Need a bit of help working around overheating on CPU...

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Fierce Headmaster

Hi! My name is Skippy.
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...starting from the fact I have negative money. I tried overcleaning, underclocking, reapplying thermal paste (and am down to the last few mililiters in my syringe). Nothing can bring it down from around 80ºC when I'm playing something. Tj. max is 83ºC, but the computer shuts down when it stays too long close to or over it. Thermal paste worked for a week, then started overheating again. Underclocking only made it take a bit more time to reach the 80 mark, and cleaning more made no difference at all.

Any solutions besides having money to buy an aftermarket cooler? I'll be out of a computer if this processor dies on me. I think all I have besides it is an old Athlonx4, but it's been sitting in my shelf for years now, and I don't even know if the sockets would match.
 
The fan is working, but it's a stock one. The RPM is going up normally and it has PWM support. I'd rather get a new one since this fan is louder than my actual fan at max speed (a necessity here), but I can't. But yeah, it takes about an hour of playing for it to get to 80, it was half an hour before I underclocked it.
 
What processor is it anyways?

Also, the best way to lower temps would be to lower your voltage. You may be able to maintain stock clocks with lower voltage depending on how well your chip binned. Works the same as overclocking except you lower voltage until unstable then boost it a tad.
 
The voltage is correct for stock FX 4170, but lowering it could result in temperature decreases. Try small increments until it crashes during high load. Undervolting is unlikely to damage your system, so don't be afraid to keep going until it stops working.
 
Well, I got amazing results. Downed the voltage to 1.3v and benching with OrthosCPU loader doesn't get it past 55ºC! I can barely hear the fan now, and my games are running just fine. Damn, thanks Splintert.
 
Honestly that was a bit of a shot in the dark :lol: AMD FX are power hungry beasts with poor stock cooling and it's just as surprising to me that you got results like that.
 
Nah, not really. As a related example my AMD R9 290 eats up a bunch of power but still only costs about $15 a year on average. A CPU uses much less juice and rarely hits 100% usage.

There are a lot of reasons to pick Intel over AMD CPUs right now, but power usage is probably one of the weakest at least for desktops.
 
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