I just finished building my new computer, which consists of: Intel Q9400 Shuttle SP35P2V2 Sapphire 4870 1GB (actually fits) 8GB of GeIL DDR2-667 Koutech card reader Samsung DVD burner Seagate 7200.11 500GB I'm really happy with it, except for a couple issues, which I'm not too sure actually ARE issues. The idle temps for the CPU are about 50c, which don't seem to be normal, but I'm basing it off of readings from normal ATX cases, so whatever. This is only the second time I've had to install a heatsink without a thermal pad already in, so I might have used too much thermal grease, but I followed the guide, used a grain of rice sized chunk, spread it around with my school ID card, etc. It's as loud as a leafblower, I can't keep it on my desk. Did I do something wrong?.. (aside from buying a Q9400 when the Q9550 was only a little more. )
I had my Q9550 (cooled with TRUE) sitting at about 45-50C on idle in my P182 before the thermal paste settled down, I swapped the fan to a bit more powerful one, and of course changed TJ to 95C. I like seeing my temperatures a bit lower!
Check the noise isn't coming from the fan on your 4870 card too, i bought a 512mb version recently and it was constantly running at around 55% fan speed, even though the idle temp was showing as 44 deg c. Changing the fan speed to manual at around 36% made a massive difference to the noise levels and idle temps were still only around 50 deg c.
If you set up two profiles, say one for gaming and one for desktop use, then I've found it can stay below 55 with fan on 22%, with core clock @250MHz (edit the profiles file for this) and mem clock at 580MHz (I think it's the mem clock anyway). Then set up another profile with, say, 40% fan, and higher clocks. Keeps temps down in both times AND keeps noise quiet when only on desktop use.
If I set my 4870 to anything less than like 60%, the temps go up to 65c+. What are safe temps for this card, and for my CPU? It seems a bit better now, that it's sat overnight, but I'm not sure.
Current advice with C2D and Quads is a thin line on the spreader, see Arctic Silver instructions for which way to run it. Letting the spring pressure spread the paste where it matters seems to work best with these large heatspreaders. The 'load' temperatures are the ones to worry about.
4870s have been known to operate under load without any problems at temperatures up to 90C. That would obviously seem dangerous to any reasonable person, but apparently the cards can handle it. You can probably dial it back somewhere in the 30-40% range and be good to go. - Diosjenin -
ATi (in the manual I think) say that if you have a custom fan setting (e.g. 40% instead of Auto) it will only override and set it to Auto when it reaches 105*C, so anything under 90 should be fine. Make the most of it and point the exhaust at your cold feet
this might be a silly question but are the system fans slowing down after the bios posts? my old sn25p needed the the fans setting to "smart fan control" first time i booted otherwise the fans stayed at 100% the whole time and sounded awful. after that it was silent pretty much ...
I have my 4870 fan on AUTO, and it idles at 80 degrees. It's completely silent. On load, it can go near 90C but usually stays at around 86C, and you can hear the fan.
Pretty much fixed the problems... I took the thing apart, and put it back together again, but I used my brains this time... I removed the unneeded cables, and managed to make the rest of them pretty neat. The top rear intakes were blocked by a mass of cables, but now they're completely clear, temps all dropped by 5-10c! I moved the hard drive tray to go on top of the DVD drive, clearing more space for the intakes, and cleared more cables from the 4870's fan... I entirely removed the second tray, I don't need it right now. Here are some pictures: (View from the top, the twin intake fans.) (Back of the 4870) (View of the obnoxious GeIL RAM and some more general tidiness) Those intake fans are producing the majority of the noise now, they're 80mm... What is a good replacement?
