My cpu just had a close encounter with death :/

[antipody]

Hi,

Got up this morning, and as I usually do I switched on my pc. Started up a demo of a game of return to castle wolfenstein that I played yesterday. About 10 minutes into playing the demo I get warning beep from Asus probe: CPU temp at 88C and climbing!!! The graph shows a steady increase in temp over the previous few minutes.

Fans all working, but when I touch my fat alpha 8045 heatsink it is H-O-T. Asus probe is not lying.

I immediately shut down. Then rebooted resetting bios defaults. Now I'm back in win2k and with my usual operating temp of about 48C. All seems dandy once again....

Anyone know what would cause my CPU to overheat like that? More importantly, is it going to happen again????

System specs:
XP1600+ (unlocked but not overclocked)
Asus a7v266-e
2 * 40GB IBM 65GXP HDDs
2 * 256M generic ram
Pioneer DVD
Plextor Burner
Texas Instr. Firewire card
3Com ethernet

Maybe I'm paranoid, but with all the downloads I've been doing recently, I wouldn't be surprised if my system is hosting a trojan or two. Is it possible for some maliciously written code to do that to your CPU???

Any feedback would be most appreciated.

 

[pillage2001]

Try reseating the HSF on the CPU. You might have case of loss of contact with the surface of the CPU.

 

[savior]

I'm interested in this thread because my brand new older AMD CPU is now fried. At least as far as I can tell.

I have an older Abit KT7 mobo. I bought a 1.3 GHz processor after flashing the bios and making sure everything was ok. I put my fan back on, a few times, and it kept overheating. Processor got to 90C+ degrees . Now it won't boot up in any computer. Thermal tape also used. Could the thing have been defective, it's date is all the way back in '99.

I was hoping to put off buying new stuff for another six months. My Duron is showing its age.

Machine is running now, but like I said, the processor seems dead. Luckily my old processor was ok. Could it just be that my cooler master fan (that's on AMD's suggested list) sucks balls? I'm looking for some answers, I'm hoping to get it RMA'd and I don't want this to repeat itself. Thanks everyone.

 

[antipody]

Thanks for the idea pillage, but it can't be that....I opened up and touched the HS after I got the warning and the whole unit was BURNING hot. There' was definitely no problem with heat transfer.

The problem is heat generation. For some reason my CPU just went into overdrive. Even my alpha 8045 couldn't get rid of it quick enough.

I'm wondering if it could have anything to do with teh unlocking process. It's been several months now since I unlocked it and perhaps the superglue is breaking up on the bridges????

Any more suggestions.

 

[pillage2001]

The contact seems to be perfect then. You did unlock your CPU?? Which bridges did you close?? IF it's just the L1, I don't see why it would overvolt the CPU to cause such a high temperature.

 

[christoph83]

Did you make sure the fan on the CPU was still actually spinning? One of my older computers had the cpu fan die on it overnight. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it would slow down and die. Most motherboards should catch that though. Just taking a guess here.

Edit: Sorry just read all fans were still spinning. Thats my only guess. Either its not getting full contact ...or the fan died temporially or is spinning slower than it should.

 

[antipody]

Ya, it's definitely not the fan. All fans were humming along nicely.

It's about 12 hours later now and after using it all day (I'm in Australia) I've noticed that voltages have been spiking randomly every now and then. Despite being worked pretty hard, the CPU temp hasn't gone back up above 60C.

It's a real mystery. And a bit of a worry.

 

[Duvie]

What kind of voltage spiking??? vcore way up or way down??? What about 12v line??? Is it possible the fan could have at down down shifted in speed severely and allowed temps to skyrocket???

 

[antipody]

Voltage spikes have been random and up and down in all lines, including vcore. They've been pretty frequent (about once every couple of hours).

I had installed a util called speedfan that allow fan speed control, and they seemed to be more frequent when this was running. But it was spiking even when speedfan wasn't running.

I don't htink the overheat was due to the CPU fan speed. It was humming along steadily when I opened up to touch the heatsink.

It really is a mystery. I can't for hte life of me think what else might cause the temp to soar so high.

 

[Hamburgerpimp]

I know Athlons are way easier to fry than a P4. I'm sure you've seen the P4 throttle down when the HS and Fan were taken off. I've fried my share of AMD chips and for that reason I don't mess around with O/C any AMD product. But, in your case it was running stock!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Maybe a bad resistor or capacitor on the board is to blame or the CPU was some how damaged during the unlocking process? How that alpha could get that hot with a properly working fan without some crazy degree of overvolting is damned strange. I would definitely suspect hardware here though as even proggies like CPU Burn couldn't make a properly working 8045/fan combo get that high.EDIT try a new PSU too as that could be the problem though normally when they go they fry and take most of the system's components with them in my experience.

 

[SparkyJJO]

For you who had your proc get fried by high temp 90C, you said there was thermal tape. Well, I had thermal tape on something and instead of conducting heat it actually did the opposite!!!! That thermal tape might have kept the heatsink from doing its job........ Instead of tape, try the thermal grease, gunk, or whatever it is called (the white paste that doesn't get hard and glue your CPU to your HSF)

OK, and about the sudden overheat for you, antipody, I think the HSF got loose a little or something like that - I havent heard of a virus playing with your BIOS. I hate to say it, but if your BIOS is going bad and your voltage/muliplier/FSB is controlled by your BIOS, that might be doing something bad.......... Just a thought

 

[savior]

Thanks SparkyJJO,

Along with sending away the chip to hopefully have it replaced, yesterday I ordered a Volcano 9 and some thermal paste. Thanks for reaffirming my next course of action.

-savior

 

[antipody]

Well, it's been a couple of days since the first dice with death and it hasn't happened again. Except for those random spikes in voltage and temperature, CPU temp has remained below 60C, as normal.

I have had lots of problems booting up though, with the system stalling before detecting IDE devices several times. Powering down completely and restarting usually fixes it (weird I know). But this has been a recurring problem since the initial CPU dice with death.

I had experienced bootup problems that were simialer to this several times before (One of my HDDs) would often not be detected), so I wonder if my BIOS or MB is
buggy. My PSU could be shafted too, as it has been transported around the world a few times. Think I'll invest in a new PSU soon to test that theory.

Thanks to everyone for all the feedback so far.

 

[Jorbatsd]

I really don't know what happened to my duron. The first motherboard I used with my processor was an ASUS A7V and it always crashes
but i changed the board to a jetway 663AS an it works like a charm...... but then the fan stopped working and the temp was always at 90 degrees!!!!! and i my friend used it for gaming and internet!!!! He used it for 5 months!!!! and the cpu is still alive!!! running without a fan. The heatsink was already burned.... durability?