What Air Temperature When Testing?

[TJS]

This is a question some may call silly or irrelevant, but I want to know if there is a 'standard' temperature that the overclocker community uses when determining a max OC. The thing is, people live in different areas and air temperature (or whatever you want to call it) can differ dramatically. I myself try to keep my room warm, say 75-78F, so its hot but not too hot... and then get my max stable OC. I take it people just go by room temp, or is 'cheating' acceptable, like turning on the AC and dropping the room temp to 65F and going to town? ( I noticed that when I have the AC going that my TEC HSF stays even cooler, think that cold air really helps ). Anyway, chime in with your replies, I wanna know whats what.

TJS

(I live in Alabama, so the winters are pretty cool, but summer time is blazing with the humidity )

[Toxcity]

I would say, never go over 60oC....

But I hate my chip even hitting 40oC!

[Ham]

21degC, room temp is the norm.

This is why people always state the ambient temp when doing tests.

Theres no 'cheating' some people in russia overclock on theyre doorsteps during icestorms, subzero cooling without the insulation.

[Rastalovich]

I`ve got a room temp of 34° atm.

Threw a 3800x2 on an open mobo tray, on a shelf, armed with a Scythe Ninja, and it`s reading 32° for the system and cpu (idle) - that sound good ?

(I kinda read that as the Scythe making it 2° lower than the room)

Course the $23 Lian-Li mobo tray would look alot nicer with a freakin i/o plate on it !!

[Ham]

Was it you that managed to get hold of some li-li mobo trays on there own Rast? No cases?

[Rastalovich]

Yeah I got 4 of them atm, shiney as hell.

Downside on arrival 1 fan casing looks better than the other 3. Meshed 1, looks smarter.

Downside on Sunday I realized/remembered u aint sent me an i/o plate yet !!!!

Downside of it today I just noticed 1 has a dent. Which figures why it didn`t lay flat. - not bothered to be fair as u can`t see it when a mobo is on it.

Upside ... did I mention they`re shiney as hell.

Downside, any monkey-prints are a b1tch to clean off.

The pci-slot covers wwwwreek of classness.

.. but who gives an F when u paid about £13 for each one ?!!?!?!

(performance-pcs.com)

[TJS]

Too late, Tox... I've hit 71C with Orthos (15 minute test).

34C is pretty damn hot for room temp, Rast... I'm suprised you can do any overclocking at all. I start to sweat at 83F, and that's like 93F.

Ham: those crazy Russians live in an icebox, so I guess you're right, they don't have much to worry about. I, on the otherhand, have that thorn in my side called 'humidity', and lots of it. I also decided to do a little googling, and found that the average room temp is 68 to 77F, so I guess I was in the ballpark when testing.

One of the reasons I was curious was that I didn't want to 'cheat', and say I can overclock so much when it wouldn't be realistic to say so. I can cool my room down to about 70-73F and OC to 3.7GHz and be stable, but any higher in temp and my rig starts locking up. If I could, I'd stabilize my AC at a certain temp and keep my room temp constant.

Thanks for the replies so far, keep 'em comin'...

TJS

[Rastalovich]

Yeah, the problem I got isnt the cpus in the machines in this room - it`s the floopin hard drives.

For example, I got a temporary JBOD setup of 2 Maxtors and a Seagate, alongside 1 Maxtor IDE - on a shelf (like a bookshelf), nothing surrounding them - and u can`t keep u`r hand on any of them. They`re pumping around 60 out just by themselves.

Other pcs have 3 or 4 drives each in them and they`re the same.

It`s only temporary tho. Has to be, they`ll fail around 70.

[Toxcity]

Originally Posted by name='TJS'

Too late, Tox... I've hit 71C with Orthos (15 minute test).

DUDE! I would recommend downing the speed a bit.. Otherwise the chip isn't going to live very long.

Plus I find most CPUs get very flakey above 60oC.

Try finding a cheap way to get better air flow.. or open loads of windows!

[chudley]

Rast, room temp of 34 degrees, you growing something there lol. Did you get the boards direct from the states?