Question on motherboard that's not on list...

[jonathanm1978]

Ok, well with this particular CPU and setup, what would be a mid-range limit of CPU temps to look for? Not over 120F or not over 130F? I don't want to push it extremely high, but would like to get midrange and still have moderate temps since I do have a LOT of fans inside the case...I like having airflow..

[jonathanm1978]

Im running prime 95 now, and the CPU temp has gone up....but it's also a high-stress testing so I'm not worried. What I am seeing is the temp has topped off around 56C/132F and is remaining there. I haven't overclocked any of the CPU yet, so do I need to look at this as my wall or limit? Since I get 132F under regular clock speed of the CPU, do i need to overclock the CPU a bit then stop when it gets above...say 140F?

[jonathanm1978]

And just as a side note..the temps seem to be leveling off at 56C/132F up to 57C/134F after 15-20 minutes of Prime95 testing (CPU + memory mixed test). I'm assuming that my temps under full load are going to average this (mid 130F range) under full load. So there's that factor in the mix...now I should move on to bumping the HTT frequency a bit to start the overclocking process?

[jonathanm1978]

One thing I did notice is this..I turned the rear-most fan around while prime95 was running -- took side panel off, turned the back fan so it was intake instead of exhaust...so it was pulling air into the case...

Apparently when I did these fans to begin with, my engineering and placement was proper..because I was watching the temps while I turned that rear fan to face the opposite direction...

While prime95 was running and i also had OCTuner fired up so I could watch the CPU/MB temp guages...I placed the fan as intake from the rear, put side back on, and watched the CPU temp rise up to around 142F from 134-136F. So those fans did make a difference..and I think my figuring is correct on the rear fan -- the power supply exhausts right above where that rear fan is, so the fan being placed as intake was pulling the hot air exhausting from the PSU directly back into the case, causing a loop. I'm just trying to figure out what the best placement of the fans is for my situation. For the rear, I have the CPU cooler, then on the side panel I have the 120mm on the lower grid, and the 80mm on the upper grid.

For now, on the side panel, I have the 80mm acting as exhaust, since it's nearly directly above the CPU heatsink - or directly in front of it almost, I have it turned to pull out air. The 120mm on the lower grid is acting as intake, pulling cool air inside from the ambient room air. Since cool air rises and heat falls, i figured this would be the best placement, but I could be wrong. I'm open to ideas on my fan placement for anyone who wants to chip in.

[jonathanm1978]

Here's the results for Prime95. My temps stayed right around the mid-130F to low 140F range. Highest peak was at 142F but went back down, and that's because I was tinkering with the fans and placement..

[wevsspot]

Jonathan,

You definitely don't want to increase your cpu load temps further than they are. 58-60C should be the max.

Based on your temps I'm assuming that you are using the stock AMD CPU heatsink?

If so, I'd wait on overclocking until you can swing a better cooling solution.

A lot of times finding the best fan configuration for moving air in and out of a particular case is all trial and error. You've been doing the trial and error and it seems like you've found the best configuration for your fans.

[jonathanm1978]

Ok, I'm going to quit messing with it until I figure this out.

The OCTuner that AsRock has, it does a reading of the CPU temp/Motherboard Temp.

I've been reading my temps with that...

I decided to try "Core Temp" and see what it says..

I ran it and it's telling me that my CPU temp is 80F to 82F.

At the exact same time, I alt+tab over to OCTuner and look and it says my CPU temp is 40C/104F.

So which one is most accurate? I'd like to stick with the one that says the highest temp, but there's 20F difference..

[wevsspot]

I use CoreTemp because it gives accurate readings of each of the cores.

Too often the included motherboard monitoring software takes an aggregate reading, and we're not really interested in aggregate readings. What we wanna see is the actual core temps as reported by the diode on the cpu.

[jonathanm1978]

Well, right now, CoreTemp says that my Tj Max is 158F,
and my CPU #0 is 79F,
Low 77F and High 88F

So im assuming CoreTemp is correct and the OcTuner is wrong...and the CoreTemp reading is the one I should trust for being more accurate of the exact temp?

[wevsspot]

yes, that is correct. trust the readings that coretemp is giving you.

can we please talk in all C instead of mixing C & F?

[jonathanm1978]

I have CoreTemp to read all F because C confuses me (US/American here)

That's why I been listing both, because I've tried to list C when I could, but F is my native so that's what I'm used to seeing and using..but I'll try to convert to C whenever I post or use the program to change back for posting purposes. Since my last post, it's dropped down to 76F because it's just idling, so I assume my temps are great.

That would mean that I didn't hit 58C earlier when I thought I did during prime95...I actually only hit about 45C or so. (Temp now is at 25C, what does Tj. Max 70C mean?)

[wevsspot]

tjmax is mfg. specified thermal limit for a particular processor family and stepping.

you can find the correct max temp of your cpu by researching the amd tech papers or processor specification sheets. sometimes coretemp reports them incorrectly.

im stateside too so farenheit is native to me too (in everything except computer lingo)

anyways, based on the coretemp reports you're cpu temp is great so far and you have some room to bump up the htt even with your current cpu cooler. give it a go. just remember, small increments

[jonathanm1978]

So do I do the HTT in bios, or in AMD Overdrive?

I'm not sure which terminology I look for in the BIOS..what's the exact name it falls under in BIOS? Or do I just tell AsRock to overclock by 5%, or 10% in the SmartOverclock menu in my bios? (ASrock has it built in to OC the system.)

[wevsspot]

Johnathan,

I don't recommend using any Windows based overclocking utilities long term. They are fine for testing and getting into the ballpark, but all of the final changes should be set in your BIOS.

You can try the ASRock Smart Overclock and see how that goes (no harm), but keep an eye on voltages because sometimes when using the built in motherboard overclocking utilities they can really push your voltages up beyond what you need.

If that doesn't work we can also drop back and push the HTT up manually.

Try the Smart OC utility and see what happens and then report back

Wev

[jonathanm1978]

I tinkered (but removed) some settings in the Smart Overclock utility yesterday evening, and eventually (moving the CPU freq from 200 to 210) gave me a BSOD.

Only pushing 10 on the frequency (CPU) gave the BSOD, so I just put the CPU freq back at 200 and left it alone..figured I'd try again today. Thing about it is I have the Smart OC utility set to run my fan on my CPU/Heatsink...and since that's reading wrong, setting it at 45C being the limit is causing my fan to blast when the OC utility reads 45C, but CoreTemp says its WAAAAY under that...
I guess I need to set the fan speed up higher in the OC utility (and then in bios) since the reading from OCTuner is wrong on my CPU temp. And I won't be using OCTuner to overclock since I hit the BSOD with it.