System Temperatures

I often see posts on OC and hardware sites about system temperatures: is it normal? Am I overheating? What is the maximum temperature for my CPU? etc, etc.

Over the years, I've found that the best and most logical approach is:

• Computer components, especially processors, hard drives, RAM and video cards will heat up.  It's a fact, get used to it.  They are designed that way.
• The heat needs to escape your system.
• If the system is designed well with proper fans, you should feel a lot of heat escaping the computer.  This is not a bad thing.  Hot air being blown out of your machine is a good thing.
• There are three times to watch for:
• Idle temperature - when doing mostly nothing, how hot do your components get?
• High utilization temperature - when doing things like playing high end 3d games, how hot do your components get?  What is the rate of increase from Idle?  Does it level off or keep going?
• Cool down temperature - when you stop doing high utilization stuff, how long before you go back to idle temperatures?

Airflow

The flow of air in and out of your system matters:

• Always have more air being blown out vs being sucked in
• Hot air rises, so exhaust fans should be on the top of your case
• Cold air goes down, so intake fans should be on the bottom of your case
• Imagine the air flowing in your case and look for dead spots where:
• Heat is generated
• No airflow takes the heat out.

Max Temperatures

My setup:

• i7 2600k @ 4.2 GHz
• 16GB RAM
• 2x Gigabyte GTX 570 SLI

I have a mini-tower case and everything is packed in there tight.  I'm using liquid cooling for the CPU and have an intake fan at the bottom of the case (sucking in from the floor) and an exhaust fan on the top of the case (pointing at the ceiling) and another exhaust on the side (right above the two video cards).  The max I've seen so far:

CPU MAX TEMPERATURE    : 84.0C
CORE0 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 83.0C

CORE1 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 85.0C

CORE2 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 82.0C

CORE3 MAX TEMPERATURE  : 81.0C

MAX CPU POWER          : 79.734W
AMBIENT MAX TEMP (MB)  : 63.0C

GPU1 MAX TEMPERATURE   : 74.0C

GPU2 MAX TEMPERATURE   : 67.0C

Idle temperatures are somewhere in the high 30s for the CPU, low 20s for the Ambient and low 30s for the video cards.  The rate I hit these temps are pretty quick (minutes) and it tends to level out.  After quitting a game, for example, the hot air blowing out of the case turns cool in a matter of seconds.  The temperature drops rather quickly.  I'll chart it one day, but I'm not so worried about it right now.

I hit these temps last night with Assassin's Creed Revelations at max settings for everything.

Dead Island: Something is Wrong

There is something wrong with the game Dead Island.  It's not the story or the game premise.  It's not the idea. It's the execution.  Too many little issues with the execution that bugs me and I'm not talking about the bugs.

• Re-spawning zombies: this takes away from the immersion aspect.  If I walk into a bungalow and slaughter whatever zombies are in there and then I go back a few minutes later, I should not find them back to where they were in the beginning.  Also, I had a great panic when several of them came streaming down the stairs from all directions.  I got through it only to find when I pass that same area a short while later, they are back.  That really takes so much away.  Same with having to run over them over and over again.  At the very least, take the bodies away but don't make them come back!
• But, the bodies also disappear, making it hard to recognize areas you've been in before.  This would have been super useful for again, immersion.
• The "Thug" zombies are just nonsense.  There's a repetitive nature to it, which again, takes away from the immersion.
• Your character pleading with you not to let them die is kinda corny.
• The game feels unfinished.  Even AA is missing altogether.

How NOT to Run a Banking Site

This is not what you want to give your customers if there is something wrong with your online banking site AFTER they login.  It makes us feel uncomfortable, abandoned and generally the opposite of what you intended.  I do not feel like you value me as your customer.

The New Hotness

Literally.  It's like 66C up in there.

With dialog bubble.  Because G+ Creative Kit.

Sound card straddled by two GTX 570s.  HOT.  Literally.

But the crashing is gone with the replacement card.  And performance is much better with dual GTX 570s.  Now, I can move on.

Driving a Wedge

In an earlier post, I wrote about the sound card which was hitting the video card fan since it was so close together.  I gave the on-board audio a try but found it lacking.  So what to do?  I decided that some sort of wedge was needed to keep the card apart.  I found a red rubber washer in my toolbox and electrical taped it to the back of the sound card.

Not only does this keep the cards apart but also gives a bit of room for airflow.

New GTX 570 = No More Skyrim Issues

Well at least the whole system reboot/black screen of death thing.

I got a new GTX 570 in the mail today, installed it and also tidied up the cables in the system.  So far so good.  Still a little nervous, half expecting the system to crash, but nothing like that so far!  Skyrim had a few issues, but nothing I couldn't recover from.  Which brings me to an interesting observation.  With the previous video card, I never saw Skyrim (the program) fail.  I would only see the whole system crash.  Now, I see the crash to desktop (rare) and the occasional video driver crashed thing (also rare).

One scary thing - about an hour into play, I heard a loud grinding.  Turns out the sound card was touching the fans on the GTX 570.  I couldn't do much more to separate them, so I ended up removing the sound card and switched to onboard audio.

See how close the sound card (top) is with the video card?  Yikes.

When I get the 2nd GTX 570 in, it will be really crowded in there with the sound card.  I'm thinking of gerry rigging some kind of wedge between the sound card and the video card, but in the meantime, I'll give the onboard audio a try.

It's been almost a week and so far so good.  Now if only the 2nd GTX 570 gets here soon...

Amazing Skyrim Story Engine

Don't want to reveal any spoilers, but when talking with a friend about Skyrim and he shared that at one point in the game, if you kill a main character in an abandoned shack, it will spawn a whole new set of quests.  When I was at that point in the game, it never even occurred to me to do that.  It's amazing that the Skyrim developers programmed that alternate storyline in.