Hi,
I did use the search button and read the other threads about the overheating phenoms. But I'm not sure what the problem is in my case, and how I can solve it. My X4 965's idle temp is 37C but the CPU fan is running at its maximum speed. When I run prime95's blend test or OCCT, right after the very first minute, the temperature increases to 60C (reading the temperatures from Core Temp, CPUID hardware monitor and SpeedFan) and the internal speaker starts beeping (because of the "beep when >60" BIOS setting). I stop the tests right there knowing that it should be below 62C. In my case what is mounted at the top of the CPU is the heat sink and the fan which come in the AMD CPU's package and nothing else. The heat sink is well-mounted, nothing is jiggling or skewed, latches are in place, and when I release the latches and pull the heat sink, it doesn't come off. It's kind of stuck. I don't overclock and I have no intention to overclock. Well, anyway. The problem is:
I occasionally get blue screens, internal speaker beeps, and restart loops, all probably due to my overheating 965. Is this normal?

Some brief system specification:
CM Storm Scout case
Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Gigabyte GA-MA785GMT-UD2H Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Processor
2x2 G.Skill DDR3 1333 Memory
WD velociraptor 300 Hard Disk
Samsung 1000 Hard Disk
Diablotek psda500 power supply

Edited: 02/25/2010 at 07:46 AM by mukarakaplan

Welcome to the Phenom cooling problem. Mine drove me mad for several weeks but I did find a solution. Work logically through the various possible causes of excess heat. I assume that the room temperature is reasonable, say less than 20 deg C. Also I assume that your motherboard has set the Vcore correctly (1.35v I believe) Use PCprobe to give a readout of this.

1 Get Coolnquiet running it wont solve the overheating problem at high loads but it will give a lower idle temperature which gives more time to resolve the issues.

2 Run SPEEDFAN. It will tell you the CPU load and various temperatures.

3 There are two versions of the 965 one dissipates 140W and the other 125W at full load. Clearly the 125W version is going to be easier to cure.

4 Find out if it is the CPU cooling or case cooling that is causing the main problem. Take the side off of the case and play a desk fan into the case aimed at the cpu. If the problem goes away it is the case that needs most attention. If it does not it is the CPU cooler that is the likely issue.

5 If it is the cpu cooling, check the cooler and cpu heat spreader. Make sure your cooler is up to removing 125 or 140W. If the cooler came with a thick layer of thermal grease on the base this is a likely cause. Remove the grease with a solvent and clean both the cpu heat spreader and cooler base with alcohol. Check the flatness of the cooler base and cpu heat spreader with an engineering grade steel ruler. You cannot see dishing or bowing of the base by eye- you need to check it accurately. Anything less than perfectly flat will lead to cooling problems to a lesser or greater degree.

6 Reassemble the cooler to the heatspreader using a thermal grease such as MX-2 or MX-3. Follow the instructions given on the MX-2 website for the application of the grease. If either the CPU heatspreader or CPU cooler is not flat, the grease will not cover the entire area when following this method. Make sure both are flat. If one is not flat do not try to fill in the gap with excess grease. This simply doesn't work.

The result when I used a cooler with a flat base (actually the cooler that came with the CPU) and a thin layer of a high conductivity thermal grease was startling. Before I simply couldn't use the machine for other than email or web browsing without going over 65 deg C in a matter of seconds. Since then it has not gone above 40 deg C.

Let the community know the result - good luck

[SOLVED]

Yesterday, just to see that I can take the heatsink off, I tried to twist and pull it right after running the OCMT for a minute or so. Of course I turned off the computer and unplugged it before pulling the heatsink. It did come off very easily. Then I orders Arctic Silver 5, but it takes time to get it, you know, and the local stores have only the low quality thermal material. I was kind of impatient and wanted to test a couple of other things. So guess what I did. Hehe. I wiped off most of the compound on the surfaces of the CPU and heatsink and attached the heatsink back into its position (aren't I crazy? DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!) And then I put an industrial strength super fan in front of the stock fan of AMD and started it. And then I turned on the computer. It just started as if nothing has changed (although there was almost no thermal compound between the CPU and the heatsink) and then the softwares reported the same temperatures as before. OCCT test failed after the first minute because of high temperature (>62).

Then I turned off the super fan while the computer was on, and watched the temperature but nothing had changed. I tell you, AMD's stock fan is real good. Anyway, while risking my 200 dollars or maybe even more, I realized that maybe the problem was not due to the thermal compound, or the fan or the heatsink... Then I checked the CPU voltage with SpeedFan and OCCT, and it was set to something around 1. But after running OCCT, the voltage was shooting the 1.60-2 range in the first minute. The recommended range of voltage for my CPU is stated to be between 0.825 and 1.40

So obviously the CPU voltage volatility was the problem. But why was it volatile? Because of the EVIL AMD Cool'n'Quiet option in BIOS which is enabled as default, as if it does an awesome job. And they don't know how EVIL it is. EVIL. The general idea of this Cool'n'Quiet is, as we know, to set a low voltage when not much task is around, and increase the voltage if more work is needed. But then I understood that when it gives very low voltage to the CPU, Windows cannot even start up and HENCE is "the restart loops" problem mentioned in my initial post. And when CPU is loaded by OCCT, or other regular tasks, it gives a very high voltage to the CPU, HENCE the temperature gets very high, BIOS starts beeping, and Windows eventually gives a blue screen and the computer shuts down, which were again mentioned in my inital post as the pieces of the problem.

So what I did was: I turned off the EVIL Cool'n'Quiet option in BIOS, set the CPU voltage manually to 1.40. I got a very good idle/full loaded (34-56 C) temperature range with this voltage but I wasn't satisfied, so I set the CPU voltage to 1.225 (the lowest stable under full load). With this setting OCCT auto test runs for 1 hour without giving any errors. The min and max temperatures are 32-52 C. Isn't it amazing???

Now the computer runs without any problems or beeps, idling around 32, and I am a happy man.

And ah, Arctic Silver 5 is coming tomorrow and I will put some there for sure (yes, just a little). Hopefully it will decrease the temperatures even more like a degree or two...

I wonder how AMD guys don't know about this problem with the Cool'n'Quiet and let people use it as default...

Edited: 02/25/2010 at 07:32 AM by mukarakaplan

Im glad you found a solution. My cpu/mobo (ASUS M3N-WS Pheonom 11 955) set the CPU Vcore range corretly under Coolnquiet. (0.96 to 1.35). I get the same readings under SPEEDFAN and PCPROBE. This is an important point. Hopefully the AMD experts can resolve this for the benefit of the whole community. Did you use ASUS PCPROBE to get Vcore readings?

I used OCCT's and SpeedFan's Vcore info.

nice solve. i really need help.everytime when i play a game with good detail and good graphics. every is good until like 10minutes my computer starts to lag.does this have to do anything with overheating.i got :AMD Athlon (tm) II X4 620 processor 2.60GHZ.
by the way i dont know how to post topics and i am new on this website.

Hi

I am having the same problem with my processor, I'll try your solution
to see how it goes... wish me good luck

ded02



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