need help w/ cooling problems

[BamBam215]

I have about a two year old system. AMD athlon xp1800 w/ a msi kt266a pro motherboard. I also have a vantec copper heatsink on the cpu w/ ASII applied.

It's basically the system I got from the AMD Extreme Performance challenge a few years ago. Anyways, I've been running it stable, but recently the temperatures have been spiking. This has been happening the past 2 weeks. The idle temperature with the case closed is 73 degrees Celsius and w/ the case open its about 58. PC Alert 4 is telling me that the system needs to be shut down when it hits 75.

The system used to be really stable, but now it sometimes reboots itself if I leave it on for long periods of time. This never used to happen. Tonight I finally took some time to try and check things out. I regularly clean the inside of the case so that dust doesn't collect and did the same thing tonight. I also took off the heatsink and re-applied a coat of thermal paste. The temps are still soaring.

If anyone has any ideas on what might cause this, I would greatly appreciate it. If you have any troubleshooting solutions, that would be awesome also. Thanks!!!

 

[dpm]

Firstly, if your temp drops nearly 20 degrees when you take the side off, then you haven't got good airflow inside it - theres no point having a great heatsink/fan if the hot air it expels isn't taken outside the case. And 73 at idle is, frankly, worrying, although the old

Presuming that your temps used to be lower, and since you've cleaned the heatsink and the case, it makes me wonder about the fans. How many fans are you using, and how old are they? Can you monitor their RPM? Could be they are wearing out, or could do with a drop of oil

 

[Goatsan]

holy crap, i thought 55c was the highest safe temp for amd's, just keep the side off and put a box fan in front it. what the guy said befoer was correct, you dont have decent air flow in your case at all!