CPU is overheating?

[Logistics]

Can bad caps on the motherboard or PSU cause a system to start overheating? (Mind you this system is not overclocked in any way! It's a very basic Compaq with a P4 I think)

I have a system that developed some problems, apparently and won't boot into windows anymore; it was rebooting itself when I tried Safe Mode and Normal Mode, and IIRC trying Last Known Good resulted in a message about some folder or file missing from windows/system32/?/? that could possibly be fixed using the restore option on the install disc or recovery disc, whatever.

Long story short, it froze while loading the install disc, and at least once it shut itself off with a tone I had never heard that went HIGH low HIGH low like some sort of alarm. The bottom line is this system is overheating for some reason. To find out I let it sit in the Hardware Monitor screen of the bios and it slowly climbed to the high 190'sF and would get just over 200F so I then stopped the CPU fan with my finger to see what would happen and it could get to 204F and then seconds later it would shut itself off and do the same HIGH low HIGH low alarm.

I'll take my old 300W Antec, that I recapped, over there today and see if that helps.

[kc8adu]

Re: CPU is overheating?

i have seen that wierd hsf clip get sprung and not hold the hsf tight to the cpu.

[chipper]

Re: CPU is overheating?

Holy Moly. I was just about to post a thread here about overheating a PSU , and how "it" could lead to bad capacitors in the first place. Then I read 200 f , no way.
I was about to say that the normal operating temperature is not the thermal rating of a CPU.

While the thermal rating may be 70C or something more than that , that is the temperature at which the CPU has been tested to fail upon. So , running at 200f is the reason why the computer would shut down and sound the bios alarm. The bios alarm is connected to the little tiny speaker that is in some computers , or it is on the mobo in some kind of chip form. Obviously , if you hear this alarm , it is really telling you to shut the computer off , if you don't , a built in timer shuts it down for you.

I was going to say that I refer to anything above 50C as cause for attention , even though you can run up to 60C. There are many people who will not take the temperature ranges into consideration before overclocking or turning up their settings in the bios. If you have not connected a system fan in your case , you should not turn anything up above the default levels. Moreover , if you do not have any fan on your video card [as some don't have] , this will add to any changes that you make in the bios as related to FSB or clock speed.

It is surprising that the motherboard manuals do not specifically warn you to pay attention to what options you have for cooling. Even though there are warnings that specifically tell you that it is not recommended to set your settings above the maximum settings [with reference to overclocking]. The warnings should spell it out , that extra heat may occur or be caused by raising any of the bios settings. (causing restart)

Since I have learned some things in these areas specifically , I can now have my CPU always running at the same temperature as the system is. Which was not easy , considering that your CPU will run at a much higher temperature than your system in general. If and when I had any problem such as this , I immediately reach for my 128mb memory chip and flash the bios to the default levels after shutting the system down. I would even unplug the unit and let it cool before attempting to run it at all.

These high temperature symptoms can be related to a bare bones computer being fed by 3gb of memory chips [with aluminum heatplates] , on older mobo's , and while a super video card with 1gb of memory is also being put together in a system that has a 250watt power supply or less. It's important to note that the heat produced by these mega upgrades has to go somewhere and that preparations must be made accordingly before buying equipment or hardware of any kind for this reason. [overheating or failure]

[chipper]

Re: CPU is overheating?

Sorry for my possible overreaction , but my system runs so quiet I can almost not know when it is on and I am using it. You should make sure that you have as little memory as possible on the system somehow. Take 1 or 2 of the memory chips out , while the plug is out.

Then recheck the temperature range that it runs at , bios , or not. Bad capacitors can cause this , but they will need to be checked while running as a first step for heat with your fingertip. If they are hot , at your lowest settings , they are gone. Like I said , what has happened is that in an extreme temperature situation , Windows XP will "disable" or even "uninstall" the offending hardware that is causing a problem by autodetecting the problem source. XP is very strange like that , it has happened many times , even on simple driver discrepancies , so 200f is definately a discrepancy that XP will dump. You may even see XP tell you that it created a dump file as a result. Best to unplug it , remove any offending possibilities where possible and restart before the HardDrive is overheated or corrupted completely.

If XP gets corrupted , you can say goodbye to the Operating System files and you will have to reload XP from scratch. This is the problem with XP , it is smart enough to do whatever it has to to survive any occurence. XP basically requires you to think before you act , and that definately applies to hardware and setup. If you can restart and reload windows so that your Win32 files will be recopied in the process. I would imagine it is the video card files that caused a problem , but , even CPU drivers can do the same. It has been my experience that the Hyperion drivers for AMD processors are not any good at all. They peak the system at the CPU where you will already be producing most of the heat. (not good).

Uninstall whatever you can to run. Even as kc8adu says : the heatsink could be the problem , as AMD does warn that improper Heatsink size will effect operation or cause system failures. Putting a finger on the heatsink is the best indication of how well the CPU is doing , if it's too hot to touch , it's wrong somewhere and needs attention.

Of course , putting a video game into your CD/DVD Rom will do this as well if your system almost meets the requirements , and can't quite do anything except freeze up or hang while overheating. It's best to shut the system off if a video game takes longer than a couple minutes to start , having the case open , on a second attempt , checking the CPU with your finger or with a temperature gauge of some sort , will make it so that you will know it won't work no matter how long you wait for it to load.

XP , even scratches it's head sometimes. cool out