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As many of you know, we have had excessive temps here over recent weeks, often well into the 40s (°C, of course). I like to minimise aircon use and the temp in my office often exceeds 30°C. Of recent weeks, one of my computers with an Intel Prescott 3 GHz CPU started to show excessive temp warnings with the threshold set at 70°C. Even at rest, it was often over 65°C. I cleaned all the dust and dog's hairs out of the system, to no significant avail. So, why should the temp start to become excessive, when it was OK before?
I decided to attack the problem more radically. My first act was to remove the heat sink. I noticed what appeared to be an excessive amount of thermal grease but, more important, all the white stuff had migrated to the periphery of the chip's heat transfer plate and there was just clear grease in the centre (about 15 mm across without the thermal conductor). I wiped off as much grease as possible then carefully cleaned off the rest with kitchen paper wetted with white spirit, with 4 or 5 clean wipes before the paper came off clean. Same with the heat sink. I then put a small blob of thermal conducting grease on the centre of the chip plate and spread it carefully with a piece of Mylar, so I could just see a layer of white over the whole chip surface. I replaced the Intel heat sink and fan.
Problem solved: it worked a good 3-4°C cooler, but still came up to 68-69°C on prolonged intensive CPU use.
Moral of the story: if your CPU overheats, check that whoever put in the cooler used the correct amount of grease and that it has stayed where it is needed and the white conducto filler has not been squeezed out.
However, I was still not satisfied, so I bought a 3rd party (Lexus) cooler of similar design and dimensions as the original Intel cooler. The fan on this was much bigger than the Intel one and the whole caboodle was fabricated from copper, as opposed to extruded light alloy. This dropped the temp another ~8°C so, on standby, the temp was ~54°C with a room temp of 32°C. At prolonged 100% CPU usage, it stayed below 60°C. Furthermore, it didn't sound like Concord taking off!
However, other ramifications followed. The case design includes a duct that takes outside air directly to the CPU fan, which blows it across the fins into the cabinet. The case was equipped with an 80 mm extraction fan. Because the bigger CPU fan was blowing a larger volume of hotter air radially from the fans, the system chips heat sink, which was in the direct blast, became hotter. Where, previously, they stabilised at about 45°C, they increased to 55°C with the new CPU cooler. I therefore put in a 120 mm case fan instead of the little Mickey Mouse one that came with the computer: system temp reduced to 48°C and even lower noise level. Very happy!!!
My video computer is OK thermally, but the Intel fan sounds like a whole squadron of Concordes taking off. I intend dealing with it, as well, to reduce the noise.
I decided to attack the problem more radically. My first act was to remove the heat sink. I noticed what appeared to be an excessive amount of thermal grease but, more important, all the white stuff had migrated to the periphery of the chip's heat transfer plate and there was just clear grease in the centre (about 15 mm across without the thermal conductor). I wiped off as much grease as possible then carefully cleaned off the rest with kitchen paper wetted with white spirit, with 4 or 5 clean wipes before the paper came off clean. Same with the heat sink. I then put a small blob of thermal conducting grease on the centre of the chip plate and spread it carefully with a piece of Mylar, so I could just see a layer of white over the whole chip surface. I replaced the Intel heat sink and fan.
Problem solved: it worked a good 3-4°C cooler, but still came up to 68-69°C on prolonged intensive CPU use.
Moral of the story: if your CPU overheats, check that whoever put in the cooler used the correct amount of grease and that it has stayed where it is needed and the white conducto filler has not been squeezed out.
However, I was still not satisfied, so I bought a 3rd party (Lexus) cooler of similar design and dimensions as the original Intel cooler. The fan on this was much bigger than the Intel one and the whole caboodle was fabricated from copper, as opposed to extruded light alloy. This dropped the temp another ~8°C so, on standby, the temp was ~54°C with a room temp of 32°C. At prolonged 100% CPU usage, it stayed below 60°C. Furthermore, it didn't sound like Concord taking off!
However, other ramifications followed. The case design includes a duct that takes outside air directly to the CPU fan, which blows it across the fins into the cabinet. The case was equipped with an 80 mm extraction fan. Because the bigger CPU fan was blowing a larger volume of hotter air radially from the fans, the system chips heat sink, which was in the direct blast, became hotter. Where, previously, they stabilised at about 45°C, they increased to 55°C with the new CPU cooler. I therefore put in a 120 mm case fan instead of the little Mickey Mouse one that came with the computer: system temp reduced to 48°C and even lower noise level. Very happy!!!
My video computer is OK thermally, but the Intel fan sounds like a whole squadron of Concordes taking off. I intend dealing with it, as well, to reduce the noise.
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