Lock-up; overheating my guess

[anjulpa]

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.

 

[conlan]

Welcome to AT.

Download and install Motherboard Monitor It is no longer supported, but your mobo is on the list. Run MBM, and post the temps here so we can better help you to determine if this a heat related issue.

 

[anjulpa]

Hi..
Thanks for replying.

I use Intel Active Monitor which sufficiently well gives me my temperatures (or so I think).. and they presently happen to be much less than what my motherboard has seen. Is MBM better in some sort? Even if it is I'm going to have a hard time installing and using it... it doesn't take time die everytime I boot.

Here are the approximate values I get these days....

Processor ~ 50* C average (this has gone easily upto 70 without problems in the past)
Zone 1 ~ 40* C average
Zone 2 ~ 45* C average (this used to go beyond 50 lots of times during heavy load when Active monitor went crazy with its alarms, I think its the RAM slot, but I never had many problems)
CPU fan speed ~ 5000 RPM

Given the weather here these temperatures are pretty normal. Could Active monitor give wrong readings?

Anyway I also need an input on how I could monitor my card temperature.. afaik there's no sensor there.

PS. I remember one of the fans (CPU/Cabinet) once changing its speed (I heard a drifting noise) before a lock - up, although this doesn't always happen that way.

PPS. Should I try memtest86?

 

[conlan]

Originally posted by: anjulpa
Hi..
Thanks for replying.

I use Intel Active Monitor which sufficiently well gives me my temperatures (or so I think).. and they presently happen to be much less than what my motherboard has seen. Is MBM better in some sort? Even if it is I'm going to have a hard time installing and using it... it doesn't take time die everytime I boot.

Here are the approximate values I get these days....

Processor ~ 50* C average (this has gone easily upto 70 without problems in the past)
Zone 1 ~ 40* C average
Zone 2 ~ 45* C average (this used to go beyond 50 lots of times during heavy load when Active monitor went crazy with its alarms, I think its the RAM slot, but I never had many problems)
CPU fan speed ~ 5000 RPM

Given the weather here these temperatures are pretty normal. Could Active monitor give wrong readings?

Anyway I also need an input on how I could monitor my card temperature.. afaik there's no sensor there.

PS. I remember one of the fans (CPU/Cabinet) once changing its speed (I heard a drifting noise) before a lock - up, although this doesn't always happen that way.

PPS. Should I try memtest86?

Try running ATI Tool, if your VidCard is supported it will show it's temps.

Running Memtest is a pretty normal diagnostic tool, your dealer should have done it. If not, run it.

 

[anjulpa]

Hi

I'm on my machine now... Its been running for the last 15 minutes without crashing. I hope it stays that way.

I installed ATitool and it seems my card doesn't have temperature monitoring enabled.

Also... here's a screenshot of my CPU temperatures.. they have been much beyond that and working well in the past. Its hot here.

Intel Active Monitor Screenshot

(What's my best option to put an image here btw?)

Some help would be awesome. I'll get my smps checked first thing now that my exams are also over.


Thanks in advance

 

[anjulpa]

This is the second time I've run my machine for more than 10 minutes without crashing, mostly because I think I ran it after a few days.

One thing I notice is that whenever it freezes no fan/psu/light misbehaves.

 

[anjulpa]

Hi people

I could really use some help...

Any guesses would do. I also have problems booting sometimes.