Possible heat problem on CPU

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mxsmanic
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Mxsmanic

A friend of mine is having trouble with his PC. Periodically it
freezes up completely. My guess was an overheating CPU. I suggested
he install Motherboard Monitor, which he did. The CPU is at 60° C at
boot, and goes up from there. At around 70° C or somewhat above, the
machine freezes up. (This is an Intel processor, by the way.)

Clearly, then, it seems that the CPU is overheated. I told him to
check the fans. All fans are turning, including the CPU fan, which is
moving fast enough to be a blur.

I then thought that maybe the connection between CPU and heatsink is
bad. I asked him to check the temp on the CPU and then touch the
heatsink fins. At 70° C, they should be scalding hot. He says they
are only just warm. Conclusion: There's inadequate contact between
the CPU package and the heatsink, probably because there's too much or
not enough thermal compound, or it was applied improperly, or the
heatsink was mounted improperly ... or perhaps there is no thermal
compound at all. The heatsink and fan are third-party (not boxed CPU
versions), and the computer was assembled for him by a small company
that builts PCs to order.

I've suggested to him that he remove the fan and heatsink, remove any
thermal compound, then apply new compound carefully and remount the
heatsink and fan. Do all of you agree that this is a good idea? The
compound is cheap. It's true that the processor could be damaged by
removing and remounting the heat sink, but I figure he has nothing
else to lose at this point (the next step, I think, would be a new
processor and possibly a new motherboard). What do you think? Am I
missing any other possibilities?
 
Mxsmanic said:
I've suggested to him that he remove the fan and heatsink, remove any
thermal compound, then apply new compound carefully and remount the
heatsink and fan. Do all of you agree that this is a good idea? The
compound is cheap. It's true that the processor could be damaged by
removing and remounting the heat sink, but I figure he has nothing
else to lose at this point (the next step, I think, would be a new
processor and possibly a new motherboard). What do you think? Am I
missing any other possibilities?
Click to expand...
Think that's good advice. MY betting is on either too much heatsink
paste or they've not removed the protective film from a thermal pad.


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Conor
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Conor said:
Think that's good advice. MY betting is on either too much heatsink
paste or they've not removed the protective film from a thermal pad.
Click to expand...

Is it possible that they just skipped the paste or pad, or would that
burn up the CPU immediately? It occurred to me that they might have
tried to save money assembling the machine, but I don't know if a CPU
can survive with no paste at all.
 
Mxsmanic said:
Is it possible that they just skipped the paste or pad, or would that
burn up the CPU immediately? It occurred to me that they might have
tried to save money assembling the machine, but I don't know if a CPU
can survive with no paste at all.
Click to expand...
Well once upon a time they used to. I can't see them doing it to save
money as I've done dozens of computers with a small tube of artic
silver. In fact I'm still on the same tube a year later.

--
Conor
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Well once upon a time they used to. I can't see them doing it to save
money as I've done dozens of computers with a small tube of artic
silver. In fact I'm still on the same tube a year later.
Click to expand...

Not to mention, warranty claims from dozens of burnt CPUs would be a real
pain in the ass. -Dave
 
Mike said:
Not to mention, warranty claims from dozens of burnt CPUs would be a real
pain in the ass. -Dave
Click to expand...

I was thinking of small hole-in-the-wall companies that wouldn't
necessarily offer any kind of warranty, but would just be assembling
really cheap PCs and cutting corners as much as possible.

This friend lives in a relatively cool climate and didn't notice the
current problem until summer temps rolled around.

Some assemblers can be really crummy. I once bought a PC from a small
company that had a cracked case when I received it, and speakers and a
diskette drive that the assembler had never bothered to connect (I
don't know how he installed the OS, since in those days everything
installed from diskettes).
 
Not to mention, warranty claims from dozens of burnt CPUs would be a real
I was thinking of small hole-in-the-wall companies that wouldn't
necessarily offer any kind of warranty, but would just be assembling
really cheap PCs and cutting corners as much as possible.

This friend lives in a relatively cool climate and didn't notice the
current problem until summer temps rolled around.

Some assemblers can be really crummy. I once bought a PC from a small
company that had a cracked case when I received it, and speakers and a
diskette drive that the assembler had never bothered to connect (I
don't know how he installed the OS, since in those days everything
installed from diskettes).
Click to expand...

Companies that build computers for profit do not do individual OS installs.
What they do is have 3 or 4 hard drives (maybe more) with typical OS/drivers
pre-installed on them, to roughly match the various models of computer
systems that they sell. Then they clone the hard drive that most closely
matches the hardware that you purchase. Let's say they have a "gamer's
special". You and several other people order one. They clone 5 or 6 hard
drives off of the ONE hard drive that has the OS/drivers for the "gamer's
special" installed already. In fact, they usually have the hard drives
cloned in advance, so that they can complete the build in about 10 minutes.
Yes, I said 10 minutes. It doesn't take long to throw the components
together, if that's what you do all day, every day.

If you happened to throw a curve-ball at them, such as upgrading your video
card or sound card (so it no longer matches a pre-configured system), they
then just change the drivers for that one component, and the system is done.

If you are lucky, they then change the Windows Product Key to match the copy
of Windows that they sold you. In many cases, they skipped this step. That
is, until the activation thing with XP kicked in, forcing them to change the
product key every time.

So that is how you could have a system with no external drives operational
and have the OS installed and fully functional. If they have to change
drivers, they don't necessarily have to get them from a disk. They could
connect to the LAN temporarily, or use a memory stick. -Dave
 
I believe that the CPU internal temperature monitor firmware is designed to
shut the processor down when the temp gets past their operating limit.
That's not to say damage couldn't occur, especially if this occurs
repeatedly, but a few occurrences shouldn't be disastrous.

Directions on the Arctic Silver site warn about contamination, etc. What
they don't mention is that any foreign solid matter or significant surface
irregularities on the sink can provide the opportunity for the compound to
'flow' out, leaving you with inadequate thermal contact.

To clean the CPU and the sink, use a clean solvent and a soft cotton cloth,
such as discarded t-shirts. I've used both engine starter fluid--mainly
ethyl ether--as well as denatured alcohol. Denatured alcohol used for
shellac thinning generally contains less water than the 'rubbing' varieties
and is thus to be preferred.

Hth,
Joe
 
jt3 said:
I believe that the CPU internal temperature monitor firmware is designed to
shut the processor down when the temp gets past their operating limit.
That's not to say damage couldn't occur, especially if this occurs
repeatedly, but a few occurrences shouldn't be disastrous.

Directions on the Arctic Silver site warn about contamination, etc. What
they don't mention is that any foreign solid matter or significant surface
irregularities on the sink can provide the opportunity for the compound to
'flow' out, leaving you with inadequate thermal contact.

To clean the CPU and the sink, use a clean solvent and a soft cotton
cloth,
such as discarded t-shirts. I've used both engine starter fluid--mainly
ethyl ether--as well as denatured alcohol. Denatured alcohol used for
shellac thinning generally contains less water than the 'rubbing'
varieties
and is thus to be preferred.

Hth,
Joe
Click to expand...
Is it still under warranty? If so, take it back and let them fix it!
If it's socket 775 it is very easy for one corner of the heat sink to pop
out of position, Can be quite tricky to get all 4 corners tight.
Mike.
 
you mioght also just need a better CPU cooler

do me a favor:
if you have a linux boot cd:
boot the 'rescue system'
just type 'root' at the logon, no pw will be asked
type this:

hwinfo > /tmp/hwinfo.txt

then put a floppy into the fd drive, and type this:

mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy
cp /tmp/hwinfo.txt /media/floppy
sync
umount /media/floppy

and post the file here

would be very interesting to see who actually built that system and very
probably did skimp on the cpu cooler, or replaced the one that should be
there by a lesser model.

Mike
 
COMPUTER PARTS
-VA9000SWA Kandalf Super Tower, Silver Aluminu
-Maxtor 250GB DiamondMax 10 7200RPM Serial ATA w/ 16MB Cach
-Kingston 1GB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRA
-Kingston 1GB PC2-4200 DDR2 SDRA
-Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe w/ DualDDR2, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, 2 x PCI-
x16 SLI (MOTHERBOARD
-Enermax 600W EG701AX-VE SFMA All In One Noisetake
-Intel Pentium 4 Processor 630 3.00 GHz w/ 2MB Cache, EM64
-Sapphire Radeon X1600 XT 256MB PCI-E w/ TV-Out, DVI (Lite Retail
-Thermaltake Big Water Internal Liquid Cooling Syste
-LG Super Multi DVD Writer 16x16 DVD +/-RW Dual-Layer, Black
-Samsung 793DF (Pure Flat CRT, 17in, Silver/Black
-Panasonic 1.44MB Floppy Drive, Blac
-APC Home/Office SurgeArrest 8 Outlet with Telphone/Splitte
Protectio
-LG 16X DVD-ROM, Black
-Microsoft Black Digital Media Keyboard & Optical Mouse Value Pac
2.
-Microsoft Windows XP Professional with SP2
-Maxtor 160GB ONETOUCH EXT
-Zalman ZM-G100 Anti-Corrosion Coolan

-4 stockfan
-Thermaltake radiato

System Information
-CPU: 35C-45C (regular processing, and when the room temp get high
-Motherboard: 30C-38C (regular processing, and when the room temp ge
high
-CPU processing: 44 progra
-CPU when gaming: 35C - 47
-Mother when gaming: 30C - 45

Problems
When ever I play games my computer crashes, and when it crashes i can
move the mouse, I cant use CRTL+ALT+DELETE and the graphics tends t
stay still. Then i have to manually reboot it and then i go into th
bios to see if my CPU temperature reached 60C (60C is amount the P
can take after that it slows down and crash or burn) and when
checked temperature it only reached like 45C-47C and the motherboar
45C

Question
- Is my CPU temperature stable
- Is my Motherboard temperature stable
- Why does the game crash on me
- Is it heat problem
- Is it Hardware problem
- Is it a graphic card problem
- Is it a sofware proble
- Is it CPU problem
 
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