Operating temps for an AMD Athalon

Any ideas on a safe operating temp for my AMD Athalon 2600?

It idles at a nice 40deg C, but with the case closed is setting off the alarm at 60deg C when working hard on games etc.
Iv currently got the case open, and it runs upto about 45+deg C and I dont really want a case fan, as the damn thing is noisy enough with the power and CPU fans.

The CPU fan is running at about 3308rpm, dont know if thats good or bad, but will be replaced next week as its gotten very noisy.

What FSB and voltage? It should be safe up to 90c.

90c!!! Sweet!

Its a 333FSB, its running on a Gigabyte G7n400 ProII, I got the first one sold in the country would be belive (only by luck).
Core voltage is at 1.7v but the CPU takes a full 12volts. (I think its running at about 11.7 at idle, if Im reading it right).

Thanks for the help mate! Ill increase the warning temp, and put the case back together.

Yeah - should be sweet as. If it starts to hit consistantly around 80, look at a bigger heatsink/more fans. Have you got some of that heat conductive gel crap between the heatsink and CPU? If not, go and get some. It's made from silicone and at under $10 is a worthy investment.

Oh, and the really good news is your system should become amusingly unstable before and damage occurs to hardware. If your worried, look on www.download.com for some freeware 'CPU stress testers'. Should tell you if your stable or not.
:cheers:

Yeah Iv got some good gel type stuff on it, same stuff used by a mate who used to be into overclocking so it should be good stuff.

Iv had a look at some flash heat sinks and stuff, but they are all bloody expensive, especialy for what Im doing.
Unforunatly having had a good listen it sounds like my power supply fan is going bad, and not the CPU fan.
I have a spare one here, but Im a bit reluctant to use it as its a cheapo, and the same brand that blew up in my flatmates comp and fried EVERYTHING!

Try and find a local computer markets near you. I have one at my local shops virtually giving all that stuff away. :) Even try looking on ebay etc. for stuff like that. Can get good bargains. :)

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3440332544&category=3673

Buy it for $6au (couldn't find any on NZ ebay) and pay the $10 or so shipping. I reckon your still in front.

No comp markets here, lots of crappy retailers who will only sell you a complete system, and lots of wholesalers who only speak chinese unless you know exactly what you want.
I can use a friends account at one, but its still a pain having to go in and act like I know what Im talking about :)

Those operating temps are normal for a normal computer using passive cooling. I wouldn't worry too much about it. A range which the cpu can run under would be anywhere from 25-60 degrees, 25 degree using methods such as water cooling and 60 degrees being passive cooling.

Other factors such as case size, the amount of space you have in your case, amount of dangling cables, and airflow in the case, etc. They all contribute to how it runs.

What you can do to lower it is place case fan within your case, or go extreme, water-cooling or even get yourself a nice vapochill unit to cool it off.

But at that temps, I wouldn't worry about it. My cpu runs at a nice 45 degree-ish, but this is because of the dual configuration of the SMP setup of cpus, but not much space in the case.

Yeah, Iv seen water cooling in action, a mate used to have to change an 8L bucket every 4-5 hours as it would start to boil the water and melt the bucket.
He then went to peltiers, which worked really well till the condensation fried everything.

I might go an invest in a good quite case fan, theres some really good articles on www.overclockers.com including one on building a quite system, which is important to me.



At the moment though Iv narrowed down the noise to a small fan above the on bourd AGP chip!
Its bloody tiny though, but being part of the m/b should still be under warrenty.

Melt the bucket? dude my mate only have like a 1 litre reservour and that's enough, he haven't changed that in months (only change it cause of bacteria, and that if it grows it'll corrode the radiator).

If you have a good water pump and radiator, you need not change that water at all, his setup is not correct as I know MANY ppl with water cooling setups with reservour of 200ml to 3 litres.

Also you need to "lap" your cpus and other parts with non conductive greeze if your going to do extreme cooling, the whole idea behind the greese is that oil and water are not soluble (water cannot mix with oil anyway, they just lap on top of one another) and the non conductive properties doesn't allow charge to build up of any sort.

Providing proper education of the topic, and information this shouldn't be a problem at all. Just search the net for extreme cooling using n2o or a refrigerator to cool the water down, they'll have guides on how to set it up. If your not game enough, get yourself a vapochill unit, it should have guides and troubleshooting for any problems, its basically a mini fridge but made to fit a pc and for pc use.

My mate was just eperimenting at the time, and has learned a fair bit since, hes one of the founding members of OC.com :)