A Few Questions...

[DKlein]

I have an Athlon 2000+ and am planning on overclocking it, but was wondering how hot is too hot? While I'm on that question, how do you find out how hot it is running while in windows? It currently runs at around 130F when I'm in the system bios, but I'm not really sure it stays that cool while in the middle of a game...

Of yeah, does anyone know if the Kingston/ASUS issue has been solved (I originally bought some Kingston RAM, but found out a day later it wouldn't work, and I guess I'm just gonna keep it until they fix the problem since I was planning on buying more RAM next summer anyways...)?

AMD Athlon 2000+
ASUS A7V333
512MB DDR PC2700
36.7GB 7200RPM SCSI (in 2 days)
GeForce 3 Ti 200
Windows XP Pro
and some other stuff...

 

[mechBgon]

You can run Asus Probe (downloadable from Asus if you need it) to get Windows readings. The A7V333 uses a socket thermistor for the CPU temperature reading in the BIOS and in Asus Probe. As a result, the readings are somewhat "numb."

With a 1700+, using an Alpha PAL8045 and a 24cfm 80mm fan for cooling, I get idle CPU temperatures around 55C and loaded around 58C (with a well-ventilated case having an interior temperature about 25C). 60C is quite "normal" for the board, and in fact Asus' Q-Fan feature will run your CPU fan at the lowest speed it can unless the temperature has passed 60C, in which case it will begin stepping up the fan speed to hold 60C. So consider 60C a sort of reference point for the A7V333.

For overclocking, lower temps help with the OC up to a point. I would start to be concerned if the socket-thermistor reading is getting close to 70C, and try a faster CPU fan at that point. The Alpha is a great heatsink for OC'ing or for quiet-PC pursuits, since it takes 80mm fans ranging from mild to wild. An adjustable-speed 80mm fan is another option, YS Tech makes one with ~45cfm peak.


edit: welcome to the Forums, by the way! 🙂 And looking at the rest of your parts list, I see you have SCSI in the works. My own A7V333 has a problem where the SCSI card's throughput drops about 20Mb/second if the onboard VIA USB 2.0 controller is enabled on the motherboard. Disabling it by jumper, or disabling it in Windows, restores my SCSI performance. Put your SCSI card in the second PCI slot from the bottom so it doesn't have to share its IRQ. If you have Win2000, you might consider using that instead of WinXP Pro, since WinXP is known to have a severe performance problem with SCSI.

edit #2: more A7V333 info than you can shake a DIMM at: thread

 

[DKlein]

Thanks for the info. I got Probe working alright now. The CPU is running around 59C right now, and around 63C while gaming. There is a problem though: the +12V voltage is running in the low 13s... I don't really know what that means or if it's bad or how to fix it... also, how do you update the bios; I tried doing it through Windows, but it wouldn't quite work since I could only do it through a foreign site, and I don't want my info to be displayed in German or something?

Also, I turned off the USB 2.0, and moved the SCSI controller card to the second from the bottom PCI slot - thanks, so now once the HDD arrives, I'll see how well that does.

And one more thing; what's a good heatsink (not a quiet one, but a really effective one since I ran out of room inside, so I put two fans on the outside and that makes enough noise already so I'm not really worried about more), mine is fairly bad, even though I put a second fan on top of it, and then two more on the back, and have the AC blowing directly at the computer (it's about 3ft away) - so it's almost like having four fans on the processor - it still is running fairly hot, and I'm not sure how well it would do if I OC'd it...

Thanks,
David