What is ideal CPU temp?

[johnlusf]

I'm worried that my CPU on my T43 is getting insanely hot. Previously, I had installed NHC but was not sure how to use it so I didn't use it to control the fanspeed. During games, my CPU would get really hot so I used NHC to check the temperature after weeks of gaming and found that the CPU was like 85C, my god!!! Isn't that close to frying the darned thing? I finally got smart and used NHC to monitor the temp everytime I game.

Two questions:

Would a 85C+ CPU over a course of maybe 20 hours spreadout through 1-2 months irreversibly damage the CPU?

How do I use NHC to keep the CPU from ever getting that hot again?!?

Thanks so much. And I hope all the newbies like me realize that gaming might drive the CPU to hellish levels

[dsigma6]

The heat will shorten the life of your T43. Run TPFancontrol, found in this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=17715

I play Halo CE on my T43, and with the fan at level 7, the temps don't go higher than 65C.

[Paul Unger]

John,

I think you were on the right track with running NHC. With it you can make a number of significant adjustments that should help lower your operating temperatures.

1. CPU Voltage Control

I have a Pentium M 1.7 GHz. I run the following settings:

6 @ .700V
8 @ .748V
10 @ .796V
12 @ .828V
14 @ .908V
17 @ 1.036V

2. CPU Speed Control

In the drop-down box beside the a/c plug picture select "Dynamic switching". Same for battery.
Then select "Enable custom dynamic switching". You can adjust this by clicking any of the numbers beside the pictures of the a/c plug and the battery with the blue arrows and green 'level meters'. For a/c I have:
Min. Multiplier: 6x Min. Load: 20%
Max. Multiplier: 17x Max. Load: 70%
This means that my CPU will run at "6x (.700V)" up to 19% CPU load, will run at "17x (1.036V) at 70% CPU load and above, and will run at the other "xes (8, 10, etc.)" accordingly. Hover over the picutre with your cursor to see what they are.
Just for interest's sake, my settings for battery are:
Min. Multiplier: 6x Min. Load: 40%
Max. Multiplier: 17x Max. Load: 80%
I figure--rightly or wrongly--that those settings will help my battery life a bit (i.e., not calling for as much juice as often).

3. ACPI Control

Here's where life gets interesting! And probably where you gave up . . . But, my, is it worth it! TPFancontrol--as significant a step forward as it was (with due credit to all involved in creating it!)--tended to generate "read errors/conflicts". NHC's ACPI control tends not to. That's a good thing I'll admit, I struggled with the ACPI setup, but I finally got it figured out and I'll try to guide you through the steps required. I worked from this thread (http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=28482), so if I lead you astray, refer to it. Oh, I just remembered: you're going to need to install the NHC Intel Core2Duo patch before doing anything below (http://www.pbus-167.com/nhc/nhc.htm#anchor_download). Follow the instructions in the readme file. Then:

a. Download this file: http://nhc.justred.info/acpi/file/file_id/22.html
b. Unzip the folder (22.zip)
c. Modify the file ibm.xml to reflect your model number, but leave everything else as is (i.e., don't try to change your machine "class" to T42 or T43--it needs to be T43p)! To do that, right click on the file, open with Notepad, and replace the text 2668G2G with your specific model number (mine is 23733UU). Save the file and close it.
d. Make sure NHC is not running and copy ibm.cs and imb.xml from the "22" folder to your "Notebook Hardware Control\acpi" folder (mine is here: C:\Program Files\Notebook Hardware Control\acpi).
e. Restart NHC and check "Enable ACPI Control System". You should now have a notebook resembling that block of ice you see in NHC !

I hope this helps you get over the hump, so to speak. I know how it is . . . once those programmers--bless them!--get going, I'm in the complete dark! I hope this helps with the "Say wha?!" factor. Of course, where I'm wrong please correct me!

Paul

[johnlusf]

Thank you Paul. This post was MOST informative... I will try to tinker with the settings in NHC.

I think I will make it a habit to load up NHC everytime I start up my laptop.

[agarza]

In my opinion you wouldn't lower too much your CPU temp using NHC, because the CPU will be constantly at 100% or so load, the think to blame here is the thermal compound on the processor's core not transmitting effectively heat to the heatsink. If you want to lower your temperatures via hardware you would need to open your machine and clean the heatsink/CPU and reapply a good thermal paste like Arctic Silver 5. No matter if you install NHC or not after you do this modding, your CPU would be cooler and the heat transferred more quickly and effectively.

[Ken Fox]

In my opinion you wouldn't lower too much your CPU temp using NHC, because the CPU will be constantly at 100% or so load, the think to blame here is the thermal compound on the processor's core not transmitting effectively heat to the heatsink. If you want to lower your temperatures via hardware you would need to open your machine and clean the heatsink/CPU and reapply a good thermal paste like Arctic Silver 5. No matter if you install NHC or not after you do this modding, your CPU would be cooler and the heat transferred more quickly and effectively.

This is presumably the only thing you can do that might lower CPU temps without reducing the performance to the point where you might as well have bought a cheap laptop with a slow processor.

Most of this sort of stuff (not your post, the other ones dealing with software controls) have the look of the blind leading the blind

[Paul Unger]

Oh, I beg to differ, Ken. Why pump full voltage to the cpu when it's not working?! All that voltage goes to one place: heat. I'd much rather just let it idle at a low speed / low voltage (and low temperature) until I need it to work and than ramp up the speed and voltage accordingly: that's the beauty of NHC--it's adaptive! I like to think that my machine is competitively quick and blessedly cool. But, hey, to each his / her own. Having lost a hard drive to heat, I'm willing to go this route to a cooler running computer.

[Ken Fox]

Oh, I beg to differ, Ken. Why pump full voltage to the cpu when it's not working?! All that voltage goes to one place: heat. I'd much rather just let it idle at a low speed / low voltage (and low temperature) until I need it to work and than ramp up the speed and voltage accordingly: that's the beauty of NHC--it's adaptive! I like to think that my machine is competitively quick and blessedly cool. But, hey, to each his / her own. Having lost a hard drive to heat, I'm willing to go this route to a cooler running computer.

You are talking apples and oranges.

Hard drives are not processors and processors are not hard drives.

Some of the early 7200rpm desktop hard drives, especially the IBM Deskstars and the Maxtor 9s, had serious overheating problems and failed as a result. There may be notebook drive series which have failed for similar reasons, although I'm not personally familiar with them. This is not something that could have been prevented with windows software, rather this was a result of design limitations that killed a fairly high percentage of these drives. One result of these problems was that IBM decided to sell its hard drive division to Hitachi, after the IBM drives acquired the unkind nickname of "Deathstars."

You will not save a single hard drive by reducing processor temperatures; hard drives die of high temps that are produced by the hard drives themselves.

I should note for those not reading this carefully, that the fan noise problem in some T series notebooks is a separate issue, where the fans are being controlled to REDUCE NOISE. The logical result of this would be to INCREASE system temps in at least certain circumstances by REDUCING ventilation. So here, we are talking about reducing an annoyance (fan noise) with software, which has at least some possibility of working since the endpoint is user aggravation and not system, processor, or hard drive cooling.

Processors are able to withstand much higher temps than can hard drives. Granted, there is a limit to how much heat they can generate and tolerate, but any attempts to reduce that heat by software are going to reduce performance. Laptop processors are designed to reduce their own speed and heat production when idle. This has been designed in since a number of generations ago, at least when it comes to Intel notebook processors.

[GomJabbar]

Oh, I beg to differ, Ken. Why pump full voltage to the cpu when it's not working?! All that voltage goes to one place: heat. I'd much rather just let it idle at a low speed / low voltage (and low temperature) until I need it to work and than ramp up the speed and voltage accordingly: that's the beauty of NHC--it's adaptive!

I am not a gamer, and have not used NHC. Nevertheless, I would have to go with Paul on this one. The way I understand it, NHC can reduce the voltage (to a point) while maintaining full performance. This should reduce processor heat and increase battery life. Another feature that NHC provides is the ability to throttle down the CPU when it reaches some temperature threshold that is set. Although the BIOS in my desktop PC provides this feature, the BIOS in my T42 does not offer thermal threshold control. Another feature of NHC is the ability to monitor the temperature of other components such as the GPU and Hard Drive. I have read some posts where gamers apparently have fried their motherboard in short order, presumably to overheating. The ability to monitor and control temperatures could make a difference in notebook longevity. So yeah, I can see the benefits of NHC for gamers (and CPU intensive software users) and users who need to get the maximum battery life possible.

[Paul Unger]

You are talking apples and oranges.

Hard drives are not processors and processors are not hard drives.

You're right, Ken. But anything I can do to reduce the temperature in the belly of the beast is going to help, no?

I should note for those not reading this carefully, that the fan noise problem in some T series notebooks is a separate issue, where the fans are being controlled to REDUCE NOISE. The logical result of this would be to INCREASE system temps in at least certain circumstances by REDUCING ventilation. So here, we are talking about reducing an annoyance (fan noise) with software, which has at least some possibility of working since the endpoint is user aggravation and not system, processor, or hard drive cooling.

You will note in my profile that I'm in Solomon Islands. Heat is a significant factor here (humidex corrected ambient temps in the low 40s celcius). I am one user who controls the fan to REDUCE HEAT (not noise) by increasing ventilation (and "noise"; though the fan on my T42 has never bothered me--ever heard a Dell Inspiron 8000 at full wail?!). So I've turned the temp thresholds way down to kick my fan in earlier. My fan used to come on only when cpu temp approached 70C. I've got it set now to come on at 42C (so yes, it's almost always running). johnlusf's original post made it sound like he was in the same situation as I was--a fan that wasn't doing its job until temperatures got to "hellish levels". If a piece of software has the potential to help him lengthen the life of his system, I figure it's worth a shot . . .

Processors are able to withstand much higher temps than can hard drives. Granted, there is a limit to how much heat they can generate and tolerate, but any attempts to reduce that heat by software are going to reduce performance. Laptop processors are designed to reduce their own speed and heat production when idle. This has been designed in since a number of generations ago, at least when it comes to Intel notebook processors.

Again, you're right, John. But Intel's 'SpeedStep' (a software control) is quite rudimentary: full on (max) and full off (min), and that only for processor speed (not heat production) . . . As far as I can tell, NHC takes the 'SpeedStep' concept to new (and more powerful) levels, giving the user control of: processor speed, processor voltage, and, most recently, temperature thresholds. Is all of this going to affect performance? Almost undoubtedly. But I suspect most of us won't notice the effect of a 3,332K process running in the background. I know I don't. All I notice is that my temps remain in the low 40s all day long; better than the low 60s, by far!

[Ken Fox]

Again, you're right, John.

All I notice is that my temps remain in the low 40s all day long; better than the low 60s, by far!

Aside from the fact that my name is not John I feel that your situation, living in the tropics, is probably not typical to most users on this forum. Perhaps this program is of use to you, but I doubt that very many typical users living in more typical locales need to monkey with processor voltages and the like.

My desktop is a Small Form Factor "Shuttle" which has an annoying fan problem largely remedied by Speedfan. I've been using that program since I built the system more than a year ago, with good results. But, I had an annoying problem and sought out a solution.

Although there may be some other users here who are similarly situated in hot locations, that is not going to be the norm as most machines are going to be used indoors in places with climate control. For the typical user, I would not advise them to fix something that is not broken, unless they are approaching this as a hobby in which case any sort of behavior is permissible since hobby oriented behavior does not need justification

[Paul Unger]

Again, you're right, John.

All I notice is that my temps remain in the low 40s all day long; better than the low 60s, by far!

Aside from the fact that my name is not John

Oh man, sorry Ken As long as I get your name right, it seems like we'll be able to end this on good terms!