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Stressing the Athlon XP

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I'll admit I'm very lucky...

I bought an Athlon XP 2700+ a year and a half ago and enjoyed lots of gaming and fun for a while. Suddenly, I started getting the general indications that the computer was overheating -- programs were crashing, the machine was randomly rebooting and I even had a few blue screens and reboot errors (Win XP Pro).

I finally decided to monitor the temperature of the system with MoboMonitor. Lo and behold the cpu core was reading 70 C while idle. Yes, 70 C from a cold boot fresh into windows. I immediately opened the case to check the fans, cord configurations and dust. I saw that everything appeared fine and decided to leave the case open and blow a house fan into the side. I live in a pretty dust-free environment and so buildup hadn't been a problem for the next few weeks/months at least. Well, throughout this new period the temperature never cooled off and even rose slightly: 75, 78, 80 and the highest -- 84 C! Over the past 2 months I've underclocked to 2500+ and switched house fans, never thinking to check the HSF and grease...

Yesterday I took care of that. I was pretty shocked to see lots of buildup and an almost putty-like form to the thermal grease that was on the cpu die. The heatsink had slight "burn" indications and was just as unclean as the processor.

I grabbed some new grease, cleaned the chip and HS and air-cleaned it well as I reinstalled. First boot I notice the MoboMonitor temp sitting at a nice 38C. After 10 minutes of Doom3 I notice the temp at 43C. I then go and OVERclock the CPU to 2800+ and re-run Doom3 -- 53C!

So I guess the moral of the story for Athlon XP users is to run them hot as hell =) In seriousness, I am very lucky because 85C is the absolute hottest that thing should ever get without frying and I got darn close for a couple months straight. Can you believe this? Over a full year with a CPU running well over 70C and powered on 24/7...

Kudos to AMD and tonight I might try to run that 2700+ at 3000 <wink>.

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Woah ! Your CPU just survived going through the digital equivalent of a Navy SEAL bootcamp, I would'nt be surprised if you find out that you have one of those incredibly overclockable CPU.

IMHO, AMD did a great job with Bartons and Thoroughbred-Bs, lot of OCing headroom and extreme resillience to overheating and high voltage. I just hope that they will be able to use the knowhow they gained with the 130nm K7 when they will start manufacturing their K8 on 90nm.

For me, happiness is a Mobile Barton clocked @ 2.5GHz =)

Fok Speling Misstake

Reply to SidVicious

What kind of thermal paste did you have in there that got so crappy?

Was it the wax pad?

Mobile XP 2600+ (11X200)
Abit NF7-S v 2.0
Maxtor 60GB ATA 133 7200RPM
512MB Corsair Twinx 3200LL
BBA 9800 Pro
Enermax Noisetaker 420 watts
Win98SE

Reply to Coyote

overclock the [-peep-] outta that chip if u can. i have an xp 2600 which i run at 12.5 * 175 which yur chip should have no problems with (i could go more but that would involve increasing the vcore and hence the temps), just make sure the fan u have is rated for that speed. I normally dont exceed 51c under any load.... so overclock if u have the ram.

"Its only when you look at ants closely with a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames"

Reply to Wolfy

Well, the paste was white -- does anyone sell a white paste besides PC Toys? I can't recall the brand I used right off hand.

Yea, I'm holding steady at 55C OC'd to 2900+ right now. As long as it keeps booting after I change BIOS settings I'm going to keep pushing it to 60ish =). I may even upgrade to a renowned HSF such as Thermaltake's line -- any recommendations would be welcome.

I'm just thrilled to not have an open case with a house fan blowing any longer. My room seems so quiet now!

Reply to softflow

i use a falconrock2 made by spire for mine... there are better on the matket but as i said it keeps my pc at 50c give or take and with its 80mm fan it runs at around 2500-3000 rpm and is real quiet (for me that is cos i had a 60mm coolermaster before which ran at some crazy rpm and sounded like a turbo engine, although it did keep my cpu 5 degrees cooler that the falconrock)

"Its only when you look at ants closely with a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames"Edited by wolfy on 08/19/04 10:14 AM.

Reply to Wolfy

The white grease is silicon-based. Could be Ceramique, Spectra-cool, or stock AMD stuff. Zalman uses it too. I've used all of it and Arctic Silver 5 seems to be a couple of degrees better at best.

Abit IS7 - 2.8C @ 3.4ghz - Mushkin PC4000 (2 X 512) - Sapphire 9800Pro - TT 420 watt Pure Power
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Sony DRU-510A - Yellowtail Merlot

Reply to Cybercraig

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