CPU overheating - help pls

[whc.demo]

Hi i have an old p4 3.4E prescott s478 and it seems to be overheating quite badly

i have the stock cooling with the stock thermal paste stuff on it and its not oc'd at all


when i boot up and look in bios it says the cpu is on around 60c idle!? and id say its pushing 70c - 75c under load, possibly more because i dont know how to find the temp while running a game etc..


i know prescotts run hot but thats too much right??

what are the max temps for a prescott and average running temps?

i have heard a lot of ppl using arctic silver and was wondering does that stuff really work?? will arctic silver bring the temps down enough or do i need a whole new heatsink and fan??

also i have a 400w generic PSU and am unsure of its amps and true rating etc, could this be contributing to the overheating problem?

and it gets quite hot where i live which isnt helping much, it was 41c here 2 days ago

all help greatly appreciated

[PVTCaboose1337]

Thats is high, but yes, p4s are hot. arctic silver 5 is good. Also, get a new HSF, the stock one = crap.

[PVTCaboose1337]

Also, generally, most cpus are about 2-6c over the room temp so... (idle i mean)

[PVTCaboose1337]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118115

something that is compatible with 478, that one is decent...

[AthlonX2]

if it gets that hot where you live i would invest in watercooling

[WarEagleAU]

PVT has the right idea. Grab one of them TT Big Typhoons or Mini Typhoon, Scythe Ninja (with fan) or a Zalman and clean off that old TIM and fan and replace it with Artic Silver 5 (just a dab) and the new cooler. Good luck.

[PVTCaboose1337]

Originally Posted by WarEagleAU

PVT has the right idea. Grab one of them TT Big Typhoons or Mini Typhoon, Scythe Ninja (with fan) or a Zalman and clean off that old TIM and fan and replace it with Artic Silver 5 (just a dab) and the new cooler. Good luck.

The dab, and then you want a thin sexy layer of paste on the processor.

[whc.demo]

ok i bought some arctic silver 5 and that has dropped the temps to around 45c when i boot up


are there any ways to optimise a cpu for better performance apart from overclocking and cooling?

[infrared]

Originally Posted by AthlonX2

if it gets that hot where you live i would invest in watercooling

That will help, but the water can only be cooled to the ambient temperature anyway. You'll just have warm water circulating. And watercooling on a PC that isn't being overclocked is a lot of expense for no reason at all.

Originally Posted by whc.demo

are there any ways to optimise a cpu for better performance apart from overclocking and cooling?

At 75c, your cpu would have definatly been 'throttling back' which means that the cpu reserves clock cycles to reduce the load. This has a BIG impact on performance, so if you can keep it below 60-70c to avoid this, then you will have increased performance. One little program you can check out is 'panopsys throttlewatch'. It will show you if your cpu is throttling back or not.

There are a few other tricks you can do to increase performance without overclocking, but it's a lot of messing around for very little gain. Just checking that the memory is running with the correct timings can help. In a lot of cases, the ram will run with looser timings than specified. For example, my memory is rated to run at 667mhz with 3-3-3-12 timings, but if the timings is set to auto in the bios, it will run at 5-4-4-15 which will reduce bandwidth. But there is no way to increase performance of the cpu itself without increasing clockspeeds.

Hope that helps

[ktr]

Originally Posted by whc.demo

ok i bought some arctic silver 5 and that has dropped the temps to around 45c when i boot up


are there any ways to optimise a cpu for better performance apart from overclocking and cooling?

the temp sounds just right for the stock cooler...

as for more performance, on bumping of the hertz is the only way to get more power, or modify the OS/software so that it takes less resources from the cpu...