Question about self-cooked P3s

[Keen]

Hi all, I recently bought myself a new case. I did a quick transplant of my system from the old case to the new case, then got it running eventually (stupid LEDs). Anyway, I always have my comp running 24/7 for seti, and a few days later, I come downstairs and sit in front of my comp for my morning webcomics. I turn on the monitor, and it powers up, but it immediately goes to standby. I figure my comp froze during the night, so I hit the reset button, but it doesn't make noise. I hear the hard drives spin up, but there's no BIOS beep. Obviously, something was wrong, I was rather worried, but I didn't have time to deal with it, I needed to get to class. I leave my comp off, and return about 4-5 hours later. I try turning on my comp, and it loads up just fine!! Scandisk does its thing, and windows loads up. Now I'm scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck happened. After seeing that my comp seems to be functioning normally, for some reason I think to check with MBM. It says one of my cpu fans is off! I have an Alpha P3-125 so my cpu (a katmai) is still receiving some cooling. I immediately shut down my comp, and when I look inside my case, I see the fan is disconnected. I reconnect it, and it works fine. However, MBM is showing my cpu temps to be in the low to middle 40's C, but before my cpu nearly died, I was getting low to mid 50's C for my cpu temp. I find it wonderful that my cpu is still functioning after frying like that, but this change in temps makes me wonder.

Could my temps have actually lowered somehow? If not, then why would only the on-die thermometer be damaged? When a cpu fries, is this type of thing common??

Anyway, if the temps have gone down, I'm hoping to oc my cpu a bit more this weekend :)

BTW, I'm running this:
P3 Katmai 500@650 2.3V
ASUS P3V4X
192 MB RAM
Voodoo 3 2k
Enermax two fan 350 Watt PS
other stuff...

[Carmine_Paterno]

Nice overclock on the Katmai! I am hoping to get my P3 450 to about 650, but i need to raise my voltage to about 2.4, right now it is @ 2.3v. I need to raise my I/O voltage alot, because of the L2 Cache.

About your chip, i just think you gave it quite a burn-in (pun intended). That happened to me a couple times before, just i never had a fan disconnect. It goes on standby, and never comes back. i just restarted and never had that problem again.

What is your 3dmark2001/3dmark2000 score? I figure we should be around the same since you have a 40mhz faster cpu, and i have a faster video card.

[Keen]

3dmark 2000 score - 2495
here's the link for more detail. (http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare.shtml?1110581)

[Endeavor]

ur lucky ur chip isnt dead, if u see if it happens again, u might want to secure the plug for the power

[Endeavor]

ur lucky ur chip isnt dead, if u see if it happens again, u might want to secure the plug for the power

[SP]

Intel CPUs have a safety mechanism built into them. When the temperature of the chip exceeds a certain point they shut themselves down. That makes it a bit harder to destroy an Intel chip by overheating it alone. I've heard of people installing PIIIs without heatsinks on them and powering up their system. The system doesn't power up because the CPUs have shut themselves down, but after powering down and properly attaching a heatsink then the system powers up and runs fine. I wouldn't try doing such, but I have heard of cases where people actually did that and the saftey mechanisim saves the CPUs from any damage.

AMD cpus, on the other hand, have no such safety mechanism and will literally self destruct themslevesin seconds if the heatsink isn't attached properly. This is one of the areas where AMD cuts corners. Perhaps they do it to reduce cost. Seeing as how their CPUs generate more heat for a given die area you would think their CPUs would be the most in need of such a feature.

[Keen]

Thanks SP for the info. I didn't realize that intel attached an anti-selfdestruct device to the temp diode. Perhaps amd will do the same with the palominos, which will have an ondie temp diode, like intel has now.

On another note, I found that I hadn't re-overclocked my cpu, which is why my temps were so low. *kicks self*

[Kingslayer]

I would be asking any questions. I would be counting my blessings and making an offering to the chip gods.......

And does anyone know at what temp the chip shuts itself down? And is there anyway to access this temp with software to monitor it?