Normal i7 860 idle temps?

[Jerochy]

Hey guys,

I recently upgraded to an i7 860 from a i3 550 for the desktop at my GF's house and saw the idle temps were a little higher than I preferred. They were around 45 degrees and I thought maybe I didn't have the heat sink seated properly so I cleaned off the thermal paste again, reinstalled the heatsink, but still temps around 45. It is the stock intel cooler, but I really never had problems with them in the past. When I loaded up fallout 4, the temps went to about 60 which isn't too bad for a processor under load. 

I did go into the BIOS to make sure the smart fan controller is working and is set to reasonable speeds at certain temps and they were. I'm wondering if this processor just tends to run hot and I should be looking at an aftermarker heat sink.

Let me know what you guys think, Thanks!

[don_svetlio]

Old Nahalem CPUs ran very hot from what I remember. Use Cinebench to stress it and if temps go over 80*C I'd invest in a new cooler.

As for idles - Nahalem does not support the lower C states that were introduced with Haswell so higher idles are normal

[Skiiwee29]

They are older so they do generate much more heat than modern processors, I wouldnt think its an issue honestly as your not bad at 60c under gaming load. 

[ScratchCat]

Check if power saving features are activated such as speedstep, otherwise check that the voltage goes down at idle

[Jerochy]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

Old Nahalem CPUs ran very hot from what I remember. Use Cinebench to stress it and if temps go over 80*C I'd invest in a new cooler.

As for idles - Nahalem does not support the lower C states that were introduced with Haswell so higher idles are normal

Wow I had no idea about the idles. Thank you so much!

[Jerochy]

2 minutes ago, legacy99 said:

They are older so they do generate much more heat than modern processors, I wouldnt think its an issue honestly as your not bad at 60c under gaming load. 

I was thinking that too, the idles were the only thing that bothered me a little haha. Thanks!

[Herman Mcpootis]

from current personal experience, that i7 runs hot. i get the same temps as yours with a gammaxx 400(although i'm in the tropics so it'll be higher). i'd suggest a cheap air cooler if you want it to be cooler but 60 degrees is perfectly fine.

[don_svetlio]

3 minutes ago, Jerochy said:

Wow I had no idea about the idles. Thank you so much!

No need to worry about it. Unless you are close to 90*C you are fine.