS to see how flat it is. its entirely possible that the IHS and the heatsink have poor contact. while everything is "precision machined" the IHS is rarely the perfectly smooth and flat surface it should be. also, stock thermal paste is usually just barely enough [if you look at what comes on the stock heatsink] and Arctic Silver 5 is much better quality.

the stock heatsink could also very well be the problem, so you may want to look into the Scythe Ninja or the Thermalright Ultra 120/120 eXtreme. the Ninja is much cheaper but is close in performance. At the same time, if you get the Scythe Ninja, you'll want to make or buy a bolt-thru kit for it. Thermalright makes a bolt-thru kit that will fit the Ninja, or you can make your own with the right size screws, and plastic washers. Pushpins on a tower style heatsink is just a bad idea.

i also hope you read the manual when you installed the stock heatsink. the order that you push the pins through the motherboard is crucial!
1-4
3-2

if you didn't do it in that order, there could be an amount of flex around the CPU socket, which could make up for the lack of contact.

northshorefiend · Post by **northshorefiend** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:40 am

Yeah, pretty fiddly. It took two attempts the first time to get the first pair of clips through the first time - though I had everything in the right position, somehow one of the clips just didn't end up through the hole.

So I had to re-set the clips and start again.

The first boot showed temp of 65, which seemed a bit high.

So I released and reset the clips, trying not to disturb the contact too much, and pushed the clips in again in opposite pairs again. Then got 45C and climbing to a stable 58C.

May be I ruined the three little strips of paste with the first failed attempt.

I can get hold of a Zalman 9700NT, but I don't really want to spend the dosh as the stock should be good enough for now. Thanks

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 12:16 pm

well, regardless, you may not want to keep stock forever. i had my stock heatsink for about 5 months, and i ran it with Speedstep so it was relatively quite, but i got a stellar deal on a Scythe Ninja Rev. A, which is the exact model i wanted, and now I've got it, proudly so.

with a quad, idling at 58 is safe in terms of the heat tolerance, but, getting it cooler will increase lifespan and give more headroom for a full load.

northshorefiend · Post by **northshorefiend** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:33 am

Well, Arctic Silver 5 made no difference. If I boot and look in the bios I get 58C CPU temperature. 56 if I leave the case side off.

The heat sink had some slight marks on the bottom. Seeing as some people 'lap' these, I guess that could be an issue.

I'm gonna try one more time, but use the Arctic even more sparingly, just in case.

I find these clips VERY difficult.

Dutchmm · Post by **Dutchmm** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:41 am

Forgive the dumb question, but something similar happened to me when I built my first (and only) socket 775 system. When I first opened the CPU socket, there seemed to be this loose piece of metal in it (which luckily I kept). And at first, no matter how hard I screwed down the hs (a TRUE) I was getting load temps of 70 - with the case sides off! - and dire warnings from fellow folders. I now realise I was getting these temps with an underclock of 25%!

Turns out this "loose" piece of metal was necessary to make the cpu clip snap shut. Symptom: when you remove the heatsink, does the cpu come off with it? Once I had that in place, my idle temps went down to about 10c over ambient, and folding, the load temps are about 20 to 25c over ambient. No, it's not a q6600, it's an E6750 overclocked to 3.2ghz. lm-sensors says ~50 for temp2 (thermistor) and coretemp for each cpu about 32 (early morning, no heating) to 42 (evening, heating on full). I have not yet discovered whether the coretemp or thermistor temperature is more reliable, but this is plenty cool enough.

HTH

Mike

northshorefiend · Post by **northshorefiend** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 6:43 am

OK, I think the problem was one or two of the clips are very hard to get into the inserted/seated position.

When the heatsink was off I worked the all the clips through the mounted/unmounted cycle.

Then remounted the jobby again, using even more pressure this time.

I got down level with the mobo and checked that all the clips were in.

Seemed that one of them still wasn't in, so I pushed down even harder, after hearing the mobo crunch a little, there was a snap and the clip was in.

The mobo has a slight bowing under the CPU now.

Anyhooo, BIOS sez idle is 54C, I installed some tools in linux to read the CPU temps (lm_sensors).

lm_sensors sez

CPU 46C, cores between 48-50

which sounds OK

Under load lm_sensors sez

CPU 63, cores 60-68 depending on exactly how much load

(I'm running 'make world' or in gentoo speak 'emerge -eva system')

This all seems safe now, but maybe the bios is over reading, maybe lm_sensors is under reading.
In any case, something must have been wrong to begin with because the very first time I rebooted the machine, the BIOS refused to boot anything, citing CPU over temp.

May be santa will leave some money for a nice new shiny heat sink...

Thanks all!

-----
P.S. Ahh, memories of my 486DX66 running 'make world', that didn't have a heat sink. Most reliable machine I ever had

Yoda117 · Post by **Yoda117** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 9:25 am

I know that this post is aged a bit, but I was concerned about temps as well and found this post via search. I'm with bonestonne on this one as far as heatsink is concerned. I just put together my build in a P182 with a passively cooled Ninja mini and with the two upper TriCools on high, the temps on the cores are 25-27C, on low 33-36C at idle. Not even touching 50C when rendering video in Premiere.

Results are from CoreTemp, and matched by Intel's own tools. Info from the BIOS at startup is pretty close to the idle temps as well (little lower, which makes sense since it's at startup).

northshorefiend · Post by **northshorefiend** » Thu Jan 10, 2008 9:39 am

This Tuesday, I installed a Zalman CNPS9700 NT.

It was a real pain to get the screws though the motherboard and into the back plane. Anyhoo....

Idle at 45 now, which might come down after breaking in I suppose. I can still hit 70 with all 4 cores going at 100% though. That Zalman is noisy too when it hits 2800rpm!

I might be installing Windoze at some point. If I do I'll post again.

I might install a more powerful exhaust fan under the power supply if the high temps are confirmed by intel's tools.

My Q6600 idles at 58C?

My Q6600 idles at 58C?

R U Sure you got the CPU clipped down securely?