P5N-E SLI Help

[primosavant]

Hey all,

I am not exactly new to the forums here but have not built a system in about 4 years. I just put together this system:
P5N-E SLI, C2D E4600, 4 X 1GB LLK CAS4 PC6400 Patriot Ex. Perf., Corsair 750W PS, Bfg 8800GT OC, 2 WD Raptor 74 (Raid not set up yet, see below).
So up upon the first start-up it fired up and I went into the bios. I then started reading for a bit and the system shut itself down. I waited a bit and checked the connections again. I then reboot and again went into the Bios, this time I went into the hardware monitor to see if there was a temperature issue. Sure enough the CPU was running about 60C and climbing, before I could shut it down the temp went to 69C and shut itself down. One of my questions is does this have anything to do with the very awkward stock heat sink and fan. I do not particularly like the way it installs and it took me quite a few tries before I THINK it was seated properly. Also I will be running Vista 64 when I get that far and in striped raid, I have seen issues with installing 4 sticks of ram on this forum and was wondering if I fall into that catagory or not? Oh yeah, the case is a Thermaltake Tsunami Dream so I dont think that is part of the problem.

Thanks

 

[primosavant]

Oops,

I forgot, the heatsink fan already had some thermal paste on it. Could that be it, does not seem like it but cant hurt to ask.
Aslo any suggestions on a cooling solution that are not so touchy when installing and will also be a good solution for future OCing.

Thanks again

 

[krnmastersgt]

If you think the seating was improper then I suppose you should try again, as for the TIM that came with the cooler, some of the unknown stuff works just as well as AS5 and other known TIMs. Try running with just 2 sticks when you install vista since apparently 4 sticks causes problems, in any case if the cpu temp is rising either the sensor is bad or it needs a serious re-seating. Just my opinion.

 

[primosavant]

What temp. should it be running at only being in the bios? I tried using arctic silver and reseated the cooler. When I went in to the hardware monitor in the bios again I saw that the cpu fan speed was only set at 600rpm by default. I changed that to 1600rpm and the temp got as high as 40C seemingly at a much slower pace before I shut it down. What temp can it reach before I SHOULD shut it down myself?

 

[primosavant]

oops again,

That was the cpu fan speed warning set at 600

 

[krnmastersgt]

Most Core2 chips should probably be kept under 80C, many chips can run that high but most tend to find 65C to already be pushing it, if your temps go 80C+ then I'd suggest shutting it down yourself. To my understanding, your cpu is maxing out at 40C before shutting down automatically?

 

[primosavant]

sorry, no. It got to about 70C when it shut down. I have it running stable now with the reseat @ 43c-44c. Now I just have to figure out how to make a floppy to install raid drivers (computer I am on is a laptop and does not have a floppy, it does have a RW drive though I dont think that will work). Any help in that area would be much appreciated as well.

Thanks

 

[JustaGeek]

First of all, do all the settings manually - especially for the memory, i.e. frequency, timings (4-4-4-12-2T - very important 2T) and Voltage. And install Vista with only 2 x 1GB sticks to avoid problems - unless you have the DVD with SP1, which most likely fixes the 4GB installation problems.

If not, you'll need a patch here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929777

Try to read as much as you can here: http://forums.anandtech.com/me...AR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear

Good luck!

 

[lopri]

Looks like a temp problem. Not only the CPU but also the NB/SB tend to get hot on that board. Is the system inside a case? You may need to reconstruct your build (cable management, fans, etc.). Those temperatures, even if you manage to get things to work, will likely cause issues over time.

 

[primosavant]

Got everything up and running other than the raid part. thanks for the help. I am going to read into it more, just took much long than I was expecting. The temps seem to have gone down to 39c-40c after sealing up the case a bit better all of course with no OCing at this point until I get the raid up.

 

[JustaGeek]

It might take about 100 hrs of operation (if I remember correctly...) for the Thermal paste to settle and reach its full effectiveness.

The temps will go further down eventually...

BTW, if you haven't done it yet, add a heatsink to the Southbridge (very important!) and a little fan to the Northbridge.

Very quiet Scythe fan that I use: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16835185039