Long story. And I'm a newbie. As much as I never touch the insides of my machine myself.
Ok.
It began 2 years ago (August, 2004) when I bought my machine with the following specifications. No points for deducing its not an awesome cooling setup:
Pentium 4 2.8 GHz 1 MB L2 cache (Prescott, bought while intel was still struggling with heat sink designs)
Intel D865GBF motherboard, on board graphics and sound
Memory 512 MB (no heatsink, has given me the maximum heating warnings yet)
Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro
300W p.s.u.
1 cabinet fan.
here's a pic of a card that looks exactly like mine
PIC
Where I live it goes really hot. 45 degrees centigrade in summers. Our hostels don't allow any room cooling apart from a ceiling fan.
Anyway.
When I got my first heating error (on the CPU) I opened my case. I also found out that the Radeon fan (which is miniature by any standards) struggling. Sluggish. It ran slowly and occasionally made noises. I took it to my dealer who did nothing about it, saying its the psu and probably wouldn't be of much consequence. I decided to wait and see too.
For two years I've managed to run the machine successfully without any frying. All games ran fine, except for summers when I didn't try taking any risks.
3 weeks ago while loading BF2 my system shutdown everything with just the motherboard light up. All fans and the smps down.
I took it to my dealer who promptly found out the smps to be at fault. He also found the motherboard filters (the yellow tori beside the processor seat) to be on the verge of blowing up, so he sent it for a replacement.
Another week later, with a new motherboard and a brand new 450 W smps I run my machine for 3 days without a problem, when suddenly it starts weird behavior. I start my machine it boots up cleanly, runs everything, but freezes within 10 minutes of operation. Same thing if I start again.
I take it to my dealer again. It runs cleanly there, for half an hour straight without any complications. I run games to test. (ps. the dealer had an a/c although it still wasn't very cold)
I bring it back hoping it would run here too. And it does for 2 days after which the problem returns.
I noticed the following things:
* After the new bigger PSU the card fan performed much better. It looked for the first time like it was putting any effort.
* Whenever lock-ups happen if I touch any part (heat sink or the memory chips) for my card they are very hot.
I have no idea what the problem could be. I have guesses:
* bad motherboard
* bad power supply
* my radeon, getting all the power it now needs is using it to its full capacity, heating away in glory
* the fan now rotating at its full potential is causing heating by friction or something
* RAM?
Overheating is my best guess, though I don't understand why I can immediately start my machine immediately after a lock up.
I can give more information... really, I'm desparate. My dealer has little idea what could have happened.
Thanks in advance.
PS. I've thought a lot about third party cooling solutions which seem so attractive now that my card is out of warranty, but I live in India where such a concept is still, a concept.
Ok.
It began 2 years ago (August, 2004) when I bought my machine with the following specifications. No points for deducing its not an awesome cooling setup:
Pentium 4 2.8 GHz 1 MB L2 cache (Prescott, bought while intel was still struggling with heat sink designs)
Intel D865GBF motherboard, on board graphics and sound
Memory 512 MB (no heatsink, has given me the maximum heating warnings yet)
Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro
300W p.s.u.
1 cabinet fan.
here's a pic of a card that looks exactly like mine
PIC
Where I live it goes really hot. 45 degrees centigrade in summers. Our hostels don't allow any room cooling apart from a ceiling fan.
Anyway.
When I got my first heating error (on the CPU) I opened my case. I also found out that the Radeon fan (which is miniature by any standards) struggling. Sluggish. It ran slowly and occasionally made noises. I took it to my dealer who did nothing about it, saying its the psu and probably wouldn't be of much consequence. I decided to wait and see too.
For two years I've managed to run the machine successfully without any frying. All games ran fine, except for summers when I didn't try taking any risks.
3 weeks ago while loading BF2 my system shutdown everything with just the motherboard light up. All fans and the smps down.
I took it to my dealer who promptly found out the smps to be at fault. He also found the motherboard filters (the yellow tori beside the processor seat) to be on the verge of blowing up, so he sent it for a replacement.
Another week later, with a new motherboard and a brand new 450 W smps I run my machine for 3 days without a problem, when suddenly it starts weird behavior. I start my machine it boots up cleanly, runs everything, but freezes within 10 minutes of operation. Same thing if I start again.
I take it to my dealer again. It runs cleanly there, for half an hour straight without any complications. I run games to test. (ps. the dealer had an a/c although it still wasn't very cold)
I bring it back hoping it would run here too. And it does for 2 days after which the problem returns.
I noticed the following things:
* After the new bigger PSU the card fan performed much better. It looked for the first time like it was putting any effort.
* Whenever lock-ups happen if I touch any part (heat sink or the memory chips) for my card they are very hot.
I have no idea what the problem could be. I have guesses:
* bad motherboard
* bad power supply
* my radeon, getting all the power it now needs is using it to its full capacity, heating away in glory
* the fan now rotating at its full potential is causing heating by friction or something
* RAM?
Overheating is my best guess, though I don't understand why I can immediately start my machine immediately after a lock up.
I can give more information... really, I'm desparate. My dealer has little idea what could have happened.
Thanks in advance.
PS. I've thought a lot about third party cooling solutions which seem so attractive now that my card is out of warranty, but I live in India where such a concept is still, a concept.