Biostar TP43D2-A7 Shut Off Issue

[scruff311]

Hi,

I built a computer for my girlfriend about a year and a half ago and over the last week or two, it has started to shut off out of the blue. I cleared the CMOS on it the first time and booted it back up and the BIOS screen said 'Overclock Fail!', however I have never tweaked any voltages out of the default settings for her computer so this was confusing to me. The comp ran fine for a week until today...

Today out of the blue and by her account, when she hooked up a USB thumb drive the comp shut off again. I sat down to troubleshoot and pressed the power button. It would just cycle on and off, never getting to the bios screen. I cleared the CMOS, cleaned the CPU fan of dust and powered it up again. Like last time, I got the same 'Overclock Fail!' warning. After maybe 30 seconds while booting windows 7, it shut off. I powered on maybe 3 more times and each time noticed the CPU temp climbing until the last power up showed a temp of 98C!! The system temp was safe at 22C but the CPU was running out of control. My guess is that the CPU being so hot is what is causing the machine to turn off.

Does anyone know a way to fix this? I don't understand why the temp is so hot. She doesn't play games, just internet, Office, and Adobe products.

All fans are operational and clean. The processor is a Q6600.

Thanks!

 

[T_T]

You said that the fans are clean, but how about the heatsink over the CPU? Sounds redundant, but it needs to be asked. Also if the by design the CPU circuitry is designed to shut down the system when it gets too hot. That being said, how can you be so sure that the heat sink fan is spinning long enough?

Can you swap out the power supply? Testing another power supply will help reduce the possibility of the currently installed PSU not supplying enough power to keep the fans running at optimal speeds.

 

[scruff311]

Yes I cleaned the heatsink as well as the fan for the CPU. The fans seem to be running at their normal speeds. The weird thing is that the CPU temp looks really high even when the computer has been off for an extended period of time. I want to think that the CPU temp sensor has failed but I don't know how to verify this.

 

[T_T]

Sounds like the heatsink may be the problem. Try removing the heatsink, reapply the thermal paste, and reseat the heatsink. Maybe the heatsink wasn't on tight enough.

 

[scruff311]

Yea I am going to try that today. Is it possible for this problem to develop all of a sudden? It's not like I was messing with the heatsink or fan before this started happening. It's just started shutting off one day.

 

[T_T]

If the heatsink is the problem, then the problem didn't happen all of a sudden. Rather it developed over time. As you know, heat expands. If the Heatsink was warped to begin with, then the heat over time may have caused it to develop more problems over time.

 

[scruff311]

Thanks for the help. I applied some Arctic Silver 5 and reseated the heatsink and the CPU is running idle at 25C now. Heatsink was a pain to put back in (one pin took a good 40 minutes to get to grab correctly) but its in there nicely now.

 

[scruff311]

Best answer selected by scruff311.