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Bad thunderbird, or just heat problem?

G

Grminalac

Golden Member
My friend just purchased a Thunderbird 800,(socket A) unfortunetly neither he or myself are able to get it to install windows without locking up..(it is not overclocked) All we have in the motherboard is a V3 2000 PCI. I have the memory latency settings turned to slowest and we still get a lockup during install. I was at my wits end until I felt the heatsink and it was cool to the touch, I asked him if he used thermal grease and he said no, it was supposed to come with the paste but instead came with a white and yellow strip of heat transfer tape affixed to the bottom of the large aluminum heatsink. It appears to me that it does not transfer heat very well, i have seen T-birds in action before and they are toasty, his heatsink as i stated before, is a bit on the cold side. Is anyone out there running their T-bird with thermal tape and does it work? I am assuming this is the problem, but if not it has gotta be a bad cpu or motherboard. He ordered some arctic silver but i doubt it will be in for about a week, any suggestions or comments before then?
 
I doubt that it's heat, and if it is, you could try installing while leaving the case open, maybe blowing a fan lightly into it. You may just want to reseat your ram, or cpu. Take note of any beeps you might come across at startup (long or short and how many).
 
Couldn't you go into the bios to take a look at the temperatures? If it's above 50 degrees, then it's probably heat.
 
You see what i'm saying... Its not that the system is running hot.. its perfectly cool to the touch... It should be toasty, were getting thermister readings of 78 degrees or so. Thats too cold if you ask me... That heatsink should be hot... I'm thinking he needs new thermal tape either that or some heatsink compund.
 
I'm not exactly sure what a HSF is, a heat sink fan? well I have no idea what he ordered, but it is a large heatsink aluminum and silver in color with a large fan on the top... what distubs me is that the back of his processor was hotter than the heatsink... maybe AMD did not apply any compund between the aluminum plate and the processor... it would be a longshot but I suppose it could happen.
 
Maybe the heatsink is not making proper contact with the cpu. That's why it's not getting hot. Try holding a flashlight on the opposite side of the cpu, and look if you see light coming through between the HS and cpu.
 
Well its kinda funny, but i guess those idiots at tiger direct forgot to remove the plastic seal from the heatsink tape... hahahaha it actually had the opposite effect and probably insulated the damn thing.. It seems to be working now, sans the white plastic layer, but the question is if the extra heat stress caused any damage to the chip and could this shorten the life considerably?
 
I'd say don't take your chances and RMA it before your 30 days runs out. Avoid problems down the road by getting a fresh processor.
 
It seems that plenty of people have missed the plastic film protecting the thermal compound. Doesn't seem to cause lasting problems. Since this is only an 800, you should be OK. The highest case temp for a BIRD is about 90c, they don't run properly at this temp but they won't burn up till they reach it.
 
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