Saved the life of a P200 today

[Zalkalin]

I recently started work this place here in town and there was this computer that just kept on crashing. It ran for some time while it did a tape backup from another server we have. Then i left it on and the next day it would be dead. At first i attributed that to the fact that it was running Win98. But still... I decided to take the top off while it was running... i reaced for the CPU heatsink and immediately screamed in agonizing pain as my fingers were nearly incinerated. Im not kidding here. It was impossible for anyone to touch this heatsink. The fan and heatsink was just cluttered with this disgusting brownish dust. The blades could hardly move. I unplugged it, dismounted the heatsink cleaned it and replaced it. Now it barely gets handwarm. Tomorrow I'll be bringing some thermal grease and give it a smear.

The point is... I'm amazed that the CPU didn't croak. The machine have been running 24/7 like this for months. The other dudes here (3 old dudes actually) don't really care about the hardware. They just pressed reset whenever the machine crashed. I don't really know excactly how hot this thing was - my best guess would be... hot as hell. Actually i was running United Devices on it for some time, but i uninstalled it because the computer was too unstable... no wonder

 

[Jeff7]

I think they would have been quite concerned had they been using a Duron or Thunderbird. Click, power on.
*sniff sniff*
Do you smell burning electronics?

 

[drewski]

A similar thing happened to a K6-III+ that I have. I touched the heatsink and nearly burned my fingers. WTF!

My problem was easier to solve than yours. The wires for the fan had somehow gotten pushed into the fan blades stopping it from spinning. Pulled out the wires. Fan started spinning. We're good to go.

To bad a lot of old hardware doesn't have any Hardware Monitoring chips or anything!

 

[GT1999]

I've done the same here, it was a P233MMX, touched the heatsink and YEOW! It was a secondary DNS server at work Added a fan and it's fine now. I hope I get a raise for it.

 

[McCarthy]

And people wonder why I've been bitching about more and more fans all the time. Give me a fanless PC, sooner than later.

Not everyone disassembles their computer every 10 minutes to upgrade something after all. Some just use them for what they are, appliances.

Better go make sure the heatsink is clear and 7,000 RPM fan on my VCR is working. Heh.

--Mc

 

[McCarthy]

Rant over, useful idea...

For those helping out with older machines like that, RAIN comes in very handy. Typical P200 which is sitting idle most of the time could run without a heatsink at all, if they're using 100% of cycles a lot then obviously it won't do any good, but for the typical office machine, even with a clogged heatsink, this would work great

(Ran a P150 with RAIN and no fan just to see once upon a time. Heatsink would be room temp when idle, just get warm web browsing/etc.) With the Pentium chips Rain worked very nicely indeed, and it's free, so...

--Mc

 

[Viztech]

Some off the shelf computers don't have enough cooling to run a game, SETI or any other distributed program without overheating.

Good thing that I build my own, so they can be built right!

viz

 

[mithrandir2001]

I'm surprised a P200 could get so hot that it would burn your fingers. My P166 had a HS without fan and it never got more than lukewarm. It wasn't a RC5 cracker box, but heat was never an issue.

 

[cbuchach]

Well I second the notion for using Rain. My brother's P2 266 is currently running w/o a fan. I cracked it open over Christmas and found the fan entirely choked with dust. I cleaned it off and all but it still wouldn't spin. Since I am a lazy bastard, instead of ordering and putting on another fan, I just loaded up Rain. And so far, no problems.

 

[TheNewGuy]

My PII 400 mhz doesn't have a fan...doesn't get very warm either...

Dave

 

[Zach]

<< I'm surprised a P200 could get so hot that it would burn your fingers. My P166 had a HS without fan and it never got more than lukewarm. It wasn't a RC5 cracker box, but heat was never an issue. >>



Not covered in dust though, and in Windows 9x the CPU doesn't idle. Always running contantly, no matter load. McCarthy likes to use Rain, I like Waterfall.

 

[mithrandir2001]

I tried Rain and it didn't work (wouldn't load). I tried Waterfall and got irritated with the paused splash screen and the automatic change of my default home page. I'm now using WinCooler, which is free and awesome.

 

[Zach]

Change of your homepage? WTF? Never happened to me.

Does Wincooler do anything special? I like Waterfall for saying what the current/average power savings is (I assume it's just inversed processor usage, but it's neat to have some feedback).

 

[mithrandir2001]

I was using the Demo version of Waterfall, so maybe the homepage change was a &quot;penalty&quot; for not using the paid version. The wattage stats are pretty neat, but I think they are only estimates. With my CeleronII@800, it reported wattage down around 2-3W under a light (not idle) load, but that just sounds too low. WinCooler is very simple and unintrusive; just a little tray icon that you enable or disable. I use MBM to check the temps. What I'd like is a graph of temps, like how NT/2000 has a CPU usage history in Task Manager. Maybe MBM already has this?

 

[Degenerate]

i suppose it would fry because it was covered in dust, like a insulator...wouldnt there be a smell?

 

[Zach]

<< i suppose it would fry because it was covered in dust, like a insulator...wouldnt there be a smell? >>



I'vr noticed that hot dust tends to lose it's smell after a good period of cooking.

 

[Insane3D]

I just moved an old Pentium Pro 200mhz system to a new case and just for the hell of it, but AS on the CPU and HS. When I booted up and was just idle on the desktop in Win2k, the heatsink was so hot, it burned my hand so bad it blistered. I think it has to do with the .35um fab process...the larger the die the hotter the CPU runs..right?