Ok Kab i read ur post on page 3 and I have no idea what you said ? can you help me out I have a phenom 9850 be and a asus m3a32-mvp deluxe mobo and a antec gaming case with 5 fans that are on high always ,i have not overclocked anything and my idle is at eround 50c and load it gets up to 68c I have tried different heat sink fans which made the temps worse ive used 3 different types of heat sink greece and im still getting to hot for my likeing...Can you explain what to do please I am quite new to all this bios changing stuff ...Thanks..Steve

Recently decided to build a desktop for the first time in several years (have used laptop and / or just made do with an old one for the past...6-7 years or so) and purchased the 9850 BE along with an ASUS CROSSHAIR II and dual ASUS 9600GT SILENT video cards in SLI-mode.

Put them in an Antec P182 case - things are very tight in there, but I managed to squeeze in the Thermalright IFX-14 (without the ancillary cooler that takes heat off the back of the motherboard):

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/...W50aHVzaWFzdA==


Of course used Arctic Silver to attach.

Speed and power were not my only consideration here - I wanted this PC to be very quiet...last one I built was way too noisy and I vowed to make a silent PC this time - and I have succeeded; the quiet-ish clock ticks louder than this thing. But this also meant that I didn't really want to go with water cooling - although I'm sure there are aquatic ninja solutions out there I'm also sure they'd be expensive.

Even with the criteria for quietude there are two "silent" 120mm fans blowing air out the top and back of the box near the proc and another silent 120mm fan attached to the heatsink blowing air over it. These fans are all load-triggered and therefore run a bit lower (~700-800ish RPMs on idle) and kick in to high gear when the thing gets hotter.

There's a fourth 120mm on the intake side; it goes over the hard drives and probably blows a bit over the upper vid card, which being the silent model is also fan-less (and noiseless). These vid cards have massive heat sinks and vents on the back.

The 850W Zalman power supply is actually installed in a separate chamber; the Antex P182 has it located at the bottom of the case and is sectioned-off to enhance airflow and decrease noise. This actually made it a pain to get the two power lines up to the CPU jack at the extreme other end of the case - had to get some extension cords, but I believe this is also helping out with the temperature situation.

On temps: the Phenom idles at around 37 C; moderate load kicks up to around 45ish (heavy downloading, Netflix streaming, etc.). I need to find some game or benchmark to really put this thing through the ringer and see what the temps look like, but so far it's about on-par with the rest of the results in this thread for peeps using quality heatsinks. Maybe get some blu-ray discs playing here - have to get software; already have the drive - that should be CPU-intensive.

Overall I'd say that the design of the case and fan placement, along with using a quality heatsink (albeit a slightly pricey one that was just barely fits in the case) makes a big difference here. When I first installed everything the three fans around the CPU were running full blast all the time, which brought idle to around 35-36 - the one degree isn't worth it IMO for the amount of noise it caused, which might have drowned out the noise of a pindrop at that point.

I'm extremely pleased with this solution so far; we'll see how it goes once I start to fire up the gamez. The CROSSHAIR II makes it somewhat easy to try overclocking and I will probably do that at some point to see what it'll do.

Sounds like a very nice build you've put together...!!!

But you'll probably find that its when you start OC'ng that the temps will start to climb...!!

As an indicator, my 9950BE @ 3311Ghz OC'd from 2.6Ghz, idles at 36C and load temps get up to 48-50C....this is using water cooling.. and with C'nQ disabled.

With C'nQ enabled I get idle temps of 26-28C and load temps again in the 48-50C mark..!!

I use a multiplier increase and voltage bump to OC my Phenom, and its the voltage increase in particular that causes the temps to increase.

There are plenty of apps that you can use to stress the system to check the CPU stability and temps...!!

There are some built into some tools like AMD Overdrive, that monitors and reports your system statistics and has a built in stress stability test that will load your CPU cores to 100%.... this isn't as demanding as some tests though...!!

You can try using multiple instances of Prime95 to load and stress test the system as well...!!!

Another tool for monitoring system specs is Everest Ultimate and this also has a built in stability test, again not as demanding as Prime95, but is adequate for measuring Load temps over a sustained period of time..!!!

All these can be downloaded.... and are readily available...!!!





Sinister Steve...

It sounds as though you are having a tough time getting your temps to drop to a level your comfortable with...!!

First of all what Heatsinks have you tried with your Phenom 9850...???

As you've found out you need a good quality HSF to provide good cooling for the 9850...!!! The stock HSF is adequate, but not if you intend to OC the CPU by much..!!

From the temps your getting I'd think that your case cooling may need looking at, and making sure that there is a good airflow through the case... you should also consider the positioning of your PC Case, is it in an enclosed space with poor ventilation, I;ve seen some people keep their PC Cases in a desk cupboard..

The next thing to consider is the ambient room temperature, if your in a stiflingly hot room to begin with then the air being drawn in and used to "Cool" the Heatsink is already warm, then this will reduce the efficiency of any Heatsink that is installed...!!!

So if you can post the following that will give an idea of where to begin:

1. The make and model of your current CPU Heatsink?
2. The make and model of your Case?
3. The size and speed of all Case fans installed?
4. The ambient room temperature?
5. The location of your PC Case?

All of these are key factors in the thermal properties of your PC..!!!

I'm assuming that you have already ensured that your heatsink is fitted correctly and that you have applied the correct amount of TIM...!!!

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3DMark06 = 20717 / 3DMark Vantage = P13618 / My Overclock Guide / My Troubleshooting Guide

Thanks for the tips kaz - I will definitely check those programs out. I wasn't thinking of major overclocking - more along the 3-6% lines, just to see what it would do. If I were to try anything more I'd certainly go for a liquid cooling system as it sounds like you do. There is space for another two 120mm fans on the heatsink which I may install if I find I have some heat problems at moderate overclocking levels - the IFX-14 really seems like a nice little heatsink for non-liquid solutions.

But it's all about the real-life apps for me - how it performs with games and media, not the raw speed. The "monitor" is a 32" SAMSUNG TV that has a max res of 1360x768, so it's not like I can really push the envelope in terms of that - which is just fine.

And the quiet - major factor. I failed to mention the Nexus Damptek installation I have on the case. The downside of the whole thing is that the whole package is very heavy, but it's a desktop - it's not going anywhere.

Slightly OT but I saw your PC-troubleshooting guide - the CROSSHAIR II motherboard has a very nice feature in that it has an LCD display that runs outside the case and rests like a small alarm clock on top (or on the table, or wherever you run it to) - this is great for troubleshooting as it tells you exactly what part of the boot process it's running, gives meaningful error messages in semi-understandable terms (abbreviated English), abrogating the need for looking up beep-patterns. While running it can post the current time or some sort of user-string - would be nice if ASUS would allow it to post alternate info, i.e. the temperature / voltage or other diagnostics. Perhaps in a future iteration.

Again thanks for the recommendations and I'll be sure to check out those progs.