Intel retail cpu & thermal paste....

[DarrellS]

The picture that Budz posted is the Coolermaster Hyper 212 and comes highly recommended. It's ranked 6th on Frostytech's website. Fry's has it for $44.

Frostytech rates this one heatsink #1 but you'll have to buy the fan separately.

http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2001

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835109125



I noticed that my desktop utilities was calling my side fan an inlet fan (I didn't need a fan with the 478 P4 since the CPU fan ran fast and pushed the air out the horn at a very good rate) so I removed the horn and turned the fan around to blow the air towards the board and it lowered the temp to about 48* C but it didn't take long for the fan to slow down and run the CPU at between 55* and 67*. If I could control the fan speed, I'd be alright but there is nothing that I can do to control the fan speeds.

I updated the BIOS and the instructions from Intel for controlling the fans on this board sounds good until I get into BIOS and none of those options are there. I've installed three different programs to control the fan speeds and none of them work. All they do is show my hard drive temps.

If nothing else, the controller that comes with these coolers would solve my problem. The extra cooling benefits would be a bonus. As it is, the inlet fan only runs at 1500 rpm (the outlet fan runs around 2500 rpm) and the CPU fan runs around 1100 rpm unless it's under load. The good thing is that the alert has stopped going off and the CPU fan spins up pretty fast right before it gets to the high temp limit.

[TBoneit]

If you do decide to replace the P/S Antec is a good solid brand.

[DarrellS]

That's what I put in mine. A 500W Antec Basiq. I think they had an 800W on sale at the time but it was out of stock.

My other computer uses a 300W Allied on an old HP Celeron board. The stock PSU wasn't big enough to run the ATI 7500, two hard drives and two burners.

I was running a 430W on this one when the board burnt up and I bought the Antec before I found out the MSI 478 socket 865PE Neo2-P was shot. Wish I could get a replacement board for the 3.2Ghz P4, it's a real good processor.

[budz]

If you do decide to replace the P/S Antec is a good solid brand.

Lately Antec's quality control has gone down hill. I've already gone through a Antec 650 watt ps that smoked out on me. Luckily nothing else in that computer was fried. Now in another computer I have to replace the Antec 500 watt ps that flaked out on me as well, it wasn't even 6 months old. I'm done with Antec and replacing it with a Enermax ps.

[glockjs]

the ultra 120 is the best you can get for air atm and the extreme edition is a lil bit better

antec's earthwatts arent bad at all. i went with corsair myself very solid psu. otherwise pc&c, zippy, sparkle, or ocz

[DarrellS]

I was running a 430W on this one when the board burnt up and I bought the Antec before I found out the MSI 478 socket 865PE Neo2-P was shot. Wish I could get a replacement board for the 3.2Ghz P4, it's a real good processor.

My brother bought me a cheap Biostar board for my socket 478 P4 this weekend and the CPU runs at 33C to 38C all day long while the MSI board said it ran at 67C. This is with a VIA chipset which I was leary of getting since everyone says they're junk. Now I'm convinced that Intel chipset boards cannot read the temperature correctly. My Intel board, my MSI board with Intel 865 chipset and my brother's ASUS with Intel 865 chipset all read the 3.0 and 3.2 P4s and the 3.2 Pentium D at 67C and say our I/O controller hubs are in total meltdown stage (either that or everyone else on here that claims their CPUs are running at 35C are really running at 67C).

Intel's data sheet says that the Pentium 4 and Pentium D run at 67C but without being able to get any third party monitoring software to work at all on this machine or correctly on my brothers ASUS P4P800 then I can't verify that. On Intel boards it seems to be the case though.

[redwudz]

You can always use the 'finger' test. Put your finger on the base of the heatsink when the temperature shows as 67C. I guarantee you won't hold it there very long at that temp, if it's accurate.

I've seen all kinds of temp reading errors with after market programs, enough that I wouldn't trust any. Even the motherboards software programs can misread. Usually the temps shown in BIOS are fairly accurate, but those are also reading temps without the OS being loaded, which can change fan speeds and make other adjustment that can lower temps.

I use a infrared temperature reader now. Much easier on the finger tips. One like this is less than $20US: http://www.directron.com/mt100.html

[budz]

I was running a 430W on this one when the board burnt up and I bought the Antec before I found out the MSI 478 socket 865PE Neo2-P was shot. Wish I could get a replacement board for the 3.2Ghz P4, it's a real good processor.

My brother bought me a cheap Biostar board for my socket 478 P4 this weekend and the CPU runs at 33C to 38C all day long while the MSI board said it ran at 67C. This is with a VIA chipset which I was leary of getting since everyone says they're junk. Now I'm convinced that Intel chipset boards cannot read the temperature correctly. My Intel board, my MSI board with Intel 865 chipset and my brother's ASUS with Intel 865 chipset all read the 3.0 and 3.2 P4s and the 3.2 Pentium D at 67C and say our I/O controller hubs are in total meltdown stage (either that or everyone else on here that claims their CPUs are running at 35C are really running at 67C).

Intel's data sheet says that the Pentium 4 and Pentium D run at 67C but without being able to get any third party monitoring software to work at all on this machine or correctly on my brothers ASUS P4P800 then I can't verify that. On Intel boards it seems to be the case though.

I have that cheapo BIOSTAR mobo for my P4 northwood 3.00ghz cpu. I had to replace that cheapo mobo which newegg allowed a refund to me so I could purchase another one. I also had that P4 cpu with a ASUS P4P800SE mobo which died after almost 2 years. ASUS does have a program called ASUS PC PROBE which monitors computer temps like the cpu. But to get actual temps it's best to use the temps in the mobo BIOS.

[TBoneit]

Did you try and RMA that motherboard with ASUS, They aren't the fastest but they do rmas with no problem. I RMA'd one motherboad with them that had 30 days left. no quibbles or problems. A while back I RMAd a HB Burner that had 2 days left on the warranty, No problems. THen since it was a RMA unit it had 30 days warranty beause of the short time left on the original. Some companies do things right.

[DarrellS]

Well, I had to go to Fry's and pick up a cable so I figured I'd break down and the get the Mastercool Hyper 212 that I was looking at and after installing am pleased to report that my temps have dropped from 68*C at idle to 48*C at idle. When I first started it up, it was running at 42*C.

It has a huge fan but is a lot quieter than the stock fan (you can add another fan to the heatsink it you wish). It runs about half as fast as the stock fan. I had to remove the side fan and horn on the door because there isn't room for it and the back exhaust fan is only running around 900rpm.

I was starting to worry with the temperature beginning to rise here in the Arizona desert and wasn't sure the stock cooler would get me though the summer without burning up the CPU.

The problem with the stock Intel 775 coolers is that the fan blows towards the CPU instead of drawing the heat away from the CPU. It doesn't matter how many fans you have blowing at the CPU, it's not going to cool it down. The Intel 478 cooler is just the opposite with the fan drawing the heat away from the CPU and that processor is running at 35*C on the Biostar board.