Help sought with Intel Pentium III

[Rubicone]

I am not overclocking and when I called Intel their tech support person told me that the cpu can go up to 80 C so the reading I was getting was well within the safety range. I have been told by someone else that the cpu temp should not exceed 45 C. Should I call Intel back to see if they give me the same answer up to this point my major worry was the possibility of having my motherboard going SUPERNOVA!

 

[Rubicone]

I can view various fan speeds in Setup.

 

[Mikewarrior2]

Yes, p3's are capable of peak 80c or so.

But your MB temp of 51C is extremely high? Do you live in a desert?

Work on some case cooling. Or, as PM suggested, take the case cover off and see if the 51C MB temp comes down a bit.


Mike

 

[KR]

Intel is correct, the maximum operating temperature (measured with the internal thermal diode inside the processor core) is 80 or 85 C - depending on the processor speed. 51C is well within the spec for the processor but the 51c motherboard temperature is pretty high - suggesting that you have less than adequate airflow in your case - unless your typical room temperature is in the 110 F. range. With an inlet fan at the front of the typical ATX case and an exhaust fan at the Power supply, you should be seeing 10 - 15 F above your room temp with the typical case.

The 51C case air being drawn (very slowly) through your power supply may be too hot for the power supply to tolerate. Try the cover removal that was suggested and see if your motherboard temperature comes down. With a 27C room temperature, expect motherboard temps in the 32-40C range, depending on airflow provided by the case fan(s) and case design.

If the reading you are reporting are correct, your motherboard temperature is seriously high - too high.

 

[Rubicone]

This is what I did I opened up the side panel of the case and placed a large fan directing air into it. Everything has stablelized with the exception of the rotation speed of the Power Fan (not power supply fan as has previously mentioned). I am unclear why the POWER fan will not rotate above 1770 rpms (it's new) is it defective (and if so any good brands I should look for?), not enough electrical flow from the motherboard connection (what do I do in this case - new motherboard?), or is the power supply at fault here.
By the way I called ASUS tech support today and they suggested to me to firstly change the power supply, secondly update the BIOS, and, lastly change the MB, once again.

 

[Assimilator1]

Have you updated the bios yet?

 

[Rubicone]

Read post below just made a mistake posting message.

 

[Rubicone]

I have not at this point updated the BIOS and plan on following the suggestions by ASUS sequentially.(By the way according to ASUS the zip file has to be opened as their program does not do this automatically.)Once completing this hopefully everything will be resolved and within the next few days I hope to have everything up and running. Thanks for all the suggestions and should any new problems arise or the old ones remain unresolved you will all be hearing from me again.

 

[Assimilator1]

Whoops! ,I'd forgotten they were zipped up!.
Anyway if I were you I would update the bios 1st because it won't cost you anything ,P to Asus's order!).
And anyway ,its a good idea to have the latest bios (usually!)

 

[Rubicone]

I created a boot disk in DOS and downloaded the zip file opened it inserted into the disk drive on this new computer and get the following message:

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I press enter and the above message repeats itself. For some reason the boot disk is not being recognized as a system disk. Any possible reason(s) and solution(s) to this new problem?Clear the CMOS? It have tested the disk to confirm that it is bootable, which it is. My boot sequence is floppy, hard drive, and CD-RW.

Time 10:15 - I retried again after doing a second download from bootdisk.com and I got the error messsage IVALID SYSTEM DISK. Is it the BIOS? Perhaps the file is being corrupted somehow.I am at a loss. Any more ideas.

Time 10:51 - I created a startup disk on the laptop I am using and tried booting up with it. I got the message starting up WINDOWS '95. Hooray! I GOT TO AN A PROMPT! Swapped this diskette for the one I originally created in DOS typed DIR and could see the files I had created. Then I attempted to switch drives to copy the BIOS file onto the diskette and could not find the CD-ROM drive after having gone through every available letter in the alphabet. Time to check those data cables again?

 

[Assimilator1]

Sounds like your boot disc didn't have the CD ROM drivers on it ,I think its Atapi.sys ,though if the boot disc works you don't need CD ROM drivers ,you should have the bios file (unzipped!) on your floppy.

The boot disc I use for Bios flashing has these files on it. Command.com , drvspace.bin ,Io.sys & Msdos.sys

 

[Rubicone]

I checked my boot disk and it also had the same files as yours and still I could not boot my new computer although it works perfectly well on the laptop which I used to create it. According to my ASUS manual I need to use the CD to save my original BIOS to disk. Unfortunately, at this point I cannot access my E Drive. I am going to create a new CONFIG.SYS file to access my CD-ROM load my OS and then save the BIOS file before flashing it. I don't see how the sequence of events would make a difference - do you?

 

[Assimilator1]

Maybe the FDD is screwed? does it work on that FDD in another PC?

 

[Wik]

Make sure you have boot floppy seek enabled

 

[Assimilator1]

lol ,good point ! I hadn't thought of that!