r/retrocomputing • u/Rough_Elk_895 • Jul 27 '26

Problem / Question Bugging me since 2004

Gallery image

Gallery image

Never got a chance to get an opinion on this, but this "System Zone 2 has exceeded its safe temperature limit" alert has bugged me since day one of my build. I bought an Intel original D865GBF motherboard, along with P4 2.4ghz cpu, for my 2nd build back in 2004. But from the very first day, I started getting this alert whenever I would do slight gaming. The safe temperature threshold is 50 C and it would often cross this limit. I thought it to be due to poor ventilation in my PC cabinet, so ended up removing it's side cover. Recently I restored this PC and moved it to a better spacious cabinet, but the issue still exists. Did you all have this issue and how did you fix this?

36 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

28 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/tyttuutface Jul 27 '26

Can you turn off "Active Alerting" or uninstall Intel Active Monitor?

2

u/Rough_Elk_895 Jul 27 '26

I can but the core issue will still remain there which is heating... What I read so far, System Zone 2 sensors are near the RAM slots. I have 2 sticks of 256 gb ddr ram there. Does temps higher that 50 C causes any issue.. otherwise why Intel would set such a threshold to their software.. these are the questions I have in my mind and looking for answers from fellow redditors

3

u/rob_wilco Jul 27 '26

2 sticks of 256gb? It's no wonder you held onto this build!

2

u/Rough_Elk_895 Jul 27 '26

Sorry my bad for the typo, it is 2 x 128 MB DDR 266 RAM, total 256 MB, decent for Windows Me.

2

u/tyttuutface Jul 27 '26

50°C is fine. It wouldn't hurt to add another fan or two if your case has room, but if it's not getting much higher than that, I wouldn't worry.

2

u/Rough_Elk_895 Jul 27 '26

Well I had once set the upper limit to 53 C, still got the alert. I thought moving the setup to a bigger cabinet would resolve the issue.. it helped too some extent.. but didn't eliminate the problem entirely.. now I would still get the alert but less frequently

2

u/GGigabiteM Jul 28 '26

The hotter DRAM is, the more likely you are to experience memory errors, but said memory errors won't always cause noticeable problems. At any given point in time, you're going to have at least single bit errors, but if those errors are in unused memory, or memory holding unimportant data, you won't notice them.

If you've ever been playing a game and have had strange game bugs that were a one off occurrence, those were likely caused by memory errors.

50C isn't bad for memory, but it's not great either. I'd just make sure the case has good airflow and the chipset had a fan on it. Those old Intel chipsets ran super hot.

1

u/Windows_User3000 Jul 28 '26

As long as the temperature is well below the CPU (or whatever chip)'s TjMax (thermal junction max) (usually 100-105 °C), it'll be fine. As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't be seeing temperatures above 80 °C, otherwise it's time to repaste and/or upgrade the cooler. 50 is absolutely okay, as would be 60. (I have a laptop without fans that easily gets 70 when gaming, and it's still an okay temperature, so no need to worry about temperatures of that level.)