# How hot should an Athlon XP 2100 run?

## eauclair

I just built a Gentoo box, and am using an AMD Athlon XP 2100 - I've only used Intel chips in the past.  When the machine boots, you can go in to the CMOS and look at the temperature - I was surprised it was about 130 (F).

My motherboard has different settings to warn and shutdown based on temperature, and the Athlon was already getting close.  When I installed the chip, I had problems, and might have scraped off some of the 'thermal adhesive' sticky that was on it.

My friend has an Athlon, and his tech guy said Athlon's run hot, and not to worry about it, but I'm afraid it will shut off if I leave it running too long.  I bought some 'thermal glue' for re-seating the chip to the heatsink, but have been reluctant to remove the chip unless I know there is a problem.

I have been looking on the net, and have not been able to find what the acceptable range is for the chip's temperature.  Most info is vague.

[slight divergence]

I also bought a 120GB Maxtor drive with a 8MB cache, hoping it would be faster and quiter than my normal 80GB MAxtor on my 1.8Gz P4 Compaq.  Maybe it is making the chip run hotter?  I ran Winbench99 inside Windows2000, which was running in WMWare 3.2 for linux, which was running in FLuxbox, on top of Gentoo 1.4 - and the disk I/O was twice as fast than on my Compaq.  My new Gentoo is also using ReiserFS instead of ext3, maybe  that helped VMWare run faster.

[end diveregnce]

Any one know how hot an Athlon XP 2100+ should run? I was dismayed to see that 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' said my it was *slower* than my existing Intel P4 1.8Gz.

thx!

----------

## yngwin

I don't know about acceptable temperatures, so can't help you there.

But I do know that our Athlon cpus may be slower in MHz, they do much better in performance though!

----------

## DefconAlpha

I've got a 2100... It will shoot up to 60C with 2 80's and a 20 in the box. Granted even I don't want to be in that room when it does (it's so damn hot in that apartment...) I would expect your chip to run at about that under a high load (maybe a little less) The actual temperature is going to vary with the operating environment. In my room it gets really hot, but if you are keeping this in a nice climate-controlled room, well... It should run quite acceptably with an AMD heatsink and fan.

You could always try a bigger heatsink *cough*alpha pal8045*cough* just be careful when you install it. *very* careful.

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQ3

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTQy (a bit outdated, but still somewhat useful)

Or water cooling :)

Oh, and that sticky tack shit sucks. Get silicon grease, or heatsink compound, doesn't matter. Go for the cheapest; that arctic silver stuff isn't as good as silicon grease and costs more.

----------

## eauclair

My Athlon makes my apt so hot, I am now running my AC.  The room gets *hot*, I put 5 fans in my case, so all the heat is going out of the PC's case in to the room.

Is there a good linux benchmark program?  Running Winbench inside a Win2000/VMWare3.2/Fluxbox/Gentoo1.4 system seemed like an interesting 'real world' test.  I found the 'bogomips' entry in /proc/pci.  Is there any good (free) test I can run on my linux machines to see which hardware and configurations work best?

I want to compare my ext3 vs ReiserFS, AMD vs Intel, 8MB cache HD vs normal HD, fluxbox vs kde, and any other performance tests I can do.  Then I want to do them all on Slackware, to compare Gentoo to Slack.

When I bough the parts for my machine, the Athlon chip was $160, and the newest Athlon (with "Barton" chipset) was $280 (I think).  I wasnt really bound by price, but I wanted stability more than speed, so I took the slower machine.  If I had know how hot the system was going to run, I might have gone with Intel, or just gone ahead and got the fastest Athlon the had.  My fear was that the fastest chip would over-heat while I was away, which is what I am worring about now with the 2100.

I like Gentoo because I like knowing that all my apps are being compiled for the Athlon, and should run faster than a comparable Intel or other non-source distro.

thx!

----------

## brian33x51

It all depends, is your 2100XP a Palimino (.18 micron) or Thoroughbred (.13 micron).  The difference is pretty huge.  I think the 2100XP Palimino consumes close to 100W, so seeing temps near 60C wouldn't surprise me.  Now it if were a thoroughbred you should be concerned if it's 50C.

If it's not going to kill you financially I'd pretty much suggest forking out another $90 or so and grabbing a 2200XP which I believe are all Thoroughbred processors.  We have some 2400's here at work that run very quiet and very very cool.

----------

## FxChiP

Athlon 2100's and the like do exaggerate their MHz/GHz speed slightly in their names

They really run about 1.7 or 1.8 GHz, however their faster transfer rates, better FPU, better math handling, and just better efficiency make it outperform the Pentiums (even Pentiums that are at higher GHz than they are! My Athlon 500 MHz may be equivalent to a 733 MHz Intel processor!)

As for heat, well, I never checked mine...

----------

## guero61

My 1800+ runs consistenly in Linux around the 90-degree mark, due to hardcooling (pci settings).  In windows with no such settings, I average 45-50C or 104-122.  I'd say that you're in the ballpark at 50-60; the core I have is designed to operate up to 80+C, and I would think yours is much the same.

----------

## DefconAlpha

My apartment is hot, but i leave the windows open, and i never hafta worry about it really. I have an Abit, so if it gets too hot, an alarm goes off and if i'm not there, it will shutdown if it gets any hotter (alarm is at 60, shutoff at 65)

I have an Enermax PS with 2 fans, one fan on my proc, one on the northbridge, and two in the door. My cooling setup should be good enough for just about anything. If you are having to use that many fans, i would suggest maybe dropping a few of them and getting one or three really nice deltas. (delta == loudage == massive air flow)

----------

## ptbarnett

 *eauclair wrote:*   

> I just built a Gentoo box, and am using an AMD Athlon XP 2100 - I've only used Intel chips in the past.  When the machine boots, you can go in to the CMOS and look at the temperature - I was surprised it was about 130 (F).

 

I have an Athlon 2200+, which I know to be a Thoroughbred (.13micron).  However, it's not running Linux -- it's running Windows 2000.  Under constant load (SETI@home), it's currently at  50 C (122 F), but I've seen it as low as 47 C if the room is cooler.  Currently, the motherboard/system temperature is 31 C (87 F), but the room is probably about 78 F.  If your room is warm, the air inside the case is warmer.

I use the AMD retail chip fan, which apparently is a 5000 RPM FoxPro.  I tried another cooling fan that I thought would be more efficient (with a copper heatsink) even at the slower 4000 RPM, but found that it ran about 10 degrees F hotter.  So, I went back to the original chip fan.

I have three 80mm fans pushing air in the front of the system, and two 80mm fans (plus a squirrelcage slot fan) pulling air out the back -- on top of the power supply fan.  The 80mm fans are all temperature controlled and run 1800 RPM at 25 C, then ramp up to 2600 RPM at 65 C.  You might want to consider additional case ventilation, but it's a trade-off of temperature vs. noise.

----------

## CodeHacker84

<rant_mode=on>

Ok, so here's the story, I have a laptop (Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504, let the name strike terror into the heart of the portable PC user!), with a desktop Intel Pentium 3 processor inside it.  Yes, I'm not kidding, the same Intel Pentium 3 that you put in your desktop is inside my laptop.  It runs a constant temperature of about 60C, and under load it runs at about 77C.  Now, you'd think that the whole damn case would've melted by now, but I actually haven't seen any serious problems other than a little slowdown under load (but that's to be expected, isn't it?).  I do have some help from the BIOS, but overall, I don't think there's anything wrong with the damn machine, besides the fact that IRQ steering is routed through the ACPI hardware and gave me fits trying to set up sound (but that's another story entirely).  Long story short, I'm not worried about anything under 80C.  If the damn thing shuts down, I'm getting some better cooling equipment.  Other than that, I don't worry about it too much.

<rant_mode=off>

----------

## eauclair

Hmmm....it never occured to me check which way the fans were blowing.  For all I know, all 5 are blowing inwards. Or outwards,  or some weird combination.    I prolly should have checked that before adding more fans.   :Shocked: 

----------

## PowerFactor

I don't understand why people use so many fans, unless you room is like 95F or something.  My AthlonXP 1700+ is in a case that has no fans except the low-speed temp-controlled fan in the Zalman psu.  I have a Zalman 6000-AlCu flower hs on the cpu with the 92mm fan turning about 2000rpm.  With that setup my system temp is always around 36C, cputemp -s 147-152C and hd temp is 39C.  And it's pretty quiet.  If I put a single Panaflow exausting from the back my cpu and system temps go down about 3-4F and my hd temp goes down about 2-3C.  I sometimes fire up the panaflow for long compiles but I usually don't consider it to be worth the extra noise.  Of ccourse I do have AC and keep it about 75-80F in my room, and my video card is only a gf2MX.

eauclaire: Did you really buy thermal GLUE?  That's not what you want for a cpu hs.

----------

## ptbarnett

 *PowerFactor wrote:*   

> I don't understand why people use so many fans, unless you room is like 95F or something.

 

I have that many fans because I have that many places to put them.  :Smile:    I had a smaller number before I put in the temperature-controlled fans, but they were loud.  The lower speed fans are quieter, so I can use all of them for a net reduction in noise.

My house does get warm when I'm at home, because I turn up the thermostat during the summer.  But, I've had a couple of failures that were probably heat-related, so I figure that keep it as cool as practical is good insurance.

----------

## Malakin

CPU HEAT IN WATTS:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1718&p=4

XP 2100 Palomino is 72 watts.

XP 2100 Thoroughbred is 62 watts.

Palomino is the _older_ core. If you want to look at older cores the Pentium 4 willamette at 2.0Ghz runs at 75 watts. In general though the P4's and XP's are pretty close.

A cpu isn't going to make your room hot at only 70 watts. That's like having an extra lightbulb in your room (and only 23% the output of your light if you're using a 300 watt halogen lamp like me) . Space heaters for example are usually around 1600 watts. Unless you have a very unusual setup everything else in your computer might add up to another 60 watts or so and this is under load, when your computer isn't doing anything it's less. To put this into perspective a 19" crt monitor uses about 120 watts so your monitor will use about as much as a new computer does.

130F is 54C which is a totally normal temperature for a cpu to run at. Most onboard automatic cpu shutdown temps are around 90C. I wouldn't even concern yourself about it unless either your computer is crashing or your cpu temp idle's over 60C.

Here's a really good CPU performance comparison graph:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-24.html

 *Quote:*   

> I also bought a 120GB Maxtor drive with a 8MB cache, hoping it would be faster and quiter than my normal 80GB MAxtor on my 1.8Gz P4 Compaq.

 If you want a quieter drive buy a Seagate baracuda V, they use fluid dynamic bearing and are extremely quite. Hard drive reviews covering both performance and audio levels can be found here:

http://www.storagereview.com/

Unfortunately they don't measure hard drive seek levels, as some drives seek really loudly. Also a lot of drives get louder and louder as time goes on, the maxtor D740X for example is very bad for this. I'd suggest making sure you get a fluid dynamic bearing drive as I'm not aware of any of them having this problem (so far). Your new Maxtor might be one as the DiamondMax Plus 9 has them, it still seeks louder then the Seagate or WD though but most would consider it quiet.

----------

## Gnufsh

If you want to find out if it's a throughbred or pally, just post the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo. That sounds a little warm either way. T-breds put out ess watts total, but their cores are siginificently smaller, making them harder to keep cool.

----------

## spamsk8r

Do NOT, by any means, use thermal "glue" or epoxy on that chip, unless you want an expensive keychain.  Thermal epoxy is made for other applications, such as northbridge and videocards.  If anything, pick up some Arctic Silver 3 and a good heatsink, and you should be fine.

----------

## eauclair

I'll have to check exactly what it is, I call it 'thermal glue', but I think it really is some kind of substance that is made for connecting the chip to the heatsink.  

The original "sticky square" that came with it, I scraped a bit trying to learn how to install the heatsink.  So I went to CompUSA and they had this "thermal glue" (my words) for use with replacing heat sinks.  I'm not thinking of using some "heated glue gun", but one that "conducts heat". 

 :Surprised: 

thx!

 *spamsk8r wrote:*   

> Do NOT, by any means, use thermal "glue" or epoxy on that chip, unless you want an expensive keychain.  Thermal epoxy is made for other applications, such as northbridge and videocards.  If anything, pick up some Arctic Silver 3 and a good heatsink, and you should be fine.

 

----------

## Malakin

 *Quote:*   

>  I'm not thinking of using some "heated glue gun", but one that "conducts heat".

 If it bonds the two surfaces together so you can't separate them without a lot of prying then it's thermal epoxy, if it's not then it's thermal compound. It's probably thermal compound. I've had good results using silver thermal compound over the standard silicone variety, it's rather expensive though so I wouldn't recommend it if it's just for one computer.

----------

## zenz

I've a 2100 athlon xp and it runs idle at around ~55C (with case open) and sometimes at full load goes up as high as 70C.  I did some reseach and I think i read somewhere that 2100 is hotter even than 2200 and above.  

Kinda sux cuz my girlfriend has a 1800 xp and at idle it goes at 35C.  A full 20 degrees LOWER!  And her computer loads warcraft 3 faster than mine !   :Crying or Very sad: 

You should probably try doing the coolbit thingy (search for it on the forum).  It cools my comp down to 35 idel and 60 full load in windows XP.  I haven't really got it to work yet in linux cuz I'm having trouble getting lm_sensors working properly.

----------

## eauclair

I disabled the 3 extra fans I installed (for a total of 5), and my machine over-heated about an hour later.

I had the over heating warning set at 56C.  I re-enabled the 3 fans, and raised the warning to 66C - with a shutoff at 70C.

My warning/shutoff was 56C/60C now it is 66C/70C.  I have a 2100+ XP  (1.7Ghz), a Thoruabreed I think.

Do those settings sound okay?

----------

## puggy

My 2400+ Thoroughbred runs at about 47-51C. I'm using a "silent" coolermaster with a heat pipe. I think the heat pipe worls really well because of the extremely low fluctuations in heat. it never goes outside the limits above. I do also have 5 case fans ( 2 in at the front, 2 out at the back, and 1 out on the side. In addition I have a 2 fan silent PSU, a fan on my Graphics card and one on the motherboard. Making a total of 10 fans... crazy.  :Very Happy: 

Puggy

Oh, and I'm also using arctic silver thermal compund on my CPU core.

----------

## spamsk8r

My XP2100+ usually runs at about 45-50C under normal load, and it doesn't really get much higher under full load.  As long as it doesn't cause any problems, such as instability, then there's really no need to worry about it, since they were made to withstand the higher temps.

----------

