Hi All,
I'm having problems with my PC crashing, I'm pretty certain its due to my processor having overheated in the past (long story) as it seemed to be ok for a while after i put a new processor fan in.
I just want to confirm if it is the processor thats the problem but the only way i can think of to do this would be to install another processor, but as that was the root of the original problems (and could be an unneccesary expense) I don't want to do that myself.
Can anyone suggest any alternatives?

Firstly make sure there's nothing wrong with the current cooling - it is possible that dust has clogged something up making the fans less efficient? Try fiddling with the bios settings to underclock it (and therefore make it run cooler)? Or stick a bigger fan on the heatsink if that's possible? Or maybe just try and improve the ventilation to the whole case? (maybe by opening it up, sometimes that can actually make things worse though!) The current hot weather might have something to do with it..

And of course make sure the cpu cooling fan is actually spinning! :)

No problems with any of those, its currently underclocked. Also gave it a good clean when I reseated the fan to see if it would make any difference.

What processor is it? There are other things in a computer that could overheat and cause it to crash aswell - have had it happen to pc's where the chipset fan has stopped/fallen off.

Could be windows itself. Though it would be a pain to reinstall only to find out you were right in the first place and it wasnt the operating system. If you have an old hard drive lying around you could always swap it in, and install windows again to test.

As I said its been the same before and after putting a new fan in. Have already tried a fresh install of windows with no luck. It also crashes in Linux so Im sure its hardware.

I guess the best plan would be to take it to get it repaired. I just don't want to get ripped off. As it is stable some of the time I don't know the best way to check if a new CPU had actually solved the problem.

Thinking about it a stress test after putting a new CPU in might do the job?

Reason for asking what processor it is, is that someone may be able to lend you one :)

Good thinking!

Athlon XP socket A 3000+

I very much doubt it will be the CPU, genrally if they overheat to a point where they are damaged, they wont power on. What it could be is that the power circuitry on the motherboard is damaged, as this tends to happen when CPU's overheat. What temperature did it get to when it overheated?

Joel

Around 80!

The daft thing is I was trying to avoid this sort of thing happening but the software wasn't giving the correct temperature. Only when I updated to the latest version did I realise...

Athlons can take upto 90 (and higher sometimes) but chances are, the heat may have frazzled the transistors underneath the chip, I've seen it happen before.

Joel

So the motherboard then? What would you advise?

Over 60 is generally considered too high for that type of Athlon. Also, I've had to lower the speed those chips in summer when overclocked before.

Originally posted by Trickle
Over 60 is generally considered too high for that type of Athlon. Also, I've had to lower the speed those chips in summer when overclocked before.

I've never had a problem, the AMD reseerler bumf which I get specifes that the chip should run at no more than 70 degrees idle, but can withstand upto 11o degrees on some steppings.

Joel

What's the machine actually doing - locking up, rebooting, crashing with a STOP message (Windows)............???

fnky: Crashing with a stop message.

The full story of what happened:

1. Overclocked my original Athlon 3200+ chip and had the same problems as now but much more severe.

2. Installed new chip which was fine for a while, had a bit of a nightmare installing the heatsink and didn't clean it very well beforehand (ignorance is my defence). Didn't overclock this chip.

3. Same problems started up again so used the MB's software to monitor the temp. and it seemed ok, did some research online and it turned out the software was bugged and didn't pick up the correct temp. downloaded the latest version of the software and found the temps were as mentioned above.

4. Installed a new heatsink (Not an athlon one).

5. System ran well for a couple of months.

6. Problems started up again. Underclocking seemed to reduce how often it happened for a while but then kept recurring.

7. Attempted reinstalling heatsink to see if it would make any difference - no joy.

The problems aren't constant and they don't seem to follow any pattern. The error messages are varied.

The problems with Linux rule out windows problems
Have run the Microsoft RAM test program which came out fine.

Running a stress test (Prime something or other) failed and crashed the PC.

I can, if you want have a look at it for you, bench test it and run various diagnostics on it for you, and if something needs replacing I can give you a cheap price for the work. Wang me an email to sales@linuxmod.co.uk and I can give you a quote.

Joel