Athlon Cooling Help Please

H

haggy

n00b
Joined
Oct 28, 2006
Messages
55
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Ensure you remove the plastic film from the bottom of the heatsink before installing.
 
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.
 
Sounds like a ram problem. If you can up the voltage on yer ram a little bit in bios.
 
Run MemTest on it. See how it goes. That will tell you what your problem is.
 
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.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top