My Athlon 64 3800+ (skt 939) keeps overheating. It has Cool N' Quiet enabled and Smart Fan. It's not overclocked and is on the standard Heatsink and TIM. I managed to catch EasyTune5 before it crashed and it says the fan had stopped and the CPU was up to 61°c. But when I turn it back on 5 mins later the fan is working and will carry on working for 15 mins, then it will crash again, then turn off. Is there any damage done to the CPU and how can I stop it happening? Dave EDIT: It's happened 3 times now!
If you remove the heatsink and fan, and see any obvious marks of overheating (burn marks, dark black scortches etc) then you have a problem. 61C is high, since mine is running at 45C right now.... But I've got a Zalman cooler blowing on mine with a copper heatsink. If you find that you didnt damage your cpu, I would buy another heatsink and fan and install them. If you do intense stuff on your computer (I game... ALOT) then the stardard stuff that came with it is a piece of crap. PS, do you smell anything funny in your case? Like smoke?
I will be hones it diod happen when I was playing NFS: Carbon when it happened. No funny smell coming from the case. I will remove it tonight and check for burn marks. Another thing I will do is see if it's a problem with the fan by running it on a spare PSU for a few hours using a 4 to 3 pin connector. Would buying another heatsink void my warranty? Dave
that is hot for a 939 amd chip. i would start by looking to make sure all the vents in your case are clear and not blocked by dust and the like. i would then do the same for the heatsink its self and any and all fans. if cleaning all that left you with your temps around the same i would look to see if your bios is oervolting your cpu. if it wasnt i would look into a good aftermarket heatsink fan for it.
If you have a pre built computer, then yes, because I dont think they cover modding and adding other aftermarket items to the pc.
I have had it running again just idling and this is a screenshot of SpeedFan, EasyTune 5 and CPU-Z. After this let it cool and removed the Heatsink. It revealed no burn marks or anything like that (there was a bit of dust but nowhere much as some heatsinks I have seen). The thermal compound was solid (i'm not sure if there was enough of it though). I then tested the fan using a spare PSU and that's been working perfectly. It's not pre-built.
It sounds like there's an issue with the fan controller on the motherboard. Try disabling smartfan, and if you can't live with the noise, buy a hardware fan controller like a Sunbeam Rheobus or Zalman ZM-MFC1.
Refitted the heatsink (with dust blown out) and disabled SmartFan. Noise is OK, temperature is down now (can idle at 29C with Cool N' Quiet enabled, up to 47C after 15 mins of Prime95). I will buy some Arctic Silver to try and bring those temperatures down a bit more. What would you say is the maximum safe temperature for a 939 chip?
