i7-3770 Temps?
 

What is a safe temp to run an i7-3770?

I'm OCing mine to 4.2GHz on air (Noctua NH-D14) and running P95 torture test I'm seeing cores around 77C. Is that pushing it too much?

AFAIK, that is acceptable, if warm for an i7. I think the danger zone is ~90.

EDIT: I'm not sure how heat tolerance varies between different generations. 1st gen 920s seem to be very tolerant.

It got up as high as 85C which seems awfully high, especially since I have a nice big NH-D14 heatsink.

Jeff.

Do you have a good quality and coverage of thermal paste between the CPU and heatsink? Fixing an issue with thermal paste lowered my core temps by as much as 30C, from the high 70s to the high 40s. There is a known issue with IB chips that Intel used cheap thermal interface material in the chip package itself. This has been creating headaches for overclockers.

[QUOTE=Jeff Gilchrist;316189]It got up as high as 85C which seems awfully high, especially since I have a nice big NH-D14 heatsink.

Jeff.[/QUOTE]

I agree on both counts, and with NBt_33. I had not fully taken notice of the cooler involved. I run AMD and am not as conversant with Intel model numbers.
(insert belated quick Google).
OK. This family, because of the thermal interface between the CPU and the thermal spreader, tends to heat up faster than SB in spite of reduced TDP. Previous chips had fluxless solder for the thermal interface, and much better conductance.
EDIT: It is also more sensitive to voltage increases with OCing. This is discussed in the review.

[URL]http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review/4[/URL]

EDIT2: It does seem that the NH-D14 heatsink should be able to do better, unless the heat spreader interface material is [U]really[/U] horrible. What do you have between the chip and the sink?

85C might shorten its life span a few percent, but it should continue to operate fine. You should still probably keep it <= 80 though. (As noted by others, IB tends to run hotter at the same freq than SB, but AFAIK it has the same tolerance.)

[QUOTE=kladner;316196]EDIT2: It does seem that the NH-D14 heatsink should be able to do better, unless the heat spreader interface material is [U]really[/U] horrible. What do you have between the chip and the sink?[/QUOTE]

Ok, I think I found out what is going on. I'm using the high quality Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound. I was trying to take the easy route and use the built-it Asus CPU-LevelUp feature which seems to have pegged my CPU voltage at 1.3+ volts which was causing the massive heat spike.

The Anandtech article says you should be able to easily hit 4.9GHz under 1.3 volts and not to exceed 1.3 volts. I reset to non-OC and it is now running at 1.116v an 60C. I will try to manually tune my values with a much lower CPU voltage and hopefully that will keep me in check.

Thanks for the info guys.

EDIT1: Just upped the speed from 3.9GHz to 4.2GHz without increasing default voltage and seems to be passing torture test. Now running at 64C max, which is much better than the 85 before. I guess the auto-program had the voltage levels all screwed up.

i wish i had one of those. :bangheadonwall::bangheadonwall::bangheadonwall:

Haha. Maybe I'll consider.. hmm.... . .. :loco:

EDIT: I like keeping my cpu's at 70C, no higher, although I do realize it would probably be ok even if it was a bit higher...

Going back several builds and brands, I have noticed that the Auto-type settings for Vcore tend to be quite generous. I would guess that this is to make the board seem to OC readily. It seems that Level Up subscribes to this approach. I have often been able to get increased speed at stock voltage, or stock speed undervolted. One issue to keep in mind is that what is set in BIOS, what BIOS says the voltage is after rebooting into CMOS, and what it ...reads out in the OS may vary considerably. (<EDIT: got distracted and posted without the end of the sentence.)

Level Up appears in my BIOS on an AMD Asus, but is usually greyed out. I'm probably in the wrong overall mode, but it doesn't sound like a very desirable function anyway.

I'm glad you discovered the setting responsible, and were able to correct the situation. The results look pretty stellar now for those speeds.

I tried bumping it up to 4.4GHz and using 1.118 volts running stable on Intel Burn Test right now and still holding at 62C, 70C, 69C, 63C.

After IBT is finished, I will try P95 Torture Test overnight.

I have been running an overclocked i5-3570K between 89C - 92C for two months now.