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Are these temps too high?

6

617arg

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 3, 2008
306
45
Hello, I recently installed (4) - 4gb RAM modules and I'm worried that they may be running too hot. The image attached is from the machine just essentially sitting idle all day. Only 1gb of the 17gb are wired.

When I do put the Mac to work, either through Handbrake or running Autocad through Fusion, the temp on module A1 reaches 173 degrees and the fan speed just about doubles.

Is this something to worry about?
 

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Thats alot warmer then mine. Which system is it? Do the RAM chips have heatsinks to apple specs on them?
 
That looks as though they are running in fahrenheit?

My memory runs at 45 - 55 degrees celcius
 
only looks a little warmer then mine but its winter/spring so my room is cold. once summer comes around my room is an oven, ill be scared to turn it on.
 
I shutdown for the night to see if a fresh restart would maybe reset the temperature sensors.
Started back up at around 9:00am and let it sit without running anything until now at 2:30pm. I have only Firefox running. The temps still seem kind of high.

This is on an early 2008 2.8 Octo with (4) - 4gb modules from Transintl, and (2) - 1gb Apple modules.

I've attached a picture of the current reading.

Normal?? Everything else seems so much cooler. Should I send these back?
 

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What speed are your fans set to?

Stock!? If so, bumping them up ever so slightly to about 1000rpms each should lower those temps to more comfortable levels
 
Fans

160F is the breaking point when magic blue smoke begins to leave RAM modules. @ high load, mine run at 130, which is fine. Your temps are very high.

Do your ram modules have heat sinks with fins? Extra large ones? They are REQUIRED for the Mac Pro, since it purposely does not meet industry standard airflow/temp specs to be a quiet machine. Normal heat spreaders (useless strap on chunks of metal) will not be sufficient. you need something with fins parallel with the direction of airflow.

I would either use SMCFanControl to bump your fans exhaust and cpu fan speeds up 500rpm, or do the right thing and get some heat sinks with large fins for your ram.
 
Yes, these have huge heat sinks....... This is what I ordered: http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2726&RequestTimeOut=500

After reading this: http://barefeats.com/harper12.html I'm beginning to feel a little better about the temps. It seems like it may be somewhat normal (?) for the 4gb modules. To quote:

"TEMPERATURE TESTS
We spawned 10 copies of DLT running for 10 minutes each. Below is the temperature history graph from Hardware Monitor. Notice it stays well below the 190 degree Farenheit "sweat" threshold. Though some FB-DIMMs run hotter than others, during the 10 minute stress test, the hottest module peaked at 174 deg F. Five of the eight modules remained below 155 deg F. The average for all eight was 159 deg F."

I downloaded smcFanControl just to be safe and I'm setting it up now. I just figured that the OS would adjust the fans on its own according to what the temperatures are.
I've added 300rpm to each of the fans. After about 10 minutes the temps came down about 10 degrees (F).
 

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617arg said:
After reading this: http://barefeats.com/harper12.html I'm beginning to feel a little better about the temps. It seems like it may be somewhat normal (?) for the 4gb modules. To quote:

"TEMPERATURE TESTS
We spawned 10 copies of DLT running for 10 minutes each. Below is the temperature history graph from Hardware Monitor. Notice it stays well below the 190 degree Farenheit "sweat" threshold. Though some FB-DIMMs run hotter than others, during the 10 minute stress test, the hottest module peaked at 174 deg F. Five of the eight modules remained below 155 deg F. The average for all eight was 159 deg F."
Click to expand...

Yeah, but that 150 degree range was under load. Like 70%-90% processor load and 60%-100% memory load. At idle, you should be a lot lower.
 
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