[ghall426]

OK, I've read dozens of forums and for the most part it seems like 60C is too hot for the P4 processor to operate, but I'm a little confused. Here's why.

I first had the P4 with Intel heatsink and fan with the thermal pad. Next, I removed the pad and used Arctic Silver 5. I then replaced the Intel heatsink with a Cooler Master fan and heatsink using their thermal pad. Then I replaced the thermal pad with AS5.

With all of these configurations, the CPU temps idle were around 60 with 65C under full load. The CPU fan is 650RPM idle and gets up around 2500RPM under full load. The board temps are 48C and 39C with fans running at 1500RPM pretty much constantly.

I was concerned about the 60-65 temps, so I disabled the BIOS speed controls and was able to get 38C idle and 42C load for the CPU temp. If I can get the 38C, I must have everything set up right. I have an intake 80mm case fan in front and a 120mm blowing out the back. My main question is if the 60C is so close to the max temp, why does the fan blow so slow?

I realize the best thing to do is leave the fans running as fast as possible, but there's the obvious noise issue. So if I leave bios monitoring the temps and fan speeds, is it doing it correctly? Or is my thinking completely flawed?

Greg

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There's a trend in P4 boards at the moment for them to want to run as hot as possible. I've seen temperatures running around 70 degrees C (idle) when the BIOS was set to automatic CPU fan speed control. Not a one-off - I've seen three this week alone. There's usually another option to set the fan ratio speed (set to Auto where available) and another to set the "target temperature" which doesn't seem to go anywhere below 50.

Failing this, a software solution might work - see something like Speedfan for example - to control the fans.

Edited by Neil Jones, 17 August 2006 - 04:51 PM.

[Neil Jones]

There's a trend in P4 boards at the moment for them to want to run as hot as possible. I've seen temperatures running around 70 degrees C (idle) when the BIOS was set to automatic CPU fan speed control. Not a one-off - I've seen three this week alone. There's usually another option to set the fan ratio speed (set to Auto where available) and another to set the "target temperature" which doesn't seem to go anywhere below 50.

Failing this, a software solution might work - see something like Speedfan for example - to control the fans.

Edited by Neil Jones, 17 August 2006 - 04:51 PM.