Newbie temperature question & cooling

kesawi · 3rd July 2012, 3:51 PM

I apologise for another newbie temperature post. I'm running an i7-3770K on a gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard and cooling it with air using a Megahalems Rev B heat sink fitted with twin Noctua NF-F12 PWM fans. The fans are controlled by the motherboard BIOS using the silent profile. The heatsink is orientated so that the fans blow horizontally.

I have a Fractal Design R3 case with twin 120mm intake fans at the front, a 140mm intake fan at the top blowing across the intake of the heatsink and a 120mm fan exhausting out the rear. All fans are connected to the PSU with a low noise adaptor. The intake fans are filtered. My aim with cooling has been to keep the noise down and maintain a positive pressure case to prevent dust build up inside the case. I didn't want it to be very noisy during normal use. I have a Gigabyte GTX 670 OC in the case as well.

Before overclocking the chip I ran a a blend test using Prime 95 to get an idea of where the temps of the cpu sit at stock settings. The temps of the cores generally peaked around 66 degrees during the more demanding parts of the cycle and around 58 degrees at the lower end. Idle temps are typically in the high 20s. The load temperatures seem quite high to me at stock settings based on what I've been able to find by googling around. Am I worried about nothing or should they be lower?

pantsonnos · 10th July 2012, 11:25 AM

Might be worth checking if your heatsink is seated properly and that there isn't too much/not enough thermal paste.

I've heard the 3770k runs a bit warmer than 2600k/2700k so it might be normal.

Dron · 11th July 2012, 9:14 AM

Well I've got i5-3570 and on the stock settings during stress test in Prime95 it pumps 3.7 GHz at about 1.17 V. Temperatures are stable at 61 degrees with Noctua NH-U12P SE2.

It is actually possible to get my chip to work under stress at 3.4 GHz with 0.92 V (I did undervolt it via fixed Vcore setting on purpose to see what would be the lowest voltage it can chug on under stress on default frequencies) and the temps were around 52 degrees.

There is a thread here on the forums (I thinks it is in Intel x86 section) where people discuss successful OCs for Ivy Bridges (volts, temps, testing times etc.) - maybe worth checking there and see what people's temps and volt settings are.

kesawi · 11th July 2012, 4:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dron

Well I've got i5-3570 and on the stock settings during stress test in Prime95 it pumps 3.7 GHz at about 1.17 V. Temperatures are stable at 61 degrees with Noctua NH-U12P SE2.

It is actually possible to get my chip to work under stress at 3.4 GHz with 0.92 V (I did undervolt it via fixed Vcore setting on purpose to see what would be the lowest voltage it can chug on under stress on default frequencies) and the temps were around 52 degrees.

There is a thread here on the forums (I thinks it is in Intel x86 section) where people discuss successful OCs for Ivy Bridges (volts, temps, testing times etc.) - maybe worth checking there and see what people's temps and volt settings are.

I did a lot of searching prior to posting originally and most posts refer to overclocked rather than stock temps. Reviews of the Megahalems I found indicated that it should run quite cool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pantsonnos

Might be worth checking if your heatsink is seated properly and that there isn't too much/not enough thermal paste.

I've heard the 3770k runs a bit warmer than 2600k/2700k so it might be normal.

When I applied the paste I put a small drop in the middle, installed the heat sink and then removed it to check the coverage on the CPU. It was slightly less than what is shown in the photo below (note this is not my CPU but a photo I found which looked similar to mine after applying the paste):

I then applied some more paste very thinkly with a cotton bud out towards the edges. Not sure whether this was correct or whether I should have cleaned off the past and reapplied before reseating the heat sink. Does it matter if only the centre of the CPU has the paste and it's not all of the way out to the corners?

There's so much conflicting information surrounding how to properly seat heat sinks.

Ninja_Harbinger · 11th July 2012, 6:39 PM

It's really just a case of trying it out yourself...

The way most people (I think) do it is a small grain of rice size in the middle of the CPU then put on the cooler trying not to lift it off or make any air bubbles. When you put it on, put a firm amount of pressure on the heatsink and twist it around a few times while keeping pressure on it. Then screw/clip/tighten it down.

kesawi · 16th July 2012, 8:48 AM

Tried reseating, and it made 1-2 degrees difference, but hard to tell.

3rd July 2012, 3:51 PM	#1
kesawi Member Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: Brisbane Posts: 583	Newbie temperature question & cooling I apologise for another newbie temperature post. I'm running an i7-3770K on a gigabyte Z77X-UD5H motherboard and cooling it with air using a Megahalems Rev B heat sink fitted with twin Noctua NF-F12 PWM fans. The fans are controlled by the motherboard BIOS using the silent profile. The heatsink is orientated so that the fans blow horizontally. I have a Fractal Design R3 case with twin 120mm intake fans at the front, a 140mm intake fan at the top blowing across the intake of the heatsink and a 120mm fan exhausting out the rear. All fans are connected to the PSU with a low noise adaptor. The intake fans are filtered. My aim with cooling has been to keep the noise down and maintain a positive pressure case to prevent dust build up inside the case. I didn't want it to be very noisy during normal use. I have a Gigabyte GTX 670 OC in the case as well. Before overclocking the chip I ran a a blend test using Prime 95 to get an idea of where the temps of the cpu sit at stock settings. The temps of the cores generally peaked around 66 degrees during the more demanding parts of the cycle and around 58 degrees at the lower end. Idle temps are typically in the high 20s. The load temperatures seem quite high to me at stock settings based on what I've been able to find by googling around. Am I worried about nothing or should they be lower?

10th July 2012, 11:25 AM	#2
pantsonnos Member Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: QLD Posts: 42	Might be worth checking if your heatsink is seated properly and that there isn't too much/not enough thermal paste. I've heard the 3770k runs a bit warmer than 2600k/2700k so it might be normal. __________________ Gigabyte EX58-UD4P \| i7 920 \| G-skill 6g \| Asus GTX560ti DCUII TOP \| 320gb + 2x1tb + 2tb \| Corsair HX620w \| Xclio Windtunnel

16th July 2012, 8:48 AM	#6
kesawi Member Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: Brisbane Posts: 583	Tried reseating, and it made 1-2 degrees difference, but hard to tell. __________________ Main: i7-3770K@4.3GHz, Megahalems, Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H, Corsair Vengeance 8GB, 2xOCZ Vertex 3 120GB(RAID0), Liteon IHBS312 BlueRay, Gigabyte GTX670 2GB OC@1267, Seasonic 860W Platinum, Fractal Design R3, AQ5 XT HTPC: i3-2100, Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3, G.Skill 4GB, Asus GT430, Crucial RealSSD C400 M4 64GB, WD CaviarGreen 2TB, Liteon IHBS212 BlueRay, SeaSonic S12II 430W 80+ PSU, DigitalNow Quad DVB-T Tuner, nMediaPC HTPC 7000B

11th July 2012, 9:14 AM	#3
Dron Member Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: Hills Posts: 18	Well I've got i5-3570 and on the stock settings during stress test in Prime95 it pumps 3.7 GHz at about 1.17 V. Temperatures are stable at 61 degrees with Noctua NH-U12P SE2. It is actually possible to get my chip to work under stress at 3.4 GHz with 0.92 V (I did undervolt it via fixed Vcore setting on purpose to see what would be the lowest voltage it can chug on under stress on default frequencies) and the temps were around 52 degrees. There is a thread here on the forums (I thinks it is in Intel x86 section) where people discuss successful OCs for Ivy Bridges (volts, temps, testing times etc.) - maybe worth checking there and see what people's temps and volt settings are.