Intel P4 650 Prescott

[bettagl]

Hello,

I am new to the forum and have just built my new system which makes me have goosebumps to talk about it. I am very into video editing and gaming. I purchased the new Intel P4 650 with Disable Bit and 2M L2 cache. I assembled the heatsink with the factory pad on it. My BIOS said at idle speed my processor was about 50-52 deg C. I thought that was high even for a Prescott Core so called Asus and they said at idle it was too high so I got online and purchased Arctic Silver 5 heatsink compound. As per the directions I cleaned the old pad off very well and put a drop about the size of a grain of rice on the core and attached the heatsink. The heatsink is sitting nice and level on the processor but my temperatures have increased. I am now running 58-59 C at idle. Is a drop that small not enough for the prescott core? I know you cannot glob on too much but a grain of rice seemed a little to small to me. Can anyone offer some advice on what I should do. I am very anxious to get this straightened out so I can find my overclock sweet spot and get to editing and playing.

Asus P5AD2-E PREMIUM MOBO
Intel P4 650 3.4 Ghz 2MB L2 cache and Disable Bit
1 GB Corsair TWIN2X-5400 C4PRO
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
3 Western Digital Raptors @ 10,000 rpm in RAID 0
Maxtor 120GB Boot Drive
Thermaltake Tsunami Dream Case
old pci video card until I decide what PCI-e card I want to put in it.

Thanks for any advice

Lenny

[beavo451]

Re: Intel P4 650 Prescott

The stock HSF is not good enough. Get a new one, especially if you're going to overclock. The Artic Silver website installation instructions say to put about a grain of rice worth of compound on and then stick the heatsink on. Personally, I spread it with the edge of a card to get it nice and evenly distributed before I put the heatsink on.

[bettagl]

Re: Intel P4 650 Prescott

Thanks for the reply. Last night I removed my hsf, cleaned the surfaces really good again and put more on and kind of did what you referred to. I put a little extra on and spread it out a little with the tip of the Arc Silver tube. This did some good but now I have a discrepancy in temperature display. When I boot my system and go into the bios it says my CPU temperature is 49-50 C. I then boot to windows and call up the Asus PC Probe software and it says my CPU temp is 30-31 C. I assume I should trust the bios reading? This is my first Asus mobo, is this a normal thing with the PC probe software. Do you have any suggestions on a better hsf to purchase for the prescott?

Thank you

Lenny

[Yawgm0th]

Re: Intel P4 650 Prescott

Trust the BIOS over the software.

If you aren't overclocking, even the stock heatsink should be fine. Lap it, and put AS5 on it. If the temp doesn't lower, then either you applied too much or too little AS5, or the BIOS is just inaccurate, in which case you shouldn't worry about it unless the system starts freezing.

[wayout44]

Re: Intel P4 650 Prescott

One thing that you should take into account is that a CPU running in BIOS runs hotter than a CPU running Windows at idle as the os will idle the CPU where as while in BIOS its cycling to find instructions and if you have Intel's SpeedStep Power Savings turned on then those temps could very well be accurate as that CPU would only be running at around 2.4GHz at idle in Windows (there spose to be a program around now that shows what throttling those CPU's do while in Windows but I can't remember its name).

Run a program like Prime95 which will put the CPU under 100% load and take your temps there as its the load temps that count, not the idle temps.