Athlon Cooling Help Please

[haggy]

Hi All - Kinda new here, been buying and selling some good stuff on the Trade forum lately.

Here is the deal. I have an Athlon 64 3700+, 1GB Ram and a new 6800GT AGP Video Card.

When I am playing HL2 or Counter-Strike my PC randomly powers off. When I reboot the CPU temp is showing 130-140 degrees temp. This is the only thing I can think of that is causing my system to reboot.

I have the case open and a fan blowing on it and it is still heating up on me so I am looking to get a better cooling system in place. Currently I just have the generic heatsink and fan that came with my CPU and Evox motherboard.

What is the best cooling solution for a Athlon 64 3700+? I am looking for something easy and simple so no water or liquid cooling...just air/heatsinks.

I greatly appreciate the help.

Thanks for your time.

[Docmhz]

140 F = 60 C which is not abnormal for an A64 under load with stock heatsink. I wouldn't think it would shut down at that temp, unless it had been quite a bit hotter until the restart.

I would make sure that your current hsf is making good contact with the chip and that you have a decent thermal compound in the correct amount on the chip as well.

That said, there are many options for aftermarket air coolers. Zalman, Scythe, Thermaltake just to name a few.

[DeadlyAura]

When you built the PC, did you apply thermal paste/grease to the CPU?

I don't know you level of experience so I'm sorry if I insult you with such a dumb question. :D

Perhaps you even overlooked it by mistake. Take the HSF off. reapply thermal grease/paste, remount the HSF and see what happens. With the stock HSF I was pulling 45*C load temps and 35*C idle.

After you do that, check your temps again. Within the range I gave is generally normal range for the stock HSF.

If you want better cooling, I use the XP-90 and it works great. Its also cheap.

A little more expensive would be the XP-120 and the Big Typhoon. Those are a bit more but offer great cooling.

[Zero82z]

The best budget cooler out there right now is the Arctic Cooling Freezer Pro. I would suggest getting that, as it will be much better than an XP-90 and would allow you to overclock by a decent amount as well. The cooler can be found for around $20-30, which is around the same price if not less than an XP-90 with a good fan.

[Smoove910]

Ensure you remove the plastic film from the bottom of the heatsink before installing.

[Zoogle]

Ensure you remove the plastic film from the bottom of the heatsink before installing.

Ouch...

[haggy]

Thank you all for the responses. I remember putting the paste on but I have some extra and will re-do it to make sure.

As to the temps - I read a lot on this lately since it is really pissin me off (sorry for the language)...nothing worse then being right in the middle of a game and BOOM the PC shuts down.

If it is not the temp it may be my Ram since it is a cheap old 1gb stick that I got a few years back....so maybe time to find some in the trade section.

Thanks again all.

[ZXN]

Sounds like a ram problem. If you can up the voltage on yer ram a little bit in bios.

[DeadlyAura]

Run MemTest on it. See how it goes. That will tell you what your problem is.

[haggy]

If your PC locks up during the Memtest and then powers off like it does in various games I take it the RAM is bad? haha.

Thanks for the memtest idea - I think I know the issue now.

Now to find some PC3200 good RAM.