P4 1.6A fluctuating fan and vcore

[Acts837]

Yesterday I put my PIV 1.6A and Asus P4B266-C together. Started checking my temps and such at 100 and 133 fsb. Decided to burn-in some with Prime 95 at default (100fsb and 1.5vcore). Running PCprobe and MBM5 during this to keep and eye on the specs. Here is the problem:

1) Every 5-10 minutes my fan speed dips down below 1000 rpms and PCprobe pops up an alert.
2) Every once in awhile my vcore spikes to 3 volts or so.
3) I have started Prime 95 twice today and when I have come back later it isn't running which tells me my machine rebooted.
4) All of the above has occurred at 100fsb and my temps have settled in at 45 deg with a full load...32 deg idle.
5) This is a costa rica chip from newegg. Did I get a lemon? What will Intel say when I RMA this and I lapped the heatsink?

 

[Raiz]

With Vcore spikes and the fan slowing down, it sounds to me like your power supply may be beginning to fail. Be sure to check that before you RMA everything. A bad chip won't slow the fan down. Unless you got a bad chip and a bad fan.

 

[Acts837]

I switched out the Allied 300w with a Sparkle 300w. Seemed to help the fan spikes. I then decide to stop running PcProbe and MBM5 at the same time. I am currently using just the MBM 5 with logging every 1 second. I keep checking the logs and everything shows stable with NO cpu spikes in vcore or fan spikes/drops in rpms. Could this just be a conflict between the two applications? I am leaning towards Asus having errors...especially since PCprobe and my 1002 bios will not reflect any temps below 40 degrees.

 

[Ark]

I had the same problem last night when running MBM5 with another diagnostic program (I think it was CPUcool, I don't remeber).
Starting just one of them had no problems at all.