Hey guys im new to these forms but i looked all over the internet looking for a solution to my problem, See i have a Gigabyte GA-7N400L mobo and a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ cpu. i have a 350w PSU and a XFX Geforce FX 5500 video card and 1536mb of OCZ ram. But the problem is that when im on my Comp for about 2hrs to 3hrs it will just freeze up and theres nothing i can do about it except hold the power button down and manual shutdown i looked in my BIOS and it starts at about 50C then will climb to 60C within 20min and i got Motherboard Monitor and it says pretty much the same as the BIOS i also got CPUidle which cools the CPU down about 5-10C but the other night it still froze at like 44C i have gone out and bought Artic Silver 5 thermal paste and have applied that several different ways like a nice even thin layer and one time kinda thick but it hasnt changed the temp i also have therma take Heatsink and Fan. the HS is all copper and the fan works i have tried everything in my grasp to fix it but nothing is working. i have 3 fans in there and i have double checked EVERYTHING and still nothing is working. So anyone out there that can maybe help, it would be most appreciated.
If it is locking up at 44*C, heat is not your issue. 60*C on a loaded AMD may be a little on the high side, but if it were mine, I wouldn't worry about it too much. You need to start looking elsewhere. Your memory is overclocked? You have heatsinks on the chips? Set everything back to default in bios and boot again. Do what you normally do on the comp. See how it reacts. If it still locks up, pull one part out at a time to try to eliminate the faulty component. I would start with removing memory, and work your way through your PCI cards, etc. How many drives are you running? You may want to kick that PSU up a bit to maybe a 500W if you have a few optic/hard drives runnin. Good luck. ~Rich
thanks for the reply but i haven't overclocked my ram and i have tried pulling out each one and trying them individually and i only have 1 HD which is a 40GB Maxtor and My Heatsink sits flat on top of the CPU, but i can get into BIOS and look at everything but i cant configure things because a couple of months ago accidently set a SUPERVISOR password and now its locked me out of everything and the password that i created doesnt even work so all i can do is look at stuff like PC health status and temps
Download the newest bios and reflash the bios, that should fix any password problems. You have a cooling problem sounds like to me. Those temps sound high for a "stock" system. One thing to check is your v-core, that's your cpu voltage. More volts = more temperature, so maybe you've messed the voltage settings up. Flashing the bios to the latest should set everything back to stock. One thing to do after flashing the bios is to reset CMOS, find out how to do that on your motherboard. Make sure that your are getting air FLOW in your case, fans don't help much if the air around the cpu/heatsink is blocked. Hint leave the sides off the case. Another thing if this doesn't work is that it could be your power supply, if your psu isn't "stable" (in other words the voltage fluctuates) then this can cause overheating problems. So it could be a case of your psu getting hot and then having voltage problems, this could cause both overheating and crashes. That 350watt psu is definitely LIGHT for your rig.
thanks for the reply demon dog but how exactly do you flash your bios to the newest ones. but on that note i did go to "Award BIOS" which are the BIOS my comp uses and submitted a request for new BIOS and about 12hrs later i got an e-mail saying that they got my request form and have my system infomation and now they want me to call their toll free hotline and they say they have a few questions about my motherboard so should i just do this or what other option do i have????
actually i went and pulled the battery off the motherboard for like 30sec and put it back in and now i have access to everything in the BIOS and i found that my DIMM is running at normal voltage and my VCORE is the same so what should i do next, i dont have the money to go out and buy a new PSU but is there any other altenate solutions?
ericddog A old trick,get a large floor fan,take the sides off your computer,set fan near the side aim the fan into the computer..use your computer like ye normally would if computer does not lock up its a heat problem.if it locks up ye have other problems. cheers
ow by the way should the fan on the heatsink pull air out of the CPU or push air into it cause i have like 2 other 80mm fans i could try and attach to the heatsink to see if they can cool it down even more but i got it down to 39C while idle and maybe 47C to 50C on a full load
ericddog This is the way i do it,when i build mine i have the fan blow away from the mother board from the processor as i do not want the heat from the processor fan blowing on the components on the mother-board,and let the other installed fans move the heat from the processor out of the computer. another tip,have a extra fan directed on your hard drives,to keep them cool..As they get hot also..
Temps are not really too high, I have seen worse (but yes, usually in a stuffy case it's the HDs you can smell roasting, LoL :^) Might be doing more harm than good...? Also turn off all power management (from screensaver menu) and disable screensaver, shutdown monitor/harddisks, hibernation etc. What do you have - 3 x 512MB RAM, or 1 x 1024 plus 1 x 512? You have multiple memory chips anyway, and your BIOS setup will be important. Loosen memory timings ie. by SPD only. Try to get PC stable with case opened so not hot, 1 memory stick, and BIOS (especially memory settings & timings) setup properly. Go here for anything you need: http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-7N400-L.htm Regards Edit: Note BIOS ver. F-11 dated 2004/8/2 "Support K7 SEMPRON CPU"
Check out this thread on Gigabyte mobos, lots of good info and they state that Gigabytes run hotter than other motherboards. http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/thu-jul-01-2004-1216-am-vp389781.html Here's bios link. http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-7N400-L.htm Both links have info on how to flash the bios.
Thanks to all out there who have posted tips for me to follow by and have become very successful because the last 2 nights i've been on it for like 4-6hrs and not a hiccup so thanks to all!!!!! What i did was take out the battery on the mobo and put it back in after like 30sec and that reset the BIOS and now the Temp warning is DISABLED so the computer hasn't locked up since then Idle Now= 39C-41C Full Load Now=48C-50C Although its not what most people would say is cool but it hasn't locked up yet! by the way im using MBM and CPUidle Thanks again to all out there for all your HELP!!!!
