remove pads on athlon?

[Descend492]

OK, I seem to be having a problem with heat on my AMD 850 Thunderbird. I've got a really good heatsink/fan (Alpha if my memory serves me correctly) and I"m using radio shack themal grease (I don't really care if it's not brand name thermal grease). So that's not a problem, but I never removed the pads on the cpu. I remember this being a big debate back in the day when I get the cpu, so I decided not to remove them, and it's been doing fine since. Now I"m having heat problems. I want the definitive answer: should I remove the pads? THanks

 

[Mitzi]

The little black pads on each corner? NO NO NO! They are there to stop the HSF from crushing the core.

What heat problems are you having? What are your temps under full load?

Have you checked that none of your case fans have died or become obstucted by a cable or something?

 

[Descend492]

well...my computer just shuts down randomly. I thought I fixed it by reseating the fan/hs, but now it only takes longer to shutdown the PC. None of my case fans are broken (1 in, 1 out and a power supply). I now have the case open and a table fan blowing in, and the room is quite cold. However, the computer still shuts down after a while. I have a proggie that shows the CPU temp, but it gives two values, one says 35.7 C and the other says 25 C. It also gives a "mainboard" temp of 23.2 C. When I look in BIOS, the value is around 36, so I"m guessing the first one is the real CPU temp.

edit:

oh yea...the voltage is at 1.75 (auto-detect). I tried lowering this, but the CPU wouldn't start up. The specs for the t-bird say 1.6V, but I can't get it to run that low....

 

[cookieman]

Descend492:

The vcore for Duron is 1.6 and for TBird is 1.75. Do not lower it becuse you can experience stability problems.
Do not remove the pads.

As I see it your problem could not be heat related. Try giving more info about PSU/MB/VCORE readings/IO readings/other voltage readings.
How loaded is your system? Have you tried to put all BIOS settings to "default" of "fail safe" ?
Does it shuts down or it simply reboots?

Maybe the PSU cannot handle the load. Mine doesn't even boot up if it's 31C outside, only after I unplugged to lett it rest for a while...

Give more info, we can only speculate right now ....
Cheers,

 

[Descend492]

ok, here's some more info:

(nothing oc'd)
Athlon tbird 850 mhz
MSI k7t pro2a mobo
256 SDRAM (generic)
geforce 2 mx vid card
soundblaster value
TV card (don't use)
audio input card (don't use often)
SCSI card (internal CD burner attached)
IBM deskstar 40 ghz hdd
Sparkle power supply unit (300W)

Alpha hs/fan
two case fans (one in, one out)
one ps fan

core voltage: 1.75V
I/O voltage: 3.44 V
idle cpu usage: 3-6%

my system is rarely taxed for resources or processing power.

When it shuts down, it shuts down...no restart or anything.

I have another problem that has been persisting for a while that may be related to this:
As long as I've had the computer, it rarely boots up the first time. I usually have to turn it on and off a few times before the monitor turns on and the rest of the boot happens. This might be unrelated completely, I have no clue. It hasn't really been much of a problem, just an annoyance.

It's been running on the current setup for a while now...no major changes recently. This just happened one day without any warning.

The system is doing better after I reset the heatsink, but it still shutsdown after about 30 minutes. I havent' noticed a pattern in the shutdown temperature

Anything else?

 

[cookieman]

Hey your older problem might actualy help us "debug" this.

What I know is that if it does that (rearely booting up the first time) then the PSU is unable to handle load at boot, when everything is spinning up and eating up a lot of amps.

Some PSU have internal protection that "Shuts down" if it cannot :
- handle the load or
- detects some short-circuity (like when you somehow do not plug the power correctly to the HDD)
- or it has exceeded some max temp internaly. Keep in mind the ATX psu are allways ON (well providing standby 5V...)

What you can do:
- remove everything on which the system do not depend : (cd-writer/tvtunner/audio input/sb live....), and try booting up a couple of times
and see if the problems persist. If I suspected right this should remove your boot/shutdown problem.
- try switching to a bigger PSU. 400W or so....


I guess your PSU is on its death...

Keep us updated on your testing,
Cheers,

 

[Descend492]

ok...this is really weird.

I did what you recommended and unplugged what I didn't need. I unplugged the TV tuner and my extra HDD (I forgot I had already taken out the sound input card). The comp booted up without any hitches after that (problem #1 solved). But then I got into Windows, and I've been trying to print this one thing, and it crashed a coupla times while I was printing it (but also a lot when I wasn't printing anything). SO I try twice to print this thing, and the comp shut down twice while I was printing! Only 5 minutes into it being on! This is really weird. The printer gets its own power, so I don't think it's that. The room should also supply enough amps for this to be alright.

One thing that I did notice is that, while I was printing, the CPU usage was going between 50%-70%. Nothing else was running! is this normal? The temp wasn't going up or anything, just the usage.

I have no clue what this is now

edit:

it also shuts down when the printer's not going. So the printing being on causes it to shut down, but isn't the only thing.

 

[cookieman]

weird,

Well, try to unplug the printer from the MB-printer port and test the system troughly.
If it is working, than put the printer's plug into the same plug that goes to the Case. So you surely are on the same PHASE. Test again with the printer on....

You can also look if the CASE is grounded and try to groud the printer too.
What printer are you using? What are the LPT1 settings in bios ?

Cheers,

 

[Mitzi]

Sounds like a power issue.

A 300 watt power supply should easily be able to handle all your devices. The fact that you took out two devices and the machine powers up first time certainly points to a unstable power supply.

It could also be the actual power being supplied to the machine, could be spikes or brownouts causing the problems. Ideally you could try a UPS but they are not cheap, but a decent surge protector should also help.

Could you take the machine round to a friends house and see if its unstable there?