processor performance alot lower than i thought

thanks for all your replies, CPU has got as hot as 85c, will be getting some thermo paste today and reseating the heat sink, will keep you updated
warren

wazzaracer said:

thanks for all your replies, CPU has got as hot as 85c, will be getting some thermo paste today and reseating the heat sink, will keep you updated
warren

The early Skt775 multi-threaded Pentium IV's were beasts to cool, and very power hungry with it, and... from memory, weren't they actually part of the famously hot 65nm Prescott family of processors?

Thermal spec for yours is 69' Celcius, so clearly there's something wrong, as others are pointing out. I'm not surprised at your WEI score if the CPU has throttled back due to thermal controls kicking in if the temperatures are as high as they're reported.

Personally I'd use a top quality thermal compound that doesn't need chiseling off subsequently, something like Arctic Céramique would fit the bill :)

All that said, it's still quite a modest single core CPU, your eventual WEI score ain't ever going to hit the roof with that processor.

At that temperature, I would expect something significantly wrong, probably beyond dust.

CPU fan not spinning as it should?

If you have other chassis fans, are they working properly?

Anything glaringly wrong inside your case with airflow?

If you are going to reseat the heatsink, go to the Arctic Silver web site and look at the application instructions. I don't know your experience, but newbies often do it wrong.

Take your time with some alcohol, Qtips, and clean white cotton rags to get the contact surfaces clean before you reapply the thermal compound.

Make sure you do a good job of mounting the heatsink. The Intel mounting systems aren't exactly easy to master.

Has the case been banged around enough to dislodge anything. A heat sink shouldn't just become dislodged.

well this goes to prove you lot know what your talking about and a couple of spotty teenagers who work in shops are just not interested in a 3 quid sale, took your advice went to a computer shop to buy some theromo grease, thought while i was here i would ask for thier advice too, first shop did not have any grease but was not very forth coming with any advice, the second shop again was not very helpful and just said 74C's is fine any the processor would run fine till about 90c, i bought some thermo paste and thanked him for his advice, got home took the heat sink off cleaned off all the old paste re-applied paste and re attached the heat sink, turned the computer on, put the CPU under load and ran Speed fan, read 54C at its highest, so re ran the Intel Processor Identification Utility read my processor running at the right speed now(actually slightly overclocked as i messed with my bios settings) re ran WEI and my processor now gets a healthy score of 4.1

In short thanks for your help and advice guys

Wow. I'm surprised that was all it took to get the temps down. TIM does not go bad with age - UNLESS it has been disturbed and the cured bond broken. Nevertheless, I am glad this seemed to have worked. Thanks for the followup.

Digerati said:

Wow. I'm surprised that was all it took to get the temps down. TIM does not go bad with age - UNLESS it has been disturbed and the cured bond broken. Nevertheless, I am glad this seemed to have worked. Thanks for the followup.

yeah brought the temps down massively even under load for ages the temp does not rise beyond 60c now, and when not under load about 50c, thinking about it i have recently moved my computer so this could have disturbed everything ?
thanks
Warren

Could be. Ever since PCs went from desktop to tower orientation, the heavy heatsink "hangs" on the motherboard instead of sitting on top of the motherboard. If you look at the manual of many after-market HSF assemblies, they often recommend removal during transport to prevent stressing the motherboard. The popular Zalman cooler manual goes so far as to say,

During transportation of the system, the cooler must be removed.

If the temperature was being measured using a mainboard sensor then I seriously doubt the CPU was all that far over limits; it's more likely the sensor is one of the thousands out there that report wildly inaccurate results.

I've frequently seen Skt775 fans & sinks which are tacked down on only three pins on the mainboard peg fittings - that can cause overheating very readily indeed in itself, some coolers are absolute pigs to clip on correctly.

it's more likely the sensor is one of the thousands out there that report wildly inaccurate results.

If it had been wrong from the start, I would be inclined to agree with you. But unless physically damaged, it should not now be way different from previous readings. Those sensors are cheap, and you are right, they are often very inaccurate, but they still tend to be inaccurate, consistently. That is, if 10 degrees off today, they will be 10 degrees off tomorrow.

Their departure from accuracy tends not to be even however. At 30 degrees celcius it may be 3-5 degrees off kilter, but at 65 degrees the inaccuracy may be far more, and reporting could be more than 20 degrees off the mark.