Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, with intensive POV-Ray work, I always like to open up speedfan and 
> peek at the temps. (Under POV load, each core seems to be around 93?C 

  I think that's too much. Many systems I have seen have been configured
for an immediate emergency shutdown if the CPU temperature exceed something
like 85 degrees. (If it reaches those temperatures something must be really
wrong. Maybe the CPU fan died.)

  I don't know if 93 degrees is a normal operating temperature for your CPU,
but it certainly doesn't sound like such. My guess is that your monitoring
software is reading or showing something completely bogus.

  In a well-ventilated, well-designed system the CPU runs at something
like 40 degrees when idle and 60-65 degrees under full load. (Of course
this probably depends on the CPU in question, but with many CPUs normal
operating temperatures may be even lower than that.)

> I may need to pop the heat sink off the cpu, clean it off, and re-apply 
> some heatsink goop to get the temps down...

  I'm not sure that would be the problem. I have been using my system for
something like 5 years without ever doing that, and it still runs at a
comfortable 44 degrees when idle. Just need to remove the dust from time
to time.

  I had a problem with the CPU fan (rather than the CPU itself), as it would
spin really fast when temperatures got even slightly high, but tinkering with
the BIOS settings fixed that. (Now something like 2200 RPM is enough to keep
the CPU down to about 44 degrees at normal room temperature.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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