It is my intention to lap (flatten & polish) my QX6800 case and the Zalman heat sink as per the other threads in this section. I want to document each stage and write it all up so that other fool hardy folk can have ago!
Kit: as per 'My system' (a QX6800 quad core based unit)
Tasking: Folding using smp allowing the smp prog play with about 80% of the processor. Even at this setting I missed the time & dates for completed WUs and dare not give Folding any more than 80%
(my other primary applications are Actinic Ecommece, Dreamweaver, Photoshop)
Problem: over-heating in excess of 50 - 55c.
Short term solution: (a) open case side cover by about 30degrees and (b) add another fan to help shift air into the Zalman CPU heat sink area
General physical setup... Nice big 22" Dell screen
This set up helped to bring the temperatures down but not by much....
Regrettably I have stopped this machine from Folding until I can get the heat problem sorted.(am still folding with other machine)
As soon as I uninstalled the smp, during idle times where the CPU is less than 1%, the temperatures dropped down to 30/46c
Here is the rub!
I built the kit up from scratch. On switch on - It worked! I installed Vista Ultimate 32bit and went on and used it... I have done no tweaking of bios on the grounds that I know nothing about OC or messing with voltages et al. I accepted the defaults up to now.
I did read Glas' comments about letting the CPU fan run at 100% and explored my bios 'til I found it and set to manual 100%. It has made not one jot of difference!
I have downloaded & Installed Speedfan 4.33 and use without altering any configuration (it doesn't support Evga mobo) but use it for temperature monitoring. It frightens the hell out of me when I see the temperature icon change to a flame!
Here are the points I would like clarified BEFORE I grind a £650 component out of guarantee...
Knowing absolutely nothing about OCing, I wouldn't know if this machine is OCing and if it is, by how much? Bios just now said something about x11 clock speed...
I do not want to OC or otherwise 'push' the CPU beyond its safe recommended limits. So How do I check if OCing or not?
Once I am comfy about not OCing, I will make a record of temperature before and after under same CPU stressing conditions - would it be acceptable if that were to be 'idle' readings or should I be running something that is at a constant 'stress' level (below 80% please)