Newly upgraded x9100, question now

I made a post earlier I got this offer of a 150$ x9100 QS from a friend's friend, couldn't resist the price and headed to his place immediately I brought my laptop with me and tried this x9100 right there, applied some of his generic paste(didn't bring my ICD-7 with me)on it, tested it at default voltage/clock with orthos for around 20 min, the max temp reached a scorching 89 'C , which made me a bit hesitant about the purchase, but I believe my Zalman NC2000 cooler(again,didn't bring with me) combined with ICD-7 and undervolting should bring the temp down to the reasonable range.

So I headed home, cleaned off the paste, applied ICD-7, and managed to bring the voltage from the stock 1.2625v to 1.1125v, tested again with orthox, this time it hovered around 60 C at max I played a short session of my games, maxed at 52 C, it runs even cooler than my p8400 OCed at 2.66Ghz!!

But during both the stress testing and gaming, I found I had very uneven core temps, eg, one core ran at 49C, another ran at 40C and this symptom happened very often, Is this a bad thing? I know my p8400 never had the problem. I do plan to overclock this new baddie and hope this won't cause any trouble.

 

Don't worry about differences in temp readings between the two cores. It doesn't mean anything. But I'm really impressed about what you were able to achieve.

 

Good to know I was impressed about the result too, 89 C to 60 C is a little bit too dramatic, isn't it Undervolting/cooler/ICD-7 really helped a lot

 

This happened to me due to un-even distribution of the thermal paste. One of the cores was always 10C+ hotter than the other (both on idle and under load). I disassembled the heatsink, cleaned the old paste and re-applied the new paste carefully and now both cores report similar temps (+/- 1C or 2C).


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Well, that explains. I suspected if it had anything to do with the application of thermal paste, the highest difference I observed so far is 9 C, usually there is a 5 C difference when both cores are stressed, not so troublesome that makes me wanna redo the whole work again, I am lazy

 

Don't forget to update your sig

 

haha, thanks for reminding me that I am still gonna keep the p8400 for at least a few days to see if there is anything wrong with x9100, just in case.

BTW: this upgrade made me gain lots of fps in some games, dragon age seems to benefit the most from the upgrade, haven't tried pcsx2/dolphin yet

 

Processors rarely go defective. Usually the memory controller on the CPU (i7 IMC is terribad compared to AMD). Evidence of QC these days.

 

Yeah, that I know, I am currently running it at x12.5 multiplier, 3.33Ghz with 1.2125v.

This overclock makes me a lot more comfortable than overclocking my p8400 with setfsb, as it doesn't bring up the frequency of RAM(potentially could damage it), it just overclocks the processor itself, thanks to Throttlestop

 

That could be the case, or it might not. I have a T2330 that shows a large difference in temperature between the two cores, regardless of any external factors.

Processors have always been extremely reliable. No moving parts, nothing to really go bad on its own. They've always been susceptible to ESD, but that is user error.

Don't worry too much about overclocking. Higher frequencies don't damage anything. It is higher voltages and temperatures that can.

 

great OC... really suprsed X9100 would run so cool with such an OC... must have got a really good one. Enjoy

Leopard 2