Need help with Athlon XP 2000 overheating

I bought an Atlhon XP probably back in March. It came with a Maxtor 7,200 RPM hard drive. It has a 128MB NVidia Ti4600 graphics card. An ASUS A7V266-E mother board. The case is an Enlight 7237 with a 400 watt power supply. The heat sink fan for my processor is a Cooler Master 5400 RPM fan with a copper base. Sorry I don't remeber the model number. Two cd drives, and a floppy drive. 256 MB of 2100 DDR RAM. Anyways the computer worked fine till awhile back after I decided to take the hard drive out of my old computer and put it in my new computer. It's also a Maxtor 7,200 RPM hard drive. After a couple weeks of having both hard drives in my computer my processor kept over heating. The processor will get up to about 89 degrees celsius. I thought adding a second case fan would remedy this problem since I only have only case fan installed right now. It's the case fan that came with the case. I talked to a guy today at a computer parts store , and he told me that he didn't think the second case fan would help that much. He said that he thought that either rmy heat sink fan wasn't working or it wasn't making proper contact with my processor. He said either that or the heat sink fan wasn't powerful enough. I am pretty sure the heat sink fan is working okay I had already look at that when my computer started overheating. It seems like it's running fine. He told me adding the second hard drive probably wasn't part of the problem. I just need your guys advice on what I should do. I have no experience at trying to cool these puppies down. I don't have my computer over clocked or anything like that. Any advice on what to buy or do would really be helpful. Sorry if I wrote too much about my computer I just wanted to be as detailed as possible. Thanks guys.

hsf is definately not installed properly, take it off, add some as3, and reseat it, making sure it is properly positioned. 89???? are you serious??? wow.




good luck

Right about now you should start having this burnt smell in the room... Turn off your computer, and make sure hte heatsink is on right.

What were your temps before? For the most part the guy you talked to was correct. Except adding a second drive would cause your temps to rise slightly. But not to 89c. Hard drives put of heat just the same as any other component. The change from the drive would probably not even be noticiable. A second fan would also help in cooling. However 89c is extremely high and i doubt that a single case fan addition would help all that much. The most likely scenerio is that when you installed the drive you knocked the hsf a little off. Pull the heatsink off and clean it with some isopropyl alchohal. Do this to the core as well. Then apply a thin and even layer of artic sliver 3 to the core. (a pea size amount in the middle, squeshed flat with a credit card works well.) Reatach your hsf and you should see a noticable drop in temp. One more thing, does that second drive block the air flow from your fan. That could contribute to the overheat as well. But i doubt that this alone would cause such high temps. If all else fails use that sucker to heat your house this winter!!!!!

2 Points with the hdd addition:

If they are right next to each other than airflow will be a problem for them too- over time they can get pretty hot.

With insufficient case airflow, a pair of hard drives could increase your temps quite a bit: air gets hot, insufficient flow through the case, cpu gets hotter. Air that is already hot keeps recirculating and getting hotter with time.

But I don't think they are the entire answer either- check the heatsink.

Using Arctic Silver (or any other thermal compound) will help.
NOTE that if there is a Thermal Pad on the heatsink now it will have to come off.

As a temporary measure take the side panel off the case- that should get things down to a manageable level until you get the rest sorted out.

It almost sounds like you may have bumped the heatsink while doing something in the case... Could that be a possibility?

msmasitti said:

Right about now you should start having this burnt smell in the room... Turn off your computer, and make sure hte heatsink is on right.

Click to expand...

you know all about that smell don tyou

take out the mobo and check the heatsink before you turn it on again. you are lucky! most tbirds die when hsf gets knocked off.

Hey guys I tried what you guys said to do. I took off the keat sink cleaned it and the processor. Reapplied some heat sink compound as soon as I turned on my computer it started at around 54 degrees celcius. I am now at 71 degrees and my computer has only been on for less than 10 minutes. You guys have any other ideas? Err I am ready to burn down a certain computer store.

Ok, I'm having a similar problem but I have it under controll iwth my system, tho stil not satisfied by how much it took to get my XP 2000+ cool. it's under AMD Motherboards/Abit/ mobo CPU temp off?

-Shaun

I would do the following;
1. Add an additional rear/top exhaust fan

2. Dump the Coolermaster, there are only 2 Coolermaster HSF that are AMD approved for XP2000+ and doubt yours is one of them. Get and AX-7, SLK-800 or (god forbid) a Volcano7+

3. Separate the HDD's, rogerdugans makes a valid point about having 2 HDD's stacked next to each other.

I have 2-D740X drives separated by 1 1/2" w/ a HDDcooler blowing through them and my HDD temp is normally 40C. This is in a case whose ambient is 20-24C.

Where are you located? Desert, south or somewhere hot?
What is the room temperature?
I forgot to say WELCOME TO THE FORUM!!

89 celcius!??!?!?!?!?! Watercool that mofo!!!!!!!

Ok thanks guys I'll try to order another heat sink fan and get a second case fan. I live in Indiana my room temperature may reach low 80's during the day. The CPU drops considerly if I take the side of my case off, but where I live it seems everything gets so dusty so I don't really wanna leave the side off. I was looking in my BIOS could anyone tell me what CPU thermal option is? It has three options throttle, shutdown, disabled. I looked in in my BIOS book, and it doesn't say what it is. I really appreciate everyones help. I got a lot more replies than I ever thought I would. Thanks guys.

THat can be expansive. And I'm going Intel spacificly becasue of heat and stability issues with AMD.

-Shaun

That is probably a temp sensor feature. Like it wil shutdown if it gets to hot,m or throttle down or nothing, if it senses the CPU overheating. I dunno really either.

-Shaun

This happened to me before also, it got to 80+C
So I changed to a new hsf and the problem solved.

good luck

K

Hey guys if I add a second case fan what would be a good size to add? Also I am wondering if the fan that came with my case is a very good one. Does it matter if the exhaust fan is more powerful than the intake fan or vise versa? Thanks

Well what you are talking about is good case airflow. Here is what I have done with mine, use it as a guide, you don't have to do everything I did but you can go for it. I have 2 front 80mm fans equal to my 2 rear 80mm fans, i have a 92mm intake on the bottom, and a 80mm exaust ontop. the to exaust in back draw air off the cpu and thet one on the bottom sucks air of the desk, which is cold. it has a filter to keep dust out and the case is raied about 2 inches off my sesk by two wod blocks i added. there is a side input fan gonig over the cpu as well, that is complimented by the powwer suply output fans, mine has 2 on the psu. i have an in for every out. I also ttufed my extra calbes in crackks or spaces where they wont be in the way of airflow gonig thru the main part of the case.

-Shaun

I think CBriton is going to be limited by his case. I would suggest a top blowhole (92mm) and a side blowhole (92mm).
If this is what the rear of the case looks like;

You mean side intake right? a side output wont help much, an intake over the cpu wil lreally lower temps, i know from experiance.

-Shaun