I've recently built a system around a GA-MA790FXT-UD5P botherboard with a Phenom II X4 955BE. I bought an Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro 64 cooler to go with it, but it overhung the first DIMM slot and since I am using all 4 slots (8GB RAM installed) I've had to use the stock AMD cooler. I was surprised by the cooler when I pulled it out of the box. Its a compact unit with a copper and alloy base and lots of closely packed fins mounted to the based plus four heat pipes which take heat from the base to the outer ends of the fins. This is topped off with a 70mm PWM controlled fan.
When lightly loaded EasyTune6 is reporting the temperature typcially in the high 30's DegC (around 95-100 DegF) which is far cooler than my previos Atlon XP 2000+ (around 55-60DegC - 130-140DegF). I would be really pleased with this, except EasyTune's default alarm level is 40DegC (101DegF) which means, according to EasyTune the processor is running on the limit of its working temperature range. If I start to make the PC work the temperature goes into the low 40's DegC (100-110DegF) and the alarm would go off if I had it enabled. I've tried disabling SmartFan so the fan runs flat out all the time, but the temperature doesn't change by a noticable amount. Enabling everything in EasySaver to get the CPU power down as low as possible also doesn't have a huge effect on the temperature. More surprisingly, a warm room doesn't make a huge difference either. With the room around a normal level of 21DegC (70DegF) the CPU is around 36-38DegC (96-100DegF). When we had a warm spell and the room temp went up to around 30DegC (86DegF) the CPU only went up to about 41DegC (105DegF). I also briefly tried upping the CPU multiplier to see what happened. I increased from the stock 16x to 20x (upping the core clock from 3.2GHz to 4GHz) for a few minutes just to see what happened. The PC ran quite happily like that and I found the CPU temperature only increased a couple of degrees (about 4DegF) during those few minutes, although I wasn't doing anything too processor intensive at the time.
What I would like to know, if anyone can help, is whether EasyTune is being over cautions with its settings? What sort of temperature the CPU can safely run to without affecting its reliability or life? Obviously the cooler the better, but how hot can I let the CPU get before I start worrying about it? I'm not intending to overclock more than a small amount (if at all) and would appreciate any comments you have about the temperature when overclocking compared to running at stock speeds.
Many thanks
