About new computer: SATA and CPU temperatures

[horvendile]

After finally getting my new rig up and running, I wonder about a couple of things.

1: I'm hoping that I will be able to run the CPU (X2 4400+) passively cooled with a Scythe Ninja cooler in an Antec P180 case. It may work, but how high temperatures are safe for the CPU?
Idling in Windows, I get around 40 degress celsius. No problems. Running Shaderey from the B3D shader competition in the background, which seems to hog about 50% of each CPU core, raises the temperature to the low fifties. Still no problem, I guess (about the idle temperature of my old T-bird 1200). A real test would be some folding or extensive 3DMark running, but before doing that I would like to know how near the temperature roof I am. Any ideas?

2: I have a(n?) Hitachi Deskstar 7k500 SATA harddrive. In the BIOS (motherboard: RD580, Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe), the SATA controller appears to be set to "PATA emulation". I don't know exactly what that is, but it sounds silly. The alternative is "AHCI", which I have no idea what it is, but if I select that the computer won't boot. What gives?

 

[maaoouud]

1: 65°C. Link

You could try running two separate Stress Prime 2004 installs (just put the installs in two folders) and lock them to one core each. Start them one at a time, hit ctrl + shift + esc and then rightclick the process and deselect one core each for them. Then run Small FFT's test. But I highly doubt your cooler will cope with the heat without adding a fan to it.
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2: I have no idea if it's bad for performance.. specs are here

 

[the maddman]

I don't think you get NCQ if you are in PATA emulation, but it'll take a reinstall of Windows to get it running in AHCI mode. You'd have find/make the floppy for the SATA driver and hit F6 durning the install to feed windows the driver. It's up to you if the possible performence increase is worth fighting windows.

After finally getting my new rig up and running, I wonder about a couple of things.

1: I'm hoping that I will be able to run the CPU (X2 4400+) passively cooled with a Scythe Ninja cooler in an Antec P180 case. It may work, but how high temperatures are safe for the CPU?
Idling in Windows, I get around 40 degress celsius. No problems. Running Shaderey from the B3D shader competition in the background, which seems to hog about 50% of each CPU core, raises the temperature to the low fifties. Still no problem, I guess (about the idle temperature of my old T-bird 1200). A real test would be some folding or extensive 3DMark running, but before doing that I would like to know how near the temperature roof I am. Any ideas?

2: I have a(n?) Hitachi Deskstar 7k500 SATA harddrive. In the BIOS (motherboard: RD580, Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe), the SATA controller appears to be set to "PATA emulation". I don't know exactly what that is, but it sounds silly. The alternative is "AHCI", which I have no idea what it is, but if I select that the computer won't boot. What gives?

 

[horvendile]

You could try running two separate Stress Prime 2004 installs (just put the installs in two folders) and lock them to one core each. (...) But I highly doubt your cooler will cope with the heat without adding a fan to it.

Thanks!
As a matter of fact, and much to my surprise, no matter what combinations of Stress Prime I throw at my CPU(s) and for how long, I can't seem to get the temperature higher than 57-58 degrees. Rather hot, but clearly within tolerance. It's still not clear what will happen when the 3D card gets hot at the same time, but running 3DMark06 only got the temperature up to 52 degrees.

 

[horvendile]

I don't think you get NCQ if you are in PATA emulation, but it'll take a reinstall of Windows to get it running in AHCI mode.

And thanks to you too.
If NCQ is all I'm missing out on, I'll pass - according to Storagareview that would only slow me down.

 

[Sxotty]

Of course you have to think about the difference between ambient temperature as well. I am not sure what the environment around your PC is like, but I know I allow my house to be cooler in the winter than the summer. That means you may have no problem now, but perhaps in july things will change. Just keep that in mind if you happen to get some errors later. Obviously you are also taking a hit on the life of the CPU, but it probably doesn't matter much.

 

[horvendile]

Of course you have to think about the difference between ambient temperature as well. I am not sure what the environment around your PC is like, but I know I allow my house to be cooler in the winter than the summer. That means you may have no problem now, but perhaps in july things will change.

No problem, I live in Sweden, we don't do summers here!
And besides, I live in an apartment with only north-facing windows. We'll see though, I've only lived here a couple of months and have no idea how it will be in the summer.

Obviously you are also taking a hit on the life of the CPU, but it probably doesn't matter much.

Maybe, but even playing Oblivion won't push the temp above maybe 51 degrees. I'm hopeful!

 

[Moloch]

Install speed fan and monitor the temps while gaming...
Google speedfan...
To monitor temps just launch program and goto charts and select the temp1 temp 2 temp 3.
Hottest one should be your cpu

 

[Frank]

Thanks!
As a matter of fact, and much to my surprise, no matter what combinations of Stress Prime I throw at my CPU(s) and for how long, I can't seem to get the temperature higher than 57-58 degrees. Rather hot, but clearly within tolerance. It's still not clear what will happen when the 3D card gets hot at the same time, but running 3DMark06 only got the temperature up to 52 degrees.

All the chips are rated for a sustained temperature of at least 75 degrees (Celsius). And short periods of at least 450 degrees. So, no worries. It's silicon, not flesh, so it can take it.

 

[skazz]

A friend of mine has an X2 3800+ in a P180 case. He's using a Zalman CPU cooler (9500 iirc) and has both of the top tricools on low speed setting. With cool 'n quiet enabled and a passively cooled video card (6600GT) he manages to get a lower CPU temp than motherboard ambient temp when idle! It sounds bizarre, but it is inherent in the P180 design with the PSU at the bottom of the case and the CPU placed right in the top corner with 2 12cm fans extracting straight off the CPU heatsync. However, the P180 is less good at video card cooling, because you are focussing the airflow for the CPU (or at least in our tests so far).

If you are running the P180 with only 1 hdd, I would mount it in the lower compartment of the case, and then remove the upper hdd bay. Then mount a nice quiet 12cm fan (e.g. nexus) in the upper compartment front as intake and get even better airflow. What many people also do is replace the big thick tricool in the lower compartment with a smaller 12cm fan, since the big tricool is quite noisy (as well as producing stupidly good amounts of airflow admittedly). What you need depends on your PSU, but it's perfectly possible to run one of those passively cooled PSUs (e.g. Antec Phantom) in the P180 just on a nexus 12cm fan pushing air through the lower compartment.

So my view is that you should have few problems with your CPU temps with a scythe ninja, because of those two big tricools (assuming you kept them in the case). But do consider the full case airflow, and try to make sure that your ambient temps and video card temps are acceptable as well.

Oh, and turn on Cool 'n Quiet <install AMD CPU drivers and set the correct power mode in Windows>. It is capable of underclocking only one core if the other is busy, and will generally do a lot of good to your CPU temps (my tests say -4C idle, and in singlethreaded apps probably even more because the CPU won't actually be running at full power even then).

Having said that all that, over 55C is pretty hot - my own X2 3800+ with stock cooler never breaks the 50C barrier, and this is in a lowly Sonata II case with a X1800XT broiling away just below it!

 

[_xxx_]

Use the BIOS features for warning/shutting down if certain temperatures are exceeded just to be on the safe side until you're sure.

 

[skazz]

Just an extra note... If you want something to really stress your system, get consume.exe from the Windows 2003 resource kit tools.

It can be used to "fill" your CPU resources. So you can start it up next to ATI tool's artifact finder and be using your GPU and CPU at full power for say 30mins. I can't think of a better way to do a real burn test of your system while having all the monitor programs open and being able to track every single fan and temperature.