my brand new opteron 170 idles at 40 and reaches 60!

[johnnq]

i just swapped out my non overclocked 3200 venice for this brand spankin new opteron 170. my mobo temp always reads 30C, and when the room is hot it reaches 35C (has a hs and 92mm nexus blowing on it). (core temp reports 38,36, but i'll use asus probe readings) my 3200 used to idle at 35ish and reach 50C fully stressed (prime95). now i reseated this thing twice in two days with the same 7700alcu and the same 2 year old ceramique. i know that's not the problem.

so what should i do? i'm worried that the ihs isn't making good contact with the core. this means RMA :\ should i invest in a scythe ninja (i already have some yate loons)? should i try and equip the stock opteron hs with a yate loon and some paper clips (the surface is terrible. it's as if they lapped the heatsink with 100 grit sand paper)?

i'm at a loss guys. i'd like to overclock this thing and find out how far it can go before i rma, but i can't do that because of these temps! it's sort of a catch 22...i'm really disappointed that this didn't go smoothly. to top things off, orthos is giving me errors on the blend test. and i'm NOT overclocked ANYWHERE. so some part of my system is broken... please help!

[buzzlightyear]

I have a Opteron 165 cooled by a Ninja with the stock fan. At stock voltage, 1.35v, it is at 42c. If I lowered the voltage to 1v and 6x multplier, the temp is at 38-40c. Running Prime95 would bring the temp up to 50c. I am overclocking to 300fsb but without increasing volt (1.35v)

Also the temp does not change much without overclocking.
Opteron is not a cool-running CPU. Your Opty seems normal to me.

[skj]

Opteron is not a cool-running CPU. Your Opty seems normal to me.

I'll second that. My Ninja and 5V Nexus keep my Opteron 180 at around 52C under full load. This is much warmer than my old 3500+, but it runs just fine.

[Arvo]

What are your Opty's TDP and TCaseMax (somewhere on SPCR are threads about obtaining these values)?
There are very different Opterons present; my Opty 170 (in work PC, thereby no overclocking and stress results ) has 35W TDP, 49C TCaseMax and is currently running at 31C while idling (~25C ambient, stock cooler, case open, cool VIA chipset).

Generally cool Opterons are bad overclockers and vice versa.