Mugen 2 temps i7 820

[Mini]

I installed a mugen 2 on my i7 860 and find temps a little bit high
temps are 45c-50c idle 55-68 when im gaming
i reinstalled the cooler because the temps i got where 50c-60c idle 70c - 90c gaming and found out that i used too much termal paste
my room temp is 20c and my fan is blowing at 1427 RPM
i didn't oc my processor

[Oli]

Please tell us more about your general airflow. Although I also think those temps are a bit too high no one could seriously judge about them only based on the cooler and your cooler's fan speed.

[Mini]

i've got a thermaltake soprano with a front a back and a side fans so a pretty good airflow never had this problem with other my processors

[Oli]

You should think about reseating the cooler, about re-applying the thermal grease (perhaps again use less) and you can check if cooler base plate and CPU heatspreader are even.

Do the temps change significantly if you leave the side panel open? Do the temps change if you put pressure in top of Mugen towards the CPU socket?

[Mini]

tried with side panel open and chassis on its side temps are not changing
but reading temps with asus probe and real temp
asus probe gives 45c and realtemp 29c-27c-30c-27c
witch one i must believe ??

[Oli]

Please also test CoreTemp. I'd rely on CoreTemp and RealTemp, they shouldn't differ much.

Asus Probe does not read out the Core temps! It reads the temp of a sensor close to or inside the CPU socket! This value isn't too reliable - the same here with a i7-860 and also a E6700 and E5200. The values that are interesting are the temps of the hottest core.

The i7-860 is ok up to 99°C. But I'd try to keep it under 70°C. Anyway the temps you read with Realtemp are looking pretty good. Try to stress test your system with "LinX" or "Core Damage" (use 8 threads on i7-860). This will generate much heat. Check your temps with RealTemp and/or CoreTemp so you'll see how hot your cores REALLY get. This should be much lower than what Asus Probe shows.

Then use LinX with 1 or 2 threads to see the temps in Turbo Mode (they won't get higher as when testing with 8 threads because Turbo only jumps in when one core is under load).

[Mini]

yust stress tested my cpu with Core Damage results are
started with temps of:30c-27c-20c-27c
average temps where: 67c-68c-63c-68c
and max temps where: 68c-69c-64c-69c
i tested for about 35 minutes don't know if thats enough for getting good test results first time i did it
used real temps for measuring temps
one thing i didn't understand was core damage gave a cpu speed of 2809.0mhz and realtemp 2942.76mhz
got a asus maximus III formula mobo if you need too no this

Tested 2 threats with Linx ran it 20 times results are
max temp:54c-56c-52c-57c
average temp: between high 30's and low 40's

[Oli]

I think those values would be acceptable. Not perfect but acceptable. I got a cooler here which performs better than Mugen 2 and this one reaches about 58-60 degrees as maximum on the hottest core with a 800 rpm fan attached.

Read out of frequency isn't accurate with all of the tools. CPU-Z does a good job in that.

You could try a push & pull fan setup on Mugen 2 which can improve cooling although the overal rpm of both coolers can be reduced. Depending on which thermal grease you use you could also find some degrees using a MX3, MX2 or probably PK1 grease - speaking only of classic greases not taking in account the liquid metal pads etc.

One thing that could really reduce your temps would be undervolting. This means you decrease vCore for some steps which very often results in much lower temps. This has minor influence on idle but on full load. Most P55 boards allow a very flexible vCore adjustment (dynamic voltage). The P7P55D from Asus which I had here allowed it and the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 also supports this.

The procedure can be found via Google. Basically you reduce the voltage and then test the system for stability with Prime 95 or LinX for a longer period of time.

This had been working with the 65nm Core2Duo/Quad CPUs and works even better with the 45nm i7s and C2D/Qs which results in the possibility of overclocking while undervolting. Most of the i7s will run stable with much lower voltage than the VID or whatever the AUTO mode of your mainboard's BIOS will set.

[Mini]

Maybe i gonna try those options later on i am happy that the system is stable for a while now
thanks for the information you have given me