Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon?

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:11:08 GMT

Thanks for all the advice, but I have done it all. Got the best thermal paste and applied as shown on their website in a very thin layer.

Yesterday I reached 59C with system temperature around 43C (after one hour of 45% load, ambient temperature 20C). On a hotter day the temperatures may be higher. What's your sys temp for comparison? The noise reduction may raise the temperature somewhat, but as stated I added extra fans, one intake and one exhaust.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Jim Wright)

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 09:11:03 GMT

To update my earlier post --- my system currently idles at 39-40 degrees Celsius after it's been on for a while. I ran Prime95 overnight and "under load" CPU temperature stabilized at 50-51 degrees Celsius. That's still a fair bit cooler than 60 degrees Celsius, but not so much as I (mis) remembered.

Gordo's points about a very thin layer of thermal compound, etc. are well taken. If you decide to reapply compound, make sure the old compound is thoroughly removed. Arctic Clean worked very well for me (better than acetone, and safer too).

- Jim

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (agincourtdb)

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 01:26:38 GMT

ORIGINAL: eikelbijter

Just make sure you get a good case and put in some good ventilation. I believe in 2 or 3 slow spinning 80MM fans. Go AMD and you won't regret it!

Rico

My case, for example, is a Thermaltake Xaxer III... clearly a gaudy gamer case, but I love it. It came with 7 (seven. that's right, you heard me) 60mm quiet fans. two on the back, two on the front, two on the left side opposite the CPU fan, and one on the top pulling out. Plus the one on the power supply. The brushed aluminum case actually gets quite cold to the touch.

Quite a step up from the last prebuilt computer I had, which was a compaq, and inside of which I ruined a new PCI video card through overheating before I realized that there were no case fans in it.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (eikelbijter)

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 01:17:08 GMT

I've built a lot of different computers, Intel and AMD. Funny thing is, right now Intel is the one with the heat problems! It's hard to believe but true.

I just built an Athlon 64 X2 3800+ machine for a friend and I couldn't believe how quiet en cool the thing is running. My neighbor's P4 3.2Ghz machine is half as fast and puts out more heat! It's true that Intel chips have had anti-cook protection for longer than AMD, but the current AMD's can't be killed like the old ones.

Just make sure you get a good case and put in some good ventilation. I believe in 2 or 3 slow spinning 80MM fans. Go AMD and you won't regret it!

Rico

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Gordo)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 23:02:58 GMT

A few ideas...

There might be inadequate airflow in your case. Make sure there's a clear path from the intake (usually front bottom of the case) to the rear exhaust. Move cables out of the way as much as possible. Many cases only have an exhaust fan and no intake fan - maybe you need an intake fan to pull in more cool air. If the computer is sitting on a carpet, depending on case design you might need to elevate it so that the intake holes aren't blocked by the carpet.

Thermal paste should be applied very thin. More is not better. I had a CPU that was running hot. The supplier had installed the heatsink for me. I removed it and there was thermal paste all over the place! What a mess. I cleaned it with alcohol and applied a paper-thin layer - CPU temp dropped several degrees. Added an intake fan and got a few more degrees cooler.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 14:23:06 GMT

All that is working fine. Everything was installed new and without dust. I can hear the fan work, and I can regulate the speed or monitor it ....

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (hairyMug)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 13:32:57 GMT

One last thing (which just recently "bit" me);
Some BIOS gives you the option of using "quiet fan" (or some-such wording",
My system was constanty over-heating (and freezing up) due to this feature...
The CPU temp would go up and the fan never kicked on...
I only discovered the problem afer installing a monitor which constantly logs
the fans & temps...
The fix; reset you BIOS to standard settings and DO NOT turn this feature on...

>been running fine at ~42c (full load) no prob...

Walt

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (agincourtdb)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:34:34 GMT

For that matter, make sure your heat sinks, fan housings and air intake ports are not clogged with dust. " /> My last computer was a notorious dust magnet. This one has filters.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (stingie@tstt.net.tt)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:31:55 GMT

Open the case and look at the CPU fan for a while. Sometimes they keep stopping and restarting.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 11:33:36 GMT

I got special thermal paste, can't remember gold or silver something, high quality and applied according to instructions. I got the Zalman cooler CuAl something. Yes, I have applied some black stuff inside the case for noise reduction, but I also have two extra fans running. Mobo temperature in in the early 40's. CPU temperature starts there and quickly rises to 54-56 with just a single audio track or so in Sonar, but with several tracks/plugs it runs around 61C.

Just checked, I updated to most recent flash on mobo (November 05) and incorrect temperature reporting is a year old issue for my mobo.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Jim Wright)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 11:26:52 GMT

ORIGINAL: tombuur

ORIGINAL: jcschild

AMD still has room to grow speed wise. as they run so much cooler

Scott
ADK

Then why is my Athlon 64 3200+ typically running around 60 Celcius?

My system specs: Athlon 64 3700+ socket 939 (San Diego), 2G OCZ Ram; MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard, Matrox P650 video card, Seasonic power supply.

CPU temp idles at about 40 Celsius; it peaks at 50-51 Celsius after running Prime95 all night.

The Athlon 64s generally run very cool, especially compared to something like an Intel Prescott P4. (That design runs so hot that Intel killed all future development, writing off over USD $1 billion of investment in the process, and switched to a core design based on the Penium-M series). I was a staunch Intel user for 20 years, until my latest DAW, but technology moves on...

Earlier-generation AMD chips did have heat issues, and no effective thermal overload protection mechanisms; Intel was pioneered non-suicidal CPU designs. But the Athlon64 is a completely different story.

Tombuur -- if your temp temp is running 60 Celsius, something is wrong. I'd check thermal coupling to the heatsink. I assume you're using round drive cables (rather than flat), and have good airflow inside your case? And some supplementary fans (preferably low noise) to keep air moving well?

Extra care is needed to make sure that thermal coupling is actually as good as it should be. Both choice of thermal compound and application method are important.
In my case --- I bought a tested bare-bones system from Monarch (CPU, RAM, motherboard) with the stock AMD fan installed. I also bought a Thermalright XP90 heatsink/fan (Monarch doesn't ship bare-bones systems with oversize heatsinks on them, to avoid shipping damage to the motherboard). Why the Thermalright, since the stock fan cools the CPU perfectly well? I wanted a quiet system, and the Thermalright (and Nexus 92 mm fan) deliver. (The Seasonic PW, fanless Matrox video card, and Samsung drives are also important factors, of course.)

Anyway --- to install the XP90, I used Arcticlean to remove all of the "factory stock" thermal compound, then used Arctic Silver with the XP90. If the original thermal compound isn't removed properly, thermal coupling can be significantly impaired.

FWIW -- I built my wife a lower-powered system using an AMD Sempron; it's been great.

A very pleased AMD customer.

- Jim

Edit: updated temperature measurements

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (stratcat33511)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 10:43:23 GMT

I tortchured (sp?) my AMD box and it also has the heatsink and cooling fan
The only probs with MY DAW is me, mostly.!
My Athlon laptop runs 24 7 and I often question which is better the desk or laptop !

Both boxes DO get hot running for many hours at a time but never conked out or anything.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 10:41:01 GMT

Nope. I have checked it all. Only thing I can find is that the Athlons perhaps sometimes report incorrect temperature, or my mobo does. But I have installed new flash update.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (agincourtdb)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 10:36:38 GMT

ORIGINAL: tombuur

ORIGINAL: jcschild

AMD still has room to grow speed wise. as they run so much cooler

Scott
ADK

Then why is my Athlon 64 3200+ typically running around 60 Celcius?

Inadequate thermal coupling to the heatsink? bad airflow within the case? there are any number of reasons...

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 10:31:37 GMT

ORIGINAL: jcschild

AMD still has room to grow speed wise. as they run so much cooler

Scott
ADK

Then why is my Athlon 64 3200+ typically running around 60 Celcius?

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Ian Ferrin)

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 02:58:10 GMT

ORIGINAL: wogg

Do not confuse heat issues wiht Athlon XP chips and the new Athlon 64 based chips, they're completely different.

Althon XP has heat issues because the core itself was very small and was used to dissipate the heat directly to the heat sink. This meant a small surface area was used to transfer the heat, which is less efficient. Combine that with the upwards of 90W dissipation of some models (Athlon1400, .15u XP 2000+, and generaly every top clock CPU before a process downsize) and you had some users inadvertantly burning up their CPU's. Also, thermal protection was in it's infancy so a loose heat sink of failed fan meant certain death.

Athlon 64's have the large heatspreader over the core, like the P4. This leads to a much better contact point for dissipation to the heat sink. Also, the dissipation required is anywher in the mid 50's for the lower clock models to upwards of about 80W for the speedier chips. Compare that to the space heater like dissipation requirements of the Prescot core Pentium 4 at 100W or more, and the Athlon 64 starts to look like an ice cube. And now that the thermal shutdowns are implemented, you can have a heat sink fall clean off a Athlon 64 and the PC will shut down before any damage is done to the CPU.

This is the kind of input I was looking for. Thanks wogg. You got me thinkin' again.....

Ian

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Steve_Karl)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 13:58:12 GMT

I've been building ( building myself ) amd rigs since my first k6-2 400.
Never had a problem with heat or stability.
Buying good heatsinks and fans and using thermal grease proves to work well.

Steve

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (pharohoknaughty)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 13:54:26 GMT

Last year I got a dual xeon on a tyan ATX MOBO. I think the board is too small to disipate the heat. The first thing it did was go crazy with fan speed(super noizy stock cpu coolers) and we shut it down.

I ended up putting it in a Koolance water cooled case and things have been OK since. The Koolance case has a thermometer attached to the CPU. It usually runs about 98 F / 36 C. I live in southern california and some days are around 105 F. No evident problems. Except things like disk drives get real hot.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (jcschild)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 12:22:16 GMT

AMD Hot?

as Wogg said not since the XP chips. particularly the thunderbird 1400.

the tide has turned awhile ago. Intel runs much hotter than AMD now.

the heat is why Intel
1) canceled the P4 4.0G and cant get past 3.8G
2) have dumped present Net burst /P4 architecture for the "loosely based on P3" newer Centrino/Sonoma.
even thier upcoming server chips will be like this.

AMD still has room to grow speed wise. as they run so much cooler

Scott
ADK

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (wogg)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 11:55:08 GMT

Do not confuse heat issues wiht Athlon XP chips and the new Athlon 64 based chips, they're completely different.

Althon XP has heat issues because the core itself was very small and was used to dissipate the heat directly to the heat sink. This meant a small surface area was used to transfer the heat, which is less efficient. Combine that with the upwards of 90W dissipation of some models (Athlon1400, .15u XP 2000+, and generaly every top clock CPU before a process downsize) and you had some users inadvertantly burning up their CPU's. Also, thermal protection was in it's infancy so a loose heat sink of failed fan meant certain death.

Athlon 64's have the large heatspreader over the core, like the P4. This leads to a much better contact point for dissipation to the heat sink. Also, the dissipation required is anywher in the mid 50's for the lower clock models to upwards of about 80W for the speedier chips. Compare that to the space heater like dissipation requirements of the Prescot core Pentium 4 at 100W or more, and the Athlon 64 starts to look like an ice cube. And now that the thermal shutdowns are implemented, you can have a heat sink fall clean off a Athlon 64 and the PC will shut down before any damage is done to the CPU.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:18:33 GMT

Mine starts around 40 degrees and rises from there. Could it be that temperature is not measured correctly? On the other hand it feels hot when touching it.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (xackley)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:15:23 GMT

I run AMD with the stock heatsink5 and fan. NO problems.
I have even run the CPU fan at 7V when experimenting with noise reduction, No problem

If your CPU is running hot, take the side of the case off and test the CPU temps, very well be the case does not have adequate ventilation.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (fac)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 10:06:24 GMT

I have an overclocked A64 3200+ system. Stock speed is 2.0 Ghz but I'm running it at 2.4 Ghz. No heat problems at all. Idle temps are around 32-34 C, load temps around 42 C. This with stock cooling.

Prior to that I had a Pentium 4, 1.4 Ghz system which ran a bit hotter - around 40-45 C. Still nothing to worry about.

I also have an Athlon XP-M 2400+ laptop (1.8 Ghz). Doesn't get too hot and I can actually use it on my lap. Some laptops start burning your legs after a while.

I've never had problems with either AMD or Intel systems and I've had at least three of each.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Ian Ferrin)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 08:52:22 GMT

Thanks for all the thoughts guys. I thought I might get some uncivil responses and am pleased with the very reasoned thoughts.

I know lots and lots of folks run AMD w/ no problems, but the couple of you here voicing concerns even w/ the new generation Athlons make me wary.

I'm gonna do Intel. If this were my 1st go round, I'd give AMD a chance. It's like a 50% price-performance hit I'm taking. I realize this. But stability is just a huge issue w/ me. Maybe on my next system in 3-4 years.....

Thanks,

Ian

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (tombuur)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 07:39:52 GMT

I have my doubts about AMD too. Have always had Intel until now. First I blew up an AMD Athlon 64 3700+. Well, maybe I broke one of its small legs dealing with fan replacements due to high temperature. Not wanting to spend that much money again I replaced it with a 3200+. This usually runs around 60 degree C when I use like 35% of CPU continuously. And you often do with DAWs. I have Zalman CPU fan, extra cabinet fans etc. 2GB of Kingston RAM.

Probably my next CPU will be Intel.

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (LixiSoft)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 07:24:06 GMT

We have 4 DAW's here....all AMD CPU's. They have no heat issues, prior to these we used Intel CPU's also no problems. The current crop of AMD CPU's make the choice very easy, the price to performance ratio for us is with the AMD's. In service now are:

X64 4400 X2 = awesome, best we have used to date.
XP+ 2600 = replaced by the X64, soon to be dedicated to softsynths only.
XP+ 2500 = used as a dedicated GIGA Studio box, sampler only.
XP 1400 = retired to web surfing, and small edit jobs.

All have been FLAWLESS since they were built. A computer is just a tool, use the one that you like best. We have had very good results with the AMD's, and the extra money we save by building AMD's can be used on other things, ie..rent and food " />

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Rothchild)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 07:17:28 GMT

Yeah I agree, I am a converted cynic on the RAM front, pay the extra for quality RAM and even get stuff that is overspecified for your motherboard, you will be repaid many times over in stability.

Child

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (agincourtdb)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 07:07:36 GMT

I only do AMD (for three generations now, four including the new Mobile Athlon 64 laptop), because of superior price/performance ratio. Never had a cooling problem. The last CPU (desktop, Athlon Tbird 1200) I had a Thermaltake fan, but this one (desktop, XP Barton 3000) I used the stock fan and have never had problem. A third party high-performance CPU fan is a small price to pay IMO.

You don't really say what the specific issue with your liquid cooled system was, but I get the impression that it was a prebuilt system, (which I would say might be the true issue right there). I can't believe that a LC system would actually be inadequate unless the unit was faulty or it was incorrectly installed.

Anyway, do your research, buy your parts, and put it together yourself. There are plenty of sound and temperature control options available now, and it's no longer threshold technology. I don't have a lot of problems and I think it's because I buy exactly the parts I want and in many cases already know how they (are reported to) interact.

If you absolutely must have a prebuilt system, buy from a provider who lets you specify the exact components you want, and for all the components. I.E., not just "2G DDR SDram," but the specific make and model of the RAM. etc. Don't buy a system where you don't know what the motherboard is.

I figure you know most of this, I just thought I'd go off for a bit for beginners reading the thread. " />

Anyway, good luck!

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Rothchild)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 06:49:38 GMT

They do seem to run pretty hot it's true, I've had a few amd processors, the barton cored ones have allways been the best IMO the semprons run hotter than I am generally happy about (the one in my SFF 'net box clocks up to 65c and thats got a quite nice aftermarket akasa heatsink on it) but the barton 3200 in my DAW wth a zalman flower on it settles down at 55-60c even with a good caning. (the old 2400 was much better heat-wise and never really got above 50 even on a hot day)

All of these boxen are stable (well the 'net box is actually debian unstable but it still works ok ;-)) even when running hot, I believe the max limit for these chips is 80c so whilst I'd rather it be 45, 65 is still well within 'normal' parameters

I've not made the leap to 64bit yet so I can't comment on how those perform heat wise but ultimately a surf around the various forums ( I think the soundonsound pc music forum is particularly good) should give you some ideas about how to put a quiet and powerfull DAW box and help you to think about whch areas you need to spend money on and where you can settle for compromises

Child

RE: Heat issues w/ AMD/Athlon? (Yashin)

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 06:39:06 GMT

I NEVER get an AMD based system, like you I've had nothing but rubbish from them. I've had about 8 computers so far, 6 Intels and 2 AMDS.
Every Intel one has worked fine till I needed to upgrade, the AMD ones didn't.

Im currently running an Intel Pentium 4 3.0 ghz at 3.6 ghz, with nothing but stock fan and get an average temp of 32 C idle, and 42 C full load.

If you have had no problem with Intel, stay with them. Nowadays they are just as cheap as AMD's and tend to be more stable.