Major temp problems - your advice

I hve had problems with my computer since the day i bought it nearly 2 years ago. I was having problems playing games and after reading some stuff on the web decided to open the side panel of my computer and put a household fan blowing into the guts of it. From that day on i have installed 5 case fans including a blowhole,and replaced my heatsink twice and even added an airconditioning unit to my room for the hot summer months due to crashes. I can play games now but out of curiousity i downloaded MBM5 and was shocked at what i am seeing. 74 degrees celsius with windows loaded. my case temp reads 30 degrees celcius which is good i imagine. I know that those cpu temps are dangerous and i don't know what to do or what the culprit is. Is this a bad MOBO since i've hd problems from the start? I hve a very good heatsink on there- a swiftech mcx478-v with a 90mm vantec tornado cooling it with arctic silver 5 applied. when i go into bios and check pc health status my cpu temp is around 40c. MBM didn't have my exact board in the list(as45gt)- they had the as45gt-r which is essentially the same board but it has raid capable. So do i have a problem - and if so what do i need to do?

 

Is this a compact system? If so, i would be very impressed if you managed to get 5 case fans into it!

Obvious things to check : is the heatsink on the CPU properly? And have you tried re-applying the thermal paste, after cleaning the heatsink thoroughly with isopropanol alcohol? Have you made sure the heatsink is on the right way? (i know it sound obvious, but with socket 7 its very easy to get it round the wrong way, and it hampers cooling significantly as the heatsink isnt square over the CPU)

What CPU is this? If it is an Athlon XP, its about 6 degrees off not functioning, and if thats its idle state, then im not supprised you're crashing a whole lot. P4 (prescott) just as much so. if it were a northwood it would have shut down a lot earlier.

It might be the motherboard. Have you tried it with different ram? Have you tried it with a different video card? Have you unplugged everything but video card, ram, processor and hard drive?

It is possible that MBM is giving a dodgey reading, but the case temps seem nominal to me.

 

If it wasn't for the computer crashes and whatnot I would have expected the thermal diode to be faulty (which would just give you bad readings..). But since you are having some stability issues as well I would do what Goldfish recommended. As a note of caution, applying too much thermal paste can cause it to get hot as well. Make sure your applying it according to the manufactures recommendation.

If that doesn't fix it I'm not sure if it would be a mobo issue or possibly even some fault in the processor itself. What kind of mobo is it? Some mobos made by certain companies like ECS (like the k7s5a) have a variety of issues that may be the culprit especially if its a AMD processor.

Nj

 

Speaking of manufacturers instructions
http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

Follow it to the letter and you cant go wrong . I've found that paint brush cleaner works wonders for getting rid of old dried on paste, as long as you make sure you clean it off with isopropanol alcohol afterwards, to prevent any residue. Make sure you give it a good scrubbing! Clean the CPU off as best you can, a cotton bud dipped in isopropanol alcohol works well for this, with the excess tapped off. Make sure its all evapourated off before applying the thermal paste though!

And a tip for you as well, I've found AS Ceramique is much much easier to apply than AS 5, and gives me just as good temps as AS 5 does.

 

This is a p4 2.8 533bus. I'm possitive the cpu is seated correctly, i followed the instructions carefully. I performed a series of upgrades last week and one of the upgrades was upgrading my processor, so this was a brand new processor that the brand new swiftech heatsink was attached to. I put a small dab of AS5 on the middle of the top of the processor a little larger than a bb,so there was no need of cleaning anything with alchohol or whatnot. The mobo is shuttle as45gt based on the sis648 chipset. Goldfish you said a northwood would shutdown at this temperature- yet i can play games makes me think that maybe this reading from MBM isn't right. Another interesting thing is when i first open mbm the cpu tempreading is great- 38c -then it makes a jump to 74c after 10 seconds or so and doesnt come back down. I didnt have mbm installed until yesterday so i can't say what my old temp readings were with my old heatsink and processor- but checking in bios health status my readings are 5c cooler with this new heatsink.

 

If it is the mobo that is defective, what scenario could it be that would give me cpu temps that high. My system is barely stable with an air conditioning unit in the room, a 92mm tornado blowing on a top of the line swiftech heatsink and 5 case fans. If it is the mobo, what could have gone wrong with it and if i need to replace it what is a good board to go with. I have a p4 2.8ghz 533 fsb northwood processor and i really don't want to upgrade to 800mhz fsb. I removed my soundcard and network card - i couldnt remove my dvd, cd-rw,and floppy without pliers those molex connectors were really in there good- and booted it up minus those two parts and still got 74c readings. I have gig kingston value ram ddr333, a geforce 5950 ultra, a 500w power supply(brand new), wd 80gig harddrive. I'm about ready to throw this thing out my window- in two years i have aged 10- i think i'mgetting a few grey hairs too

 

Okay i think it was a false alarm. i did some reading and adjusted the sensor for my cpu in MBM and it more closely reflects what my bios says.I thinkit would have been impossible for me to play games at 74c without major hangups. Now i'm running a nice cool 35c 7c over my system temp. i guess you can mark this thread as finished thanks for your help guys- peace

 

Glad you got it sorted