BIOS Fan/Temp settings?.. AMD..

[Inocense]

Alright.. Not sure if this is the correct area but I would like some advice and hoping some of you can give me some suggestions....

What should my settings be for max fan speed, cool N quiet, etc on my BIOS?.. I have no idea.. This is my first build..

My fans seem to pulse a ton.. Sounds like a reving engine!.. Drives me CRAZY!.. Am running anywhere from 95 to 115 degrees (f).. So says Speed Fan program...

Any other BIOS settings I should switch from default to something custom?.. This is a gaming rig..

Thank you!!!...

(I asked this in the wrong forum and they told me that my fan may be "hunting" and to turn the fan temp max up a bit)

I am concerned about overheating.. I have no idea what to set these settings at..

Help!.. :P

[Inocense]

I turned the max chassis fan speed up to temp 55c.. Same with max cpu fan temp.. This too high? too low?.. What should all these settings be set at?

Do I want to change any default settings to custom in my Hardware Monitor area or Memory config area?...

I am affraid I have no clue what I am doing.. heh.. Just trying to learn.. WITHOUT frying my system!.. heh.. :P

[Senor Panadero]

...
I am concerned about overheating.. I have no idea what to set these settings at.. ...

IN general, we like to see temperature readings for an A64 CPU around 30-50 C. The official max is somewhere around 75-80 C depending, but you will never really know what the temperature is without expensive tools and customizations. 115 F = 46 C.

By the way, the temperatures that you see in the bios setup or in Windows in Asus probe and other programs cannot be called "accurate" at all. They are not comparable to other systems, even those with the same parts, and it will be a somewhat fruitless task to try and make the comparisons, but everyone tries to.

The temperatures you show are not in any danger zones, and what they are useful for is to establish a baseline. You know what "normal" is now, and if you get instability, and those readings haven't changed, then it probably isn't a heat problem.

You also know that if you see temps significantly higher than that in the future, that you need to check the airflow in your case, or clean the heatsink, or something like that.

[RAFH]

Senor Panadero has that right. Unfortunately, the sensors provided on the processors and motherboards are not very well calibrated, so you 115F might be my 120F. Beyond that, you usually don't get the raw sensor data, its been interpretted by the motherboard and chipset software and firmware. As he said, only way to be sure is with calibrated probes and knowing a lot of what you are doing, ie - what and where the sensors are.

However, that said, the sensors in the CPU is likely to be more accurate because those initiate the CPU's thermal protection shutdown or throttling. I still wouldn't give them much less than +/- 3C to 5C (5F to 8F).

SpeedFan will read the Athlon cores, so will CoreTemp.

The big thing, again as Senor Panadero indicated, is establishing your norm. Unless you are having problems like the machine locking up for little or no obvious reason or there is magic smoke coming out of it, your temps are probably ok. If you see them going way up from there, you will want to investigate why.

One good way to tell if you machine is running hot, is to check by hand the temps of the air and/or even better, the temps of the fins on your cooler. You could even hold a household thermometer up in the exhaust air stream and see what you are getting. Typically, with the fan running well, a good HSF will have about 15C to 25C temperature difference between the exhaust air and the CPU core. So if you measure your exhaust air at about 30C, your CPU is probably at around 45C to 55C. This assumes you have a good installation on your HSF. You can usually get some idea of your HSF's efficiency by finding its thermal resistance. This is expressed as C/W or degrees per watt. Since the Athlons generally put out 89 watts at full tilt, you just multiply that by the resistance factor. Don't expect extreme accuracy by this, there's no established method for determining thermal resistance, you don't really know how many watts your CPU is wasting and there are a lot of very loose variables involved. You might get +/- 5C to 10C.

But its just a norm for you. If you see it change suddenly, like go from 45C to 60C and you don't have a clue why, you might want to check things out. If over several weeks, your temps slowly climb up and it sounds like your fans are working harder, you might want to take a look at whatever filters you have and clean off whatever you can. Compressed air and an old but clean toothbrush work wonders.

Knowing your temperature norms will also help you evaluate a new HSF or the effect on new equipment you add. Or what effect an additional fan makes. Or changing the configuration in SpeedFan.

SpeedFan really is quite amazing. As you noted, your fan seems to be hunting a lot which can be more bothersome than it being louder but at a constant volume. You need to see what your SpeedFan configuration is. You can set each fan to be controlled by which sensors and how. You can set the ideal temps, the fan speed to used in seeking that ideal and the temperature at which your fan will go full blast because its too hot. The more fans, the more you can control. I would prefer a constant speed to a constantly changing fan speed but different strokes for different folks.

[Inocense]

Ah, thank you for the explanation both of you.. I will no longer worry about my temps within my comp.. I guess I was just worried about setting the fan max speed temp TOO high which would allow my comp to get too hot.. I did up the chassis temp for max fan speed a bit and that seemed to fix the problem of the "hunting".. I put decent money and research into the cooling system on my computer and I know I shouldn't worry but with such a lack of knowledge within that area it had me a bit concerned.. So thank you for assisting with that concern..

How about changes in Memory configuration and or any other changes aside from default settings in Hardware monitor area within BIOS?..

[Senor Panadero]

...

How about changes in Memory configuration and or any other changes aside from default settings in Hardware monitor area within BIOS?..

Not unless you have a compelling reason to do so. the default settings were decided upon for a reason. There are some types of memory that need changes, because otherwise they cause stability problems, but if you have no problems, there is no reason to change anything.

[Inocense]

Ok.. Thank you.. No stability issues so will leave them as is..