GORB with vacuum cleaner -searching for something better...

[Karsta]

In pursuit of reason for occasional crashes on 3D Mark and games I have drifted to quite desperate means. Now that summer has come and room temp is getting up to 23°-25° my cooling setup has proved to be quite insufficient. Increasing air flow through the case to maximum I can get with 2x120 mm and 2x80 mm fans, doesn't any more drop CPU temp under 38° under load (would give 35°-36° with 20° room temp). 38° happens to be the limit of stability with this CPU on 866MHz. Because another cause for crashes could be the memory I had to get CPU cooler for testing of recent VIO mod I made.

Vacuum cleaner tip was just what I was searching for!
So I took MB, PSU, HD and diskette drive out of the case and connected them on table. From my GORB I took fan away and attached vacuum cleaner (1350W) on it with cardboard adapter tube and duct tape. I looped 3D Mark 2000 for 2½ hours which is not long enough to be sure. Anyway it seems that CPU temperature can be now the culprit. I think that more airflow through heatsink is hard to get. Still CPU temp was 35°-36° (rt 25°)!

I am finally thinking of getting a better heatsink. Would drop in temperature be expected without a vacuum cleaner? Because CPU is on a slotket next to memory and PSU is almost touching slotket I don't have much room for heatsink. Any recommendations are welcome.

 

[Karsta]

Small addition
temp near the heatsink was 28° so the c/w was about 0.26. Is there a heatsink with c/w 0.25-0.28 without terrible noise?

 

[supraway]

I would try using a program other than 3DMark2000, as the program stresses the video card much more than the CPU.

Use Prime95 or Seti instead.

 

[cjtune]

No, try using the CPUburn package (BurnBX, BurnMMX, BurnP6). Not only will it stress more parts of your CPU than Prime95, but it stresses your mobo chipset and the memory as well. BURNBX WAS THE ONLY PROGRAM I TRIED THAT COULD DETECT THE MARGINAL STABILITY OF MY MOTHERBOARD AT 900MHz. That's why my P3 only runs at 840MHz as it does now

Then, maybe, try running 3DMark together as well to give your system a complete workout.

 

[Bad Maniac]

Those CPU temps are not so bad mate. and as previously stated, 3dMark and games aswell, tests graphic card stability more than cpu. Try to put a fan on your Graphic card, or if you already hasve one, then increase airflow TO that fan, in some whay. A fan at the back of the card blowing on both sides of the card tends to work good. And then see if your stability improves. I dont think those CPU temps should cause a crash. So it might be your Graphic card. try it.

 

[Karsta]

I don't think the problem was (now gone) Asus V7700 it had full load temperature of 32° and it didn't seem to matter whether it was o/ced or not. It had BLORB on its sanded chip and the original fan on backside cooling those capasitors (that's the reason its now broken -fan detached itself and short circuited the card) also memory was cooled with heatsinks.

Cpu is cA2 stepping mask and has poor overclocking potential. I very seldom can see higher values than 38° with it because it crashes before - even with less o/c.

I have used 3D Mark because it is more real life test and stresses heavily CPU, memory, MB and GPU. It doesn't use only floating point unit as could be imagined for some test programs. It also seems to be very sensitive for errors. This BurnBx sounds worth trying though.