Serious heat concern w/ 754 Athlon

Trekari · Post by **Trekari** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 1:13 am

My recent system build consisted of a P150 case with 2x120mm Nexus fans and 2x92mm Nexus.

One of the 120s is of course the exhaust, while the other sits on the front side of a Scythe Ninja blowing towards the exhaust.

The only other big-time heat generating component in the system is my 7800GT with an Artic Silencer 5v3. on it, but that is exhausting the hot air directly out the back of the case.

Idle temp of the CPU is about 40C, but under load (playing mame for 3 hours) I checked the temp after shutting down mame and it had shot up to 66C. This is with a 3200 Clawhammer A64, 130nm process.

This seems *dangerously* high to me since AMD's max temp says 70C for this particular processor.

Now that I've bored you to death, here's my concern: While getting ready to set up my system, my adorable cat decided to play with components he saw laying on the kitchen table. In the process he managed to knock the Ninja off the table, hitting a chair on its way to the floor and seriously knocking it off-center. One of the heatpipes has a noticeable dimple in it where I assume it made contact with the chair on its way down. I spent a while bending it back intoa recognizable square position, but I'm wondering now if he didn't permanently damage the heatsink to the point of causing such high temps?

I don't *see* any cracks in the heatpipes. Should I order a new heatsink and try with a fresh one before Sylvester (my cat) has a chance to damage it? It should be noted that I have not calibrated the temperature reporting, but I can't imagine it's off by enough to calm me down after seeing 66C ?

Overall system components:

A64 Clawhammer 3200 (stock)
MSI K8N Neo3-F
1GB PC3200 Ram
eVGA 7800GT @ 502/1190
WD Raptor 74GB
Samsung SP1614N
Plextor DL DVD+RW
SB X-Fi Platinum
Antec NeoHE 430

jaganath · Post by **jaganath** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 5:28 am

Two points to make:

1) The Clawhammer was always the hottest out of the S754 A64's.

2) Yes, your cat may have damaged the heatpipes. If it's bent, the phase change fluid may not be able to pass through as easily, thus impairing cooling. If it's cracked that is even worse as the fluid will escape.

Felger Carbon · Post by **Felger Carbon** » Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:53 am

jaganath wrote:Yes, your cat may have damaged the heatpipes. If it's bent, the phase change fluid may not be able to pass through as easily, thus impairing cooling. If it's cracked that is even worse as the fluid will escape.

The Ninja has six U-shaped heatpipes. If one cracked, the vacuum would be destroyed in that one pipe, rendering the pipe inert. But you'd have 5 good pipes left. Personally, I wouldn't sweat it.

Let me explain further: the Ninja is the only HS I've seen with two layers of heat-pipes over the CPU. First story is 3 pipes, flattened out. Then three more pipes as a second story, at right angles to the first, also flattened out.

ronrem · Post by **ronrem** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:33 pm

I'd try remounting the heatsink. It may not be snug enough or there could be too much or too little thermal goo. If that's no help,try a seperate temp monitor/fan control panel to see if it's temp readings correspond to what the mobo claims.

Finally,you could superglue that cat to the ninja. It won't do much to cool the chip,but will be a learning experiance for kitty.