Computer Meltdown & Speedfan Readings

[Tom Saurus]

Here is a link to a thread about the custom computer I had built:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/255243-Tom-Saurus-Potentially-New-Computer

I recently had computer problems, one being my hard drives were very hot: I remember they registered as HD0: 52, HD1: 56 and HD2: 64C. So there was a collapse of the system and the technician up town, put in a new power supply, a 12 mm fan to cool the drives, he didn't have a large fan for the back of the case and that is on order at the moment and I am having a new 12mm fan installed on the back of the case next week. I am hoping in the meantime things are not running too hot and that I am not doing damage to my CPU and motherboard. Thanks in advance for any advice. So here is a look at the current Speedfan readings:

[Nelson37]

Those are unusually high readings for hard drives. I often put old heat sinks on the tops of drives to help keep them cool.

Note the invalid CPU temp, I like speedfan but you may want to try something else, as well. The chipset reads a little hot but they usually are. More airflow is always good, if this box is 3-5 years old a good cleaning may be called for.

I'd have to do the Fahrenheit conversion, roughly 165F is a "failure point" but anything over 140F should be reduced and under 125F should be a goal. Cooler is always better.

[nic2k4]

Your HDD's temp look alright now, but some of the other temps are probably invalid (definitly the CPU). Click the configure button and disable the bad values. Comparing with the BIOS health management readout, you can figure out which ones are right.

If you can spare the space, these little drive coolers work well.

I like Speedfan too, but I have some doubts about it. Especially after one of my drives lost it's SMART controller while I was using the PC. It just rebooted and the BIOS issued a SMART warning. Speedfan showed a healthy drive before and wouldn't list the drive after. I'm wondering if the constant polling of SMART info it does has anything to do with it.

[pirej]

I didn't have some obvious heat problem, but i just wanted a cooler PC, so i activated the cool&quiet(AMD) option, and i put two 80mm fans, one in the front and the other in the back of the (cheap)case, and the result is ok.
The pc work's quieter and cooler.
I tried a couple of versions of set-up, 1 only front, 2 only back, and 3 bouth fans installed, the 3 worked best.
So... + 1 exhaust fan in the back would give you a better temperatures, and with 120mm fans it would be quiet too.
This are my idle temp's, before and after.

p.s. regular cleaning of the dirt/dust from the case would help a lot.
My friend's VERY dirty PC cooled down from (idle CPU temp) 68 to 32 Celsius degrees after cleaning.

[redwudz]

Cool and Quiet can help at idle as it usually just underclocks the CPU to lower temps. But I would still check temperatures at full CPU load.

Normally you want CPU temps below 50C, preferably below 40C on full load. 70C is getting up into a problem area. Much hotter and the MB may shut down to protect the CPU.

Hard drives should run at about 32C - 36C , no matter how much they are being used. But a fan blowing over them will help and drop their temps maybe 5C.

The motherboard temperature is taken at the surface of the motherboard, so it's usually warmer than the actual interior case temps.

The other common temps are the Northbridge or the Intel equivalent. It can run about 40C or a bit higher. If it also has integrated video, that can add a couple of degrees C to it.

The GPU or video cards I have commonly run close to 50C, even with fans. Apparently they aren't very power efficient.

Check your exhaust fan temps. If the exhaust air is really hot, not good. Same with the power supply. Modern name brand PSs run fairly cool most times.

You don't usually need massive air movement to keep a PC fairly cool, unless your room temp is close to 38C or above or you are doing a major overclock of the CPU or you have a dual SLI video card setup that runs hot.

[pirej]

@Tom Saurus..
If those speedfan temps are measured while continuous 78% cpu load, than probably they are not too hot?!?
Maybe you didn't set speedfan correctly, the cpu temp at -17C ????
I gues the extra exhaust 120mm fan will do it's job.
@redwudz..
OK, cool&quiet helps in idle temps, but the extra front/back fans should help in full load too.
If you set up speedfan to manage the fan-speeds according the cpu temp, than the fans will rotate faster and give better cooling on full cpu load.
I have set (with speedfan) the exhaust fan to run at variable speed depending on the cpu temp, and at idle it runs/spins at 37%(hardly audiable), and if cpu temp rises above 40 'C it goes up to 50% spin speed, and if it the cpu speed get's above 50'C than the exhaust should spin at full speed.
The fan in the front of the case is connected directly to the power supply on 5V, so it runs slower and quiet.
With normal use of the (my)pc, the temps dont go above 40'C, i haven't done some heavy video editing lately.. but some conversions dvd->avi, avi->avi..., photo editing, and etc are done almost every day, and the cpu doesent get hot or loaded over 30-50%.
So maybe at full cpu-load it would show some (temp)weakness...??
Can anyone recommend a good cpu benchmarking tool to test the temps while full cpu load??

p.s. i did a "system stability test" with everest for about 10 minutes.

[Tom Saurus]

They should have that fan in next week. I am hoping that will do the trick and keep the machine going for another year or two. I want to get another computer at some point, but my money is quite low right now, so I have to put it off. The first Speedfan picture was from when I was using Tmpgenc Xpress 4 to convert some mpeg2 files to .divx files. I have taken another snapshot, all I am doing at the moment is being on the web and recording something with the playback paused in the Hauppauge WinTV2000. I want to thank everyone who has posted to this thread for your advice.

[pirej]

I dont see how the cpu-die temp was -17 at 78% load, and then -26 at idle..????
There is something wrong with the reading, or you settings in speedfan are wrong..
You should try another temp-monitoring tool, and compare the temp's, plus the ICH temp seems bit high, maybe you gpu is hot too??

[Tom Saurus]

I just did a screenshot. I think some of the temperatures are affected by room temperature. I turn our oil space heater down low at night. At the moment the temperature is 74 F in the room, and the computer after performing some encoding that was finished 4 or 5 hours ago, has been idle up until now. Here is the current reading:

[Tom Saurus]

The place where I order the fan didn't get it in, so I tried another place and the guy had the fan in stock and he really seems to know what he is doing, so I am going to take my computer to him again. Here are the latest readings with the fan installed at the back now in addition to the one installed near the hard drives. . I am not doing much on the computer at the moment. I will post one later when I am doing some encoding and then we will know what those reading are. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice

[SLK001]

Go to the INTEL site and download their CORETEMP program. This will give you the correct temp readings of the CPU cores.

I don't know if I would trust anything that SPEEDFAN says unless independently verified elsewhere.

[Nelson37]

If your PC Bios will show temperatures, just let it sit there for monitoring. CPU is at full load, and the load is exactly the same every single time.

Checking temps without a full load on the CPU is pretty much a waste of time. Like buying a used car and just listening to it idle.

I would also find the ICH, probably the chipset, and rig a small fan on it. I often use old CPU fans from discarded PC's. 63C is a bit hot.