Athlon 2 X3 460 repeated re-boots or locks up

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Phil Thompson

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Sep 25, 2013
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A while ago I upgraded my machine budget allowing to a Athlon 2 X3 460 with an Asus M5A 78l-M LX motherboard and 8Gb of exceleram E30122B ram it was fine for a while only crashing or rebooting occasionally, mostly when I am doing 3D graphic rendering, but it has got worse and now crashes quite quickly once it's put under load, to compound matters a so called friend when looking at it has unlocked the fourth core thinking he has done me a favour now it fails all the time, so once I can turn off the extra core I need to find a solution.
Could it be a thermal issue, the CPU cooler that came from AMD with the CPU looks a bit wimpy, I do have an old OCZ cooler from one of my older Athlon X2 5000 blacks if it would fit.
So does anyone have any suggestions on whats up with it, [lease bear with me I am not the most techie person in the world and being unemployed and need to fix this cheaply if i can.
 
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richi3d10

richi3d10

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Oct 30, 2012
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Hi,

Is there any error message that comes up when you're PC crashes e.g. 'blue screen of death'?

What is usually running on the PC when it crashes, or is it random?

Also if you install CPU-Z it will give you a temperature reading on you're CPU, could you tell me what that reading says? Although I think it is unlikely that it is down to the CPU cooler, unless you're overclocking the AMD one is perfectly sufficient (even with the 4th core unlocked).

Rich.
 
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C12Friedman

C12Friedman

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Jan 25, 2012
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Not all Athlon II x3's can run the 4th core (some were locked due to defect). Having experienced a "bad" 3 core CPU I can tell you that controlling heat is one of the major issues with unlocking the fourth core, I can barely maintain 75C with custom water cooling - with stock cooling I would blue-screen in a matter of minutes

Your motherboard manual explains how to re-lock the 4th core of your CPU page 2-13, in BIOS under Advanced Clock Calibration>Unleashing Mode, set to "disable". You might have to set the "Active CPU Cores" setting to manual then select 3 cores active.
 
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richi3d10

richi3d10

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Oct 30, 2012
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That's interesting, I am running the same CPU with the 4th core unlocked on my server and I've never had a problem with overheating (with the stock cooler) and I leave it on all the time.

I didn't realize that they had locked the fourth core due to defect, I was under the impression that it was just because it would make the x4 superfluous if it was unlocked?

In any case, the problem was happening even before the fourth core was unlocked, just less frequently, so I would hazard a guess that it wasn't due to the cooling? But we can see when he posts the output of CPU-Z's temp reading.
 
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C12Friedman

C12Friedman

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Jan 25, 2012
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Yeah, you got one of the good ones, the 4th core was unlocked for distribution purposes and not due to fault - I knew before buying it there was a possibility of issues but took the gamble anyway, was hoping to overclock the hell out of it but then it came down to., "do I want the faster speed or the additional core..."
I'm rooting for Heat here, only because it's an easy fix
 
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Phil Thompson

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Sep 25, 2013
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Before the idiot unlocked the fourth core there were never any Bsods it either just rebooted or it froze completely, when running on just the 3 cores typicaly it would fail when I was rendering images in Cinema 4D R13 or Daz Studio and Occasionally even Photoshop or Premiere, once it was on 4 cores then it would just go anytime totally random, I am just gonna set it back up now and try and find CPU-Z and see what happens after disabling core 4 that is, be back later
 
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Phil Thompson

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Sep 25, 2013
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I have got it back to just the 3 cores and it is just idling in win 7 with CPU-Z running but I have checked all the tabs and cannot find any temp related figures, would the text report help?
 
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Phil Thompson

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Sep 25, 2013
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While idling Core temp shows
Tj Max 83C
Cpu #! 21C
Min 21C
Max 24C

I try to do a render and leave core temp running and watch, I'm clutching at straws cant render no data at on this system , so running particle VFX system to load cpu (it's like a hippys lsd festival light show)
core 0 20 - 45%
core 1 79 - 94%
core 2 66 - 89%

Tj Max 83C
Cpu #! 24C
Min 21C
Max 24C

also just noticed whenever i open a dialog box or a move a window mouse pointer has a little freeze 5-10 secs

About 20 mins in and its locked upp, completely frozen, the screen dimmed slightly I thought in was going to sleep, fut it froze
I can just see the final core temp figures
core 0 82%
core 1 83%
core 2 90%

Tj Max 83C
Cpu #! 25C
Min 21C
Max 26C

Now to ReBoot

Another Idea, which is really a question, I have a spare Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 mother board that works fine could I run the 3 core 460 in that as a test?
 
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C12Friedman

C12Friedman

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Jan 25, 2012
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Unfortunately there is no support for that CPU on that motherboard. Support list here (direct PDF link) http://www.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/cpu-support-popup.aspx?pid=2507 - you'll note in the "Since BIOS Version" column for the Athlon II x3 460 it says N/A so there is no support available
 
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