My brand new development box (and render target), using a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H motherboard & Intel i7 4790K processor was showing a strange (read: high) CPU temperature as soon as the processor ramped up to 100%.
The GA-Z97X-UD5H motherboard. Yup, it looks pretty much like other motherboards, with the exception of those lovely gold heatsinks.
When running Prime95, the Corsair Link software (and I backed the following readings up with Speedfan too) was reporting an instant increase to 80 degrees C when using the Blend setting, and a CPU temperature of 100 degrees C when using the Small FFTs (maximum heat) setting. This scared me somewhat! Especially as I was using the Corsair H110i Liquid Cooler – my first time with liquid cooling and at first I thought I’d done something wrong. Like plugged the pump motor into the wrong CPU header. I didn’t do that. No, really I didn’t :-). However…
And the solution:
If you’re running into the same issue, then I’m happy to say that a BIOS upgrade (from F4 to F8) sorted the issue out. CPU temperatures are now reporting at around 26 degrees C @ idle (which is only around 0.5 degree above ambient in our office…) and 65 degrees C when maxing the CPU out using the Blend setting in Prime95. I’m guessing the problem was just a reporting error, rather than the case of the actual CPU temperature hitting 80/100 degrees, but that is a guess.
Incidentally, it’s the first time I’ve used the BIOS on a MB as new as this one, and I gotta say its a dream to use. Mouse & network support, plus plenty of configuration options and a very quick BIOS flash procedure. I like.
I’ve finally got the Neoware box to actually do something (that it was not designed for). I managed to get it booting over PXE. I set up the network boot options on my Smoothwall box, pointing to a TFTP server on my laptop running XP. This didn’t quite work at first – the Neoware managed to get an IP address, and it was also confirming the IP address of the TFTP server, but wouldn’t load any files from it. So I installed the aftp mod for Smoothwall, copied the boot files over, and it worked like a charm. I reckon that although the PXE client was detecting the next-server option from the DHCP server, it wasn’t actually using it, and just tried to access a TFTP server on the DHCP server’s address – this is probably due to a fault in the firmware for the RTL8139 on board ethernet chipset, although I wouldn’t like to say for certain.
Now all I have to work out is why the Debian Etch installer is failing when its trying to partition the hard drive. I thought it was the drive itself at first (its untested) but it fails at the same place with another drive.
Smoothwall is working quite well on my network. Still haven’t got those power figures for you yet, but i’ll sort them soon. May have to borrow the current clamp from work.
Here’s the hardware list, for those of you that care :
Address
Type
Device
00:00.0
Host bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.1
Host bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.2
Host bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.3
Host bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge
00:00.4
Host bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:00.7
Host bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
00:01.0
PCI bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
00:09.0
Ethernet controller
National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
00:0f.0
IDE interface
VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1
IDE interface
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0
USB Controller
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1
USB Controller
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2
USB Controller
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3
USB Controller
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4
USB Controller
VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0
ISA bridge
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5
Multimedia audio controller
VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
