Help with athlon 1600 system cooling

[zinkpig]

HELP !

I put together following configuration:
athlon xp 1600 AGOIA
w/ antec solution series cooling fan
MSI KT3 Ultra
Antec 1080B case
pixelview geforce3
ati raedon 32sdr

the system remains unstable under windows 2K. rebooted once and the wall paper keeps dissapearing during CPU intensive tasks( software installs)
I havent tried overclocking yet ..i am running it at the stock clock freq. The temp in the bios and mother board monitor reads 39(system)/45-48(core)
is this too high .. also the cpu fan rpm is abt 6200.. but the system fan rpm is unavailable both in the bios and mother board monitor. Also i used the thermal paste that came along with the cpu cooler. do i need to use some thing better like artic silver ? All fans in the system seem to be operating. i double checked that the power supply fan is connected. None of the 3 case fans on the case have a sensor output for the motyherboard

 

[pdo]

it sounded like your PS are not cutting it What PS are you using currently?

 

[zinkpig]

iam using the antec true power 430 W.

 

[IRJack]

Sounds like your PS is more than adequate. Your cpu fan is at 6200, I'm wondering, do you have the fan plugged onto one of the 3pin mobo connectors? A fan that fast is typically a higher power fan (ie more than about 3W) and could blow the mobo fan header off. If this is the case, maybe it's causing problems with the motherboard before it goes kaboom.

Have you tried running with just a single vid card also?

 

[jaybee]

Your system temp sounds high. 48C is fine for the cpu, but what are load temps? I would guess high 50's, if 48C is your idle. If so, it is probably too hot. What is your case fan setup (location, exhaust/intake)? Also, is your Windows installation fresh? Windows gets fouled pretty easily -- especially after changing hardware -- so you can't rule out a reinstall.

jaybee

 

[zinkpig]

i have the CPU fan plugged in to the 3 pin connector on my motherboard..is there a way to directly connect it to the power supply ?

i ve tried running it with just the raedon..theres not much of a diffrence with that.

 

[jaybee]

Originally posted by: zinkpig
i have the CPU fan plugged in to the 3 pin connector on my motherboard..is there a way to directly connect it to the power supply ?

Not sure about that. Does anyone know if you can use the floppy connectors? Anyway, it sounds to me like your case -- & therefore cpu -- are too hot. Load temps?

jaybee

 

[zinkpig]

Originally posted by: jaybee
Your system temp sounds high. 48C is fine for the cpu, but what are load temps? I would guess high 50's, if 48C is your idle. If so, it is probably too hot. What is your case fan setup (location, exhaust/intake)? Also, is your Windows installation fresh? Windows gets fouled pretty easily -- especially after changing hardware -- so you can't rule out a reinstall.

jaybee

the temps on starting up after being switched off for a while is 35/40 (system/CPUcore) ..when the cpu is idle the temp at 38/45 and when i am running an intensive job (MATLAB) they run at about 38/50. The reason why i am so unsure is most people reported cpu temp within 1 degree of system temp. I am using, what was reviewed every where as the ultimate case for cooling and silence..it has 3 fans 2 directly beside the cpu and one on the side door. The wents below are totally. unobstructed for air flow ( i removed the hard disk from the lower drive bay and fit it in to the 5 1/4 bays with drive rails). I dont understand why my system temps are so high. here is a review of my case.
antec 1080B soho server

I ve connected the fans all in parallel to one of the terminals of the Power supply labeled fan..is this a problem ? The fans dont seem to be running slow but i am just wondering

 

[IRJack]

You may try to connect the fans to a standard connector from the power supply. The fan-only connectors from the antec truepower supplies start the fans at a much lower voltage (read speed) until the supply warms up internally. I haven't measured the output on the fan-only connector, but on my TP330, I can definitely tell that the fans I have connected to it are not running at full speed even after the PS has warmed up.

If you suspect the cpu fan is drawing too much power from the 3pin mobo header and causing problems, you can try a 3/4 pin adapter. Or, temporarily, if you have an extra case fan of the right size, swap it out for your cpu fan. I thought that you'd blow the 3pin header before the fan would actually cause the board to get that warm though...

Agree with jaybee that your board temp does sound too high, but I'm not really familiar with that MSI board. Do you have a bunch of drives or something in the case that may be generating a lot of heat? Does the air at any of the exhaust fans feel warm?

 

[jaybee]

Your cpu temps actually sound good, so I don't think that's the problem. System temps sound high, but it all depends on where they mount the board thermistor & I'm not familiar with that board. How much trouble would a Windows reinstall be? Tell me more about your problems too -- one reboot and wallpaper disappearing? Anything else? If you do a reinstall, take out one of the graphics cards. If it's stable, install the other & see what happens.

jaybee

 

[zinkpig]

thanks for your input jaybee and IRjack...here are more details about my system
I just put this together last week .. I did a clean install of windows 2000 after i put it together. The temps wewre like this rite off the bat. The reboots, and wallpaper dissapearing happens only when the CPU is running full load and is at high temp >48. I went and got another fan for the front which sucks the air in (thinking maybe there was turbulence because too many fans trying to blow the air out. This really didnt make a diffrence. I also removed the generic heatsink paste i had used earlier and put in a thermal pad. That didnt make any diffrence too.
I am running only one cd rom drive and one 40g 5400rpm hd both mounted right on top of the case so that they or the ide cables they use dont interfere with airflow. The air coming out of the system fans seems cool ..air out of the power supply fan on the otherhand runs a little warm. I considering getting a high end ( 7000 rpm fan) that uses power from the powersupply rather than the mobo header. do you guys have any recommendations ?

 

[zinkpig]

oops i forgot to mention that i removed the geforce 3 and ran it only with the raedon pci that didnt change things too

 

[IRJack]

The air moving out my TruePower 330 is pretty warm, too, so you're probably ok with that. Odd that you're still seeing high system temps with exhaust air feeling cool... unless the board temp sensor is a little off or your room temp is already warm.

For fan rec's, Panaflows are supposed to be excellent (no personal experience with those, though). If you're looking for something quiet, I like Vantec Stealth fans - they also make screamers in the Tornado series. I've also had pretty good luck with Sunon.

A few manufacturers make fans that plug into the PS connector and have a separate header to plug onto the mobo so you can monitor the rpm. After buying a 39.5cfm sunon with no rpm monitoring for use on my cpu hs, I really wish I had that feature.

GL, zinkpig!