CPU temp. should be.....

[Dodgy_Bob]

Hi,

I've a feeling my CPU is overheating and just wondered what temp. it should run at. I've just bought the MSI NEO-2 LS MB and a P4 3.0Ghz 800FSB.

Not overclocking and I've disabled the dynamic overclocking.

A quick story to explain why I think it's overheating. When I originally bought the components something was faulty and they all went back. I

then went to pick them up and the heatsink and fan were missing. The guy rummaged around and dug one out (obviously used and old) that was the same as the one that comes with the CPU. However, the thermal pad was missing off the bottom. When I mentioned this he gave me the scrapings of some termal paste he had left.

I've never used thermal paste before so I spread it all over the top of the CPU before sticking the heatsink on.

Now, if I boot up and sit in BIOS looking at cpu temp it starts around 38-40c and then slowly climbs. I watched for about 15-20 mins and it reached 50c. I've only tried to run C&C Generals Zero Hour so far and it bombs out after about 1 min. each time.

I'm also getting the odd error here and there in XP and the system randomly reboots itself too. Whenever it does reboot I go straight into BIOS to check temp and the CPU is around 40c and the system around 36c.

I've just installed and am running PCAlert4 to monior temps while I'm writing this and the CPU is at 33c. It was at 42c when Generals bombed out.

None of the temperatures I've mentioned here seem excessive to me, but the other symptoms (games crashing, errors in OS, rebooting) seem to point to overheating.

What should the temp be? Did I use too much thermal paste? Any other ideas?

Cheers.

 

[Dodgy_Bob]

Quick addition.

I ran a virus scan while montitoring the temp. The CPU hit 49c and then Norton failed with an error. Ran it again and the CPU hit 56c at one point, dropped to around 50c and Norton failed again. CPU then dropped to 46c and the system rebooted.

I've convinced that PCAlert is reporting incorrect temps (by at least 10c), system last rebooted at 40c yet going straight into BIOS reported 50c.

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Dodgy_Bob on 11/07/03 09:23 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[ChipDeath]

Your CPU temps are ok for a P4 (and besides, heat should NEVER stop a P4 at all, thanks to the good ol' speed throttling technology so ably demonstrated on THG a while ago). You could probably get them lower with a better HSF, but they're not anywhere near 'danger-zone'.

The symptoms (crashing when under heavy load) sound much more like an inadequate power supply to me. What is your PSU? wattage and make if you know.

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<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

 

[Dodgy_Bob]

OK, it doesn't appear to be the temperature. It looks like it's either the memory or the Motherboard (so far on this order the Hard Disk and the PSU have been returned and replaced!).

I have 2 x 256 Corsair XMS PC3700. One in each channel. With both in I get all the problems mentioned above (I re-installed system with Win98 since that post).

If I take the 2nd stick out, it all seems fine. Played C&C for about an hour.

If I take first stick out and put 2nd stick back in, it's no-where near as bad when both are in, but C&C did crash twice.

Is there something I need to do on this MB to turn on the dual channeling?

 

[4Ryan6]

Yep! What Wusy Said

<b><font color=purple>Listing your system specs, will greatly aid us, in being able to help you solve your problem.</font color=purple></b>

 

[icky_bu]

I have the same problem!
I changed cooler and the problem didnt get fixed. Althought it bought me more time before the system crashed.
I have the same exact problem with norton antivirus.

Like someone here said, the system could go real slow and all... but it shouldnt just crash/reboot.

So I'm sort of left in the dark. Could it be memory? Motherboard? Power supply? I'm trying to fix this asap cause the warranty is almost expiring...

What you recommend I ask the guys at the store to do?

 

[Dodgy_Bob]

OK, here's what I have found.

Whichever stick of memory is in, the system runs (but see later), with 2 in it freezes/fails/reboots.

With one in, like I said, it runs. But I still get lots of paging, surely even with just 256MB in the system shouldn't be using 141MB of paging space when nothing is running? Also, the onboard network seems to be ... "quirky" and when running C&C with the onboard sound I get a LOT of stuttering sounds and 1-2 second pauses. Without sound C&C seems to be fine (except on quit, when the paging causes it to takes AGES to exit).

With everything I have found/tested I reckon it's the motherboard at fault. Although, when I take it back the easiest and first thing I'm gonna get them to do is swap the memory. If they doesn't fix the major problem then I'm gonna get them to swap the MB.

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[pIII_Man]

try to bump the vdimm to 2.7v (change this in bios).


If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a procesor
110% BX fanboy

 

[Dodgy_Bob]

Putting the vdimm to 2.7 didn't do anything.

I got hold of memtest86 and ran it.

Both the DIMMs pass with no errors when they're in on their own. But both in together gives a ton of errors. It's gotta be the MB.

 

[bandikoot]

Seeing corsair xms and p4 problems together tugged a memory and a few seconds and a google search later I pulled this up from techreport.

"A fix for Corsair memory with Intel's new chipsets
By Scott Wasson - 12:00 AM, June 16, 2003


I should share something with you about Corsair RAM that we learned this past week and confirmed in spades—Geoff, Andy, and I all three—over the weekend in our various testing endeavors. I mentioned in my 875P and 865 chipset reviews that I'd had some trouble getting Corsair's XMS3200LL memory working with its default timings on these new Intel chipsets, so I wrote Corsair to see what was up. Here's the answer I got from Robert Pearce, Corsair's Applications Specialist:
Scott,
The problem is the chipset won't handle a tRCD (RAS to CAS Delay) of 2. We've done a revision of the SPD to make the LL's work on the 875 and 865 chipsets, the settings are now 2-3-2-6 by default.
We will, of course, warranty any modules with the older SPD but it should be noted that the end user can simply manually adjust the BIOS to the settings noted above.

Sure enough, using the latest BIOS revisions for the various 865 and 875 boards we have running around here, we were all able to get XMS3200LL (or in my case, plain ol' XMS3200 v1.1) DIMMs working with very aggressive timings, up to and including 2-3-2-6 at 400MHz, so long as the RAS to CAS delay was set to 3. Conversely, even with very relaxed timings for the other settings, the systems weren't happy with the RAS to CAS delay at 2.
This is a minor snag for Corsair, I suppose, but the manual workaround works beautifully, and the RAM is still easily superior to the other DDR400 samples I've encountered. "

I'm up way past when I should be asleep so mind functionality has gone down, so maybe someone else will know if this was ever fixed or not or if you should go and check your timings. Did that make sense? Definately time to sleep.

 

[keegs]

Hey guys I've got a bit of a similar problem with an AMD Athlon XP 1900+. I fried my MB a while ago and bought a new MB to replace it. I reinstalled the CPU into the new MB which was my first time. and I used artic silver thermal compound which I bought. Now I play games e.g Battlefield 1942, C&C Generals, GTA III: VC etc and after 10-20 minutes most of them freeze up. MBM5 is reading my CPU at 41-42c at idle and up to 45-46 during gameplay. Both within acceptable limits (I would think!) but never the less my games freeze and go back to desktop or lock up completely.
System
Windows XP Home, 1024mb DDR Ram, Athlon XP 1900+ (not overclocked), Geforce FX 5600 using 44.03 drivers (not the dodgy ones).

I know its a vague problem, but would the above circumstances (the program freezing but the system *generally* being stable) be likely to be resultant from
- overheating CPU from incorrect installation
- bad RAM
- overheating video card?

Any idea's?

And also are this there any software out there that can read the temperature of my graphics card?

Thanks guys.

 

[ChipDeath]

ok, one by one...
"- overheating CPU from incorrect installation"
Unlikely, as your temps seem perfectly fine. Lower than mine actually...

"- bad RAM"
It's possible, download <A HREF="http://www.memtest86.com" target="_new">Memtest86</A> and leave it running for a few hours to see if your RAM's ok.

"- overheating video card?"
Possible, but not too likely.. Usually when a graphics card starts to overheat, you'll start seeing 'artifacts' which are things like textures suddenly going weird colours, funny blobs on the screen, that sort of thing. if your games look perfectly normal, then just suddenly freeze up, I would look elsewhere first.

Since you have Mbm5, can you try getting it to log what voltage all the lines are? (12V, 5V,& 3.3V) If they all drop by more than 5% or so just before crashing then it's power supply.


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<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

 

[keegs]

Thanks for your reply

- I'm glad its not the CPU
- I've recently obtained memtest86 and was going to try it later on this evening. Will let you know how it turns out.
- sometimes... actually, often, my graphics are strange and warped. Only in battlefield 1942 at this stage, but they are erratic, with the textures spiking up out of no-where etc. I actually run a small fan/heater and put it next to my open case to help with that, and (thankfully) it does do a reasonable job. I can definently tell when the fan is off or on just by playing.

- I've now set up MBM5 to log every few seconds the voltage lines and will let you know what happens. Currently the power supply is a 300w, is that normal (satisfactory) or too low for my system?

Thanks, I'm now off to play a game and crash my system

 

[keegs]

The memtest86 report didn't come back too well. I've had a look at his site and it looks like the testing results may actually be incorrect as I had dozens of errors. One other thing he mentioned is mixing cheap(ish) RAM with Athlons - the common factor is that the RAM cannot keep up with the speed of the Athlon. My ram is relatively cheap which also may be a problem. I'm going to come in some of my test results which should shed some light on this - if someone could please confirm that my RAM is faulty from this test output I'd love to hear about it.
--------------------------------------------
SUMMARY
Walltime: 7:06:31
Cached : 1024mb
RsvdMem : 84k
MemMap : c820-std
Cache : No
ECC : Off
Test : Std
Pass : 10
Errors : 349
ECC Errs: 0

SAMPLE OF DATA IN TABLE

TEST|PASS|FAILING-ADDRESS|--GOOD--|--BAD---|
7---|-10-|-0036207d0-----|ffffffff|ffdfffff|
7---|-10-|-003620a58-----|ffffffff|ffdfffff|
7---|-10-|-003620aa8-----|ffffffff|fffdffff|
7---|-10-|-003620bc8-----|ffffffff|fffbffff|
7---|-10-|-003620bf8-----|ffffffff|ffdfffff|
7---|-10-|-003620d78-----|ffffffff|ffbfffff|
7---|-10-|-003620e80-----|ffffffff|fffdffff|
7---|-10-|-003620ea0-----|ffffffff|fffeffff|
7---|-10-|-003620ab8-----|ffffffff|ff7fffff|
N.B I have used dashes (-) instead of spaces.

Thanks guys any help appreciated as this problem is driving me nuts.

 

[ChipDeath]

Try increasing the RAM timings in BIOS to increase stability - you might find the RAM works ok with laxer timings.

I would also suggest you buy some casefans to improve airflow through your case, as you seem to have some heat problems.

A generic 300W power supply is borderline for your system. if that's a good make (e.g. Enermax or fortron) then you may be ok, but otherwise I'd advise you get at least a 350W Fortron Unit to replace it.

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<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

 

[Dodgy_Bob]

Right, took it all back and seem to have sorted it. Posting here for completeness.

Initially the guy brought out 2 512MB black Corsair DIMMs and tried those, got errors. He then got another set and we saw no errors. So, he got another set of my 256MB Corsair XMS PC3700 and again we saw no errors.

So looks like it was the memory. Unusual to get 2 sets failing tho. Still, it all looks ok now but more testing obviously

 

[keegs]

I've had a look in my bios and I can change my RAM timing but I'm not sure what parts to change, and what figures to change them too.
These are the ones I can change, and what they are on now ("optimum" setting). Got any recommendations?
Precharge Delay - 6
RAS to CAS Delay - 3
RAS precharge Delay - 3
CAS latency - 2.5T

Thanks

 

[keegs]

any idea chipdeath?