Case the cause of CPU overheating?

[Zaios]

I know a lot of you know me from my many pleas for help over the past month or so, xD and I'm just now looking for a way to overclock my CPU, although I'm not sure of how much it will help. After RMAing my new motherboard, I finally installed a P67 msi board with an intel i5 2500k chip. Problem is, when I turn the overclock genie on, my computer overheats after about 10 minutes of idling or 2 minutes on WoW.

At 3.3 GHz, the BIOS is reading 50* celsius at the start up for the computer, and it goes up to about 52/53* celsius. When I turn the OC genie on, it immediately goes to 63* celsius and begins climbing. I had very similar results with my amd 1090t phenom, and now that I've got a completely new board and processor, I think it may be the lack of cooling in my case.

My case is relatively small (nowhere near some of the huge cases I've seen,) and it's only got one fan (besides the heatsink fan.)

Btw, I also picked up a, supposedly, better heatsink; here it is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106139 (I applied thermal paste correctly and all when I put the chip in!) =)

As a side note, after installing the intel chip, my frames in WoW definitely improved, although I can't say by how much as I never really checked my fps on Alysrasor, and we spent the night wiping on heroic earlier. I'll be able to test more accurately when I do Rhyollith on heroic next week again (seeing as I got 11-21 fps as an absolute high) with the 1090t processor. I'll also get a relative idea on rag tomorrow night, and I can't wait to see if I'm getting much better frames during the living seed spawns!

I know it's kind of late, and I'll be heading to bed soon, so I'll check back tomorrow morning/afternoon. As usual, thanks everyone! =)

[Zyzzyx]

An inexpensive CPU cooler coupled with a 1 fan case and no liquid cooling is a recipe for disaster. I wouldn't overclock it without fixing your situation, and it absolutely could be (and likely is, if you have a video card in a smaller case with one fan) the cause of your heating issue.

[Zaios]

Also, I'm really not too concerned with OCing yet. I've heard of it slightly helping framerates in WoW, bit I'm not expecting anything miraculous. When I was logged into WoW for 2 mins at a 4.2 ghz OC, I was only getting (maybe 5 fps more in SW city while spamming wild mushrooms w/ fungal growth for some fps drops.) However, I've been told that a cooler PC is a faster one, so I'm not sure if getting my cpu to the standard 32* C idle point would help WoW frames even more in addition to OCing. As a side note, my GPU runs about 50* C ( I think?) in a raid setting w/ the fan set to 70%. I'm not too sure if that's good or bad. It does, however, run at 39* Celsius while idle and the fan speed at 70%.

Posting this before I hit the sack. It's very similar to my old results using the 1090t (my new 3Dmark11 number): http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1616036?show_ads=true&page=%2F3dm11%2F1616036%3Fkey%3D7XDmvjVP4VbsB49Ae5ex3mXAm7WPRN

[ccexpert]

If your i5 2500k is at stock speed with idle temps at 50C, you might want to try reseating your heatsink.

[BicycleMafioso]

What kind of monitoring program are you using, and what temperatures are you looking at?
Please tell me you're not using Speedfan and checking CPU-temps, when you should be using RealTemp/CoreTemp/HWmonitor and checking core temps?
If not, download one of the latter, and tell us the temp in °C. Please.

[SoulForge]

You have a serious issue if you are idling at 50c's at startup. My 2600k is at 26c's after being on all night. Then again I also have an aftermarket heatsink;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835106150

[Deleted]

I know upgrading from a rubbish little case with 1 fan to an Antec 900 lowered my core temps while playing wow from ~50 to ~30.

I'm using the same cpu fan as the guy above me, i would defintily recommend it along with the Antec 900 case. They're reasonably priced and very effective.

[Saithes]

Bios isn't idle temperatures with UEFI which is why it's higher. Furthermore, OC Genie puts load on the CPU when its overclocking to test stability which is why temperatures rise. In the end, 63C or even 75-80C is not deadly for Sandybridge by any means.

[Deleted]

You could also tell us your room temperature. It plays an important role in determining if your hardware has a problem afaik. For overclocking you almost always want a high quality non-standard issue cooling system.

Could the wise people perhaps shed some light on which CPU temperature should be looking at for quad/multi-core CPUs? Personally, I'm getting 5 readins, 4 for each core and one labeled as CPU with everest. Core 1 is always the highest of all, while the rest are close to each other. Quite confusing.

[Saithes]

Could the wise people perhaps shed some light on which CPU temperature should be looking at for quad/multi-core CPUs? Personally, I'm getting 5 readins, 4 for each core and one labeled as CPU with everest. Core 1 is always the highest of all, while the rest are close to each other. Quite confusing.

Typically the CPU Reading is a diode from the socket which isn't as accurate on Intel platforms. Normally its best to look at the Core Temperatures of the CPU as they're diodes for each of the individual cores underneath the integrated heatsink on the processor itself.

[Sephiracle]

As mentioned throughout the thread and various others, BIOS temps are not idle temps. Pick up Realtemp + Prime95 or IBT. Your idle temps with the EZ-OC utility will probably sit around 35-40C idle in Windows. If you spend some time actually manually doing the overclock you should see those temps drop because you'll use less vcore in the process(and achieve a higher clock).

Run Prime95 for several hours. Run IBT for 25 passes, maximum stress level, for more solid results.

We'll need your room temps, what cooler, what TIM, and what case(fans) you have cooling the thing down.

[MrHappy]

dust or poor air flow. vacuum you pc make sure it has proper air flow and if it still bad try to get a bigger/better/new pc fan a bigger heatsink if possible or if u can afford a liquid coolign system

[Zaios]

My room is definitely cool enough ( our house has central air ) so about 70-71* Fahrenheit all the time is the room temperature. There's no dust in there, and after getting the numbers from core temp, here they are as follows: 28, 28, 34, 28 (my computer has only been on for about 5 minutes.)

Hardware monitor is desplaying very similar numbers right now as well.

I wish I could show you guys the case I have, but I don't even remember. I don't even have a link for the only cpu fan I have in my system, and I'm not sure of where I would be able to find these two parts.

So if the bios were lying to me then, why would my system be crashing with the OC genie enabled? =( I thought enabling that was supposed to be the "safe" overclock. =(

[Sephiracle]

My room is definitely cool enough ( our house has central air ) so about 70-71* Fahrenheit all the time is the room temperature. There's no dust in there, and after getting the numbers from core temp, here they are as follows: 28, 28, 34, 28 (my computer has only been on for about 5 minutes.)

Hardware monitor is desplaying very similar numbers right now as well.

I wish I could show you guys the case I have, but I don't even remember. I don't even have a link for the only cpu fan I have in my system, and I'm not sure of where I would be able to find these two parts.

So if the bios were lying to me then, why would my system be crashing with the OC genie enabled? =( I thought enabling that was supposed to be the "safe" overclock. =(

Those temps are fine. The BIOS doesn't lie, you're just not interpreting the data correctly. The system may not be crashing due to the OC. Sandy's Max temp is 100C, so you're far from those temps.

Can you describe the crash, BSOD? Codes from that?

[Zaios]

I'm sorry.. BSOD? xD (Never heard of that term.) For a description of the crash, though, if I'm playing WoW, the game will just freeze along with the rest of my computer, and if the computer is sitting idle, it will just restart itself. That's all.

[Sephiracle]

I'm sorry.. BSOD? xD (Never heard of that term.) For a description of the crash, though, if I'm playing WoW, the game will just freeze along with the rest of my computer, and if the computer is sitting idle, it will just restart itself. That's all.

Blue Screen of Death....

Is it just WoW?

[Zaios]

Well I haven't tried another game. If the computer is running and decides to restart itself, I'd only assume the same would happen with any other game. With it turning off by itself and running nothing, I wouldn't think it matters what game is running if the end result is having to reboot the system. =(

I've never gotten a BSOD I couldn't find the term after googling it hehe.

[Sephiracle]

Well I haven't tried another game. If the computer is running and decides to restart itself, I'd only assume the same would happen with any other game. With it turning off by itself and running nothing, I wouldn't think it matters what game is running if the end result is having to reboot the system. =(

I've never gotten a BSOD I couldn't find the term after googling it hehe.

Never assume, there's a reason why tech support asks you if stuff is plugged in.

[Zaios]

Never assume, there's a reason why tech support asks you if stuff is plugged in.

All right, but why would running another game make a difference when the computer is just going to shut down by itself anyway? I wasn't necessarily assuming the same would happen with another game. I know the same would happen being the machine turns off whether I'm running a game or not.

[OhpUldum]

To overclock properly you need to set up the proper software and NOT USE SOFTWARE TO OVERCLOCK FOR YOU. Download RealTemp, HW Monitor, and Intel Burn Test. Visit the overclockers.net forums for step by step guides on how to overclock.

If your problem is occurring on default settings without an OC then you need to post that. If your issue only persists during an overclock then your issue is your overclock. Could be your voltage, frequency, bclck, any number of things at that point if you are inexperienced and haven't done the OC properly.