How hot is your CPU when rendering ?

[Midnight Blue]

I've got a temporary cooling system on my computer until my new one arrives, so I've been monitoring the temperature of the main processor closely. It idles at around 35C but when rendering it goes up to 84C. Is this too hot or is it an ok temperature during rendering ?

[Bpotter908]

What CPU do you own?

Take a look at the manufacturer's website and find out what the "safe" operating temperature under load is.

Some chips can take 75 others can only take 65. 84 sounds worrying to me.

[Midnight Blue]

Oh I didn't think of that. It's an Intel i7 930 @ 2.80GHz, I'll have a look on the Intel site ..............


Right, it doesn't give a loaded safe temp, just something called a case temp of 67.9°C, I have no idea what that means.

[CaptionWorld]

MB Just found this on CPU Temps. Looks like you may be running a bit on the hot side.

[enc]

just sample rendered 3 channels of video, 2 channels of audio, plenty colour correction, fx ......

core temp gave readings of

-------------------min max
core # 0................... 29 56
core# 1................... 23 48
core # 2................... 31 51
core # 3................... 39 53

[Midnight Blue]

Thanks guys, it does look as though I'm cooking it when rendering, so I best not render anything else until the water cooler arrives.

[vidmanners]

The chip temperature is difficult to measure, since it's burried inside - but it can be monitored by ingenious means which Mfrs use to protect the processor . . . it's not "exact" so I'm guessng it's not a big issue - silicon doesn't melt at these temperature but reliabilty can suffer (ie long-term). The chip-cooling may make you happy, but the same energy is being drawn inside the chip, it's just that you can remove more of it, which helps LT reliability.

However, it's quite easy to measure the case-temperature, just feel it, or introduce one of those multi-meter probes for Temp. - However, it can be tricky getting a good thermal contact.

Nevertheless if the chip is thermally overloaded I'd expect it to be shut down . . . e.g by turning off some cores.

FWIW some Audio power-chips used in TV and some so-called Hi-Fi have chip monitors that can cut parts of the waveform to protect the chip... this has odd effect on the waveform since the cut occurs after the peak (where you might expect it to be needed) - because the time it takes for the monitoring to respond.
Such chips could be run with no heatsink - but you'd hardly hear the music as a result.

[Midnight Blue]

It's not the silicon I'm worried about it's the metal bits. If you look at the video on the link that caption world posted, there are some guys deliberately burning out chips.

My system shut down in the middle of rendering that's how I knew there was something wrong with the cooling of the CPU. I have a Coolermaster case so the internal case temp is very low. The case is full of holes and there are three six inch fans blowing air through the case to keep it circulating and cool. My temp heat sink on the CPU is only small, even though the fan I've put on it is 80mm, it still can't cope with any kind of stress. Hopefully my replacement water cooling system will arrive this week so I can get back to normal.

[Midnight Blue]

My new water cooler came and is doing it's job well. My CPU now idles at 29°C and when rendering it just touched 50°C. So I'm well happy with it.