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Problems with Athlon XP system

C

Chriz

Senior member
I built an Athlon XP system a few years ago, that I recently sold to my roommate. It has an Asus A7V266 motherboard, Athlon XP 1700+ (1.46 Ghz), Lian Li PC-60 case, Enermax power supply, and Geforce FX 5500 AGP card. A few days ago he was cleaning out the inside of it, and as of last night it is having some issues.

When the computer boots up, and Win Xp is loading, it just reboots itself. And each time it got less further into windows, and finally it doesnt even show the Win XP loading screen, instead it shows like two 7 or 8 digits numbers on top of each other, black screen (this is after it updates the ESCD when windows should be loading). We tried underclocking it to 1100 Mhz in the bios, and it boots up that way into windows just fine. The CPU fan seems to be working fine, and I am kind of puzzled. While underclocked at 1100 Mhz, I checked the temps in the bios, cpu temp was like 122 degrees F, mainboard temp was like eighty something degrees F. Is this too hot? Now that was underclocked, haven't been able to check the temp yet at normal speed. Now I know I used a custom fan for the cpu, it was like a cooler master or an Antec or something, and I used artic silver thermal paste. Does that paste ever wear down and need to be reapplied? I really don't know for sure if this is a heat problem, it sounds like it, but I'd like to know what people think. I will post more info when I can.
 
I would think that the thermal paste could wear down if the cpu was constantly running hot. 122 degrees F seems on the high end, it might be worthwhile to remove the grease thoroughly and re-apply it.

You said he cleaned it, I'm wondering if there's built up dust in the heatsink and it's not cooling efficiently.

I've got a A7V266 build also, I used a Coolermaster heatpipe and AS3 on the 2200XP proc; Motherboard Monitor shows readings of 34 - 41 degrees C on the CPU, 32 - 40 C on the socket, 23 - 25 on the case.

My recommendation: Clean the paste thoroughly from CPU and heatsink, re-apply AS5, and re-install OS. If possible, add at least one 80mm fan to pull more hot air out of the case; you might try to position the fan to blow across the hard drive, that will decrease your case temp and keep your hard drive happy .🙂

Hope that helps.

alzan
 
Thanks Alzan. I had my roommate take the fan off the heatsink, turned out there was a crapload of dust, he got it out, lowered the cpu temp down to 115 degrees F. But it still won't boot up at 1.46 Ghz. gets a bunch of exception errors and 0's and stuff. But it will still boot into windows at 1100 Mhz. Do you think the CPU is permanently damaged, or might reapplying the thermal paste still help?
 
It might be damaged; cleaning and reapplying paste might help, but it doesn't sound like it's going to run at 1.46GHz. If I'm not mistaken, that board (with BIOS updates) will take up to a XP 2400; I haven't checked prices or availability but I would think you could get a 2400 for less than $50 ,maybe less than $40. That might be a better option than spending a whole lot of time with the current CPU.

You could also try starting the CPU at 1100MHz, than slowly bumping your voltages and checking for system stability between each bump to find it's fastest stable speed.

alzan
 
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