What happens when the chipset gets too hot?

[Nazo]

My grandmother's computer has nothing but temperature issues. She insists on hiding it from, well, herself, so she has it inside this cabinet. You tell me why... Anyway, the point is that it's running pretty hot. According to motherboard monitor, the chasis temperature can go up to 37C or so. Maybe occasionally even more. The HD would fly up to high temperatures as well, but I think I've gotten it cooled down enough now. Anyway, I realized after I finished up with everything that it just has passive cooling on the northbridge. But I'd have to take the motherboard out to get the stupid things holding it in place out, and right now I'm just not going to be playing around with someone's motherboard (especially since I can't find a screwdriver that doesn't have at least some magnetic properties.) So, I'm wondering, do I need to switch that out the next chance I get? You see, we've had issues with her computer before. Specifically I made a long recording (trying to convert her old cassette tapes to CDs) in the area of 200-300MB, and the file was crashing every program I tried to use it in. Finally, I tried to make a copy and windows said it had a cyclic redundancy error -- which is pretty rare on a harddrive... I ran chkdsk and it took about an hour finding errors left and right. Well, I may or may not have cooled it down a bit. So, I'm wondering, is it possible that the chipset running too hot could have caused some of this, or is it for sure purely the harddrive? Oh, and the CPU isn't a problem btw (it's one of those older Intel P4 2.4GHz CPUs) so you don't have to be worried about it.

I'm thinking I might break out the epoxy and at least put one of my little heatsinks on her southbridge. I know it controls the HD among other things, so theoretically it might be possible it got too hot. I haven't decided for sure though since the southbridge isn't supposed to be able to get very hot normally (though, in my case, it definitely does as it is the limiting factor when I change my FSB.)

 

[defakto]

cut two holes int he back of the cabinet, and out at the top a cool in at the bottome, get an old at powersupply and a pair of low rpm 120 mm fans one point in and one out to get some nice airflow into that enclosure, might help ALOT.

 

[Nazo]

I know, I know. I just don't think she'll let me. You just have no idea. You see, she actually had them MADE for her by a family member. Ok, so he won't charge an arm and a leg, but, still, he bought all this heavy wood, paints that make it spill resistant, and so on, even made the things look kind of nice, so even if he charged nothing at all for services, it's still not cheap. So she might be a little resistant to such an idea. I've actually had a thought of drilling holes and even attaching a fan directly to it, but it would have to be an AC fan or we'd never get the PC out, so I worry about EFI through that power panel causing issues for the PC.

Of course, any other thoughts like that are more than welcome.

 

[kick@ss]

Have you tried reformatting it?

 

[Nazo]

Uhm, no.... I'd have to back up EVERYTHING, then reinstall from scratch. I'll reformat when Windows will no longer boot thank you very much... Besides, the problem will just happen again over and over and eventually I'll get sick of reinstalling.

Anyway, first and foremost, I need to know just which part it is that is causing the worst troubles first and concentrate on getting that part cool enough. THEN I'll figure out what to do next.


EDIT: Ok, I just looked at her PC. Prime95 has crashed again. Well, the HD was definitely getting hot because that CRC error could almost only occur if the file was written incorrectly. However, I suppose that the chipset is definitely getting too hot, else how does something like Prime95 crash? The hd won't crash a program, right? BTW, the hd temperature program had just triggered and given me an alert that the HD hit 42C.

EDIT2: Well, while I was at it, I went ahead and opened up the case, broke out the artic silver epoxy and attached a heatsink that used to be on a chipset (I canibalize every part of broken mbs that seems like they could be useful) to the southbridge. Worst case scenario, it will change nothing. Since I had the stuff out, I picked up one of those tiny little copper videocard memory heatsinks that came with the last Iceberq I got and stuck it on the top of the passive heatsink on the northbridge. I know this won't make MUCH difference, but, sticking up a bit more means a bit more air passes through it, and, it is copper after all, so, if nothing else, it can absorb just a tiny bit more of the heat. The HD is now at the bottom with both of the front case fans blowing across it. All in all, this might help as much as I can hope for. In the end, the problem comes down to the fact that with so little room for the air to get away, it just keeps circling through the computer and getting hotter and hotter. She may have to just give up and move it elsewhere or only use it for short periods of time at all (making the tape recording at least impossible on her pc, and I really don't feel like doing it all myself... No games and no anime while recording after all.) ^_^

 

[Nazo]

BTW, one thing I was wanting to know, just at what point is it that you can do damage to the motherboard? Or will it always crash before damage can occur to the board?