heat and buffer overruns

[arclight]

Hey guys, hope you had a good weekend. I need some help. Ever since the east coast has become hot as Africa, my computer has been running much too hot (getting up to around 65 Celcius) and I think this is causing some annoying buffer overruns, when recording drums or bouncing songs to disk.

Now my computer was running too hot even before this recent heat wave (in the low to mid 50s), and I think I know why. I bought a stock XP-1800 processor that came with a heatsink. It was my first time building a computer so I was learning as I went along, and after I put on my heatsink, I read about how using artic silver would improve your cooling , so I got some, and took off my heat sink to apply a drop of the goo. There was originally a little bit of puddy on the bottom of the heatsink to begin with. I assume to help with heat absorption. Well when I removed the heatsink, half the puddy stuck to the processor and half stayed on the heatsink. I thought nothing of this at the time and proceeded to add a drop of artic silver paste, spread it around and clamp the heatsink back on as close along the severed puddy line as I could.

Now that I'm runnign hot, I believe that this is the source of my problem. My question is what do I do to fix this? Can I scrape the puddy off the top of the processor with a razor blade or will this hurt my processor? Do I have to get a new heat sink or just scrape the puddy of this one and reapply the artic paste. Any help you guys can give would be great. Thanks

[8mmOverdose]

heat absolutely can cause problems. turn off the computer and leave it off until you fix this. you can use a q-tip and denatured alchol to clean the paste off of the cpu. remove the cpu to clean it. do not use a razor blade. just make sure the cpu is completely dry before you put it back together. i also suggest getting a better fan/heatsink, the stock ones are often not good enough.

[arclight]

Cool, thanks for the tips. I did what you said and cleaned it off with denatured alcohol. This worked reasonably well. Although it wasn't really an issue because the puddy and paste had mostly melted away from the center of the processor and congealed around the sides of its heart. So I cleaned this off and put on some new artic silver paste. Put everything back together and booted my computer. It's still running too hot, even when idle. It's not even a hot day today. So I guess I need a new heat sink and fan. Any recommendations on this would be great. But I don't think that this is the only problem. Someone else on this board, I forget who, uses an xp-1800 with stock heatsink and motherboard and said there were no heat problems. Is this luck of the draw. Is there something else wrong with how I'm running my system?

[Mark_Knecht]

acrlight,
PC Power and Cooling makes a very nice and very quiet CPU fan for the Athlon. They're not at all expensive.

Do NOT attempt to use your PC without proper cooling for the CPU. You'll just fry it.

http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com

They ship quickly and these are not very expensive. Probably in the $20-$25 range. Check them out.

Mark

[8mmOverdose]

Originally posted by Mark_Knecht:
acrlight,
PC Power and Cooling makes a very nice and very quiet CPU fan for the Athlon. They're not at all expensive.

Do NOT attempt to use your PC without proper cooling for the CPU. You'll just fry it.

http://www.pcpowerandcooling.com

They ship quickly and these are not very expensive. Probably in the $20-$25 range. Check them out.

Mark

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">you also can add 2 additional case fans. one at the bottom front to draw air in, and one at the top back to push it out. i use enermax case fans. there are quite a few threads already posted about cpu fans/heatsinks, try a search for more info. athlons run hot. the stock case fan the other person is using may not be the same one you have, which is why it is working ok for them. AMD does not make the fans/heatsinks, so a stock one could be any brand.

[da BaSsTaRd!]

Originally posted by arclight:
Cool, thanks for the tips. I did what you said and cleaned it off with denatured alcohol. This worked reasonably well. Although it wasn't really an issue because the puddy and paste had mostly melted away from the center of the processor and congealed around the sides of its heart. So I cleaned this off and put on some new artic silver paste. Put everything back together and booted my computer. It's still running too hot, even when idle.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">just to be clear - you did clean off the goop on the sides of the cpu and not just the copper center, right? very important...

[arclight]

Yeah, I already have two case fans on the computer and I am using an enermax power supply. The rest of the computer is at a very comfortable temperature. And yes, I did remove all of the congealed goo. I guess the answer has to be the heatsink/fan. I'm going to order a new one today, but I want to be able to use my computer before it comes. I thought if the computer got too excessively hot, that it would shut down or reboot rather than hurt itself. Thanks for the help so far guys. I also wonder if maybe it would help if I reset my bios. Just thinking, I don't know if that would help at all.

[8mmOverdose]

if you really cannot wait, you could always take the side off the case and use a small "house" fan to blow air up onto the cpu until you get you new heatsink. of course this will NOT replace the heatsink, it will just help it out temporarily. make sure you put your stock heatsink setup back together before trying this.

[8mmOverdose]

Originally posted by Ian S:
You probably already know this but just in case, make sure the prossesor speed is set right in bios. an xp1800 is not a 1.8 ghz prossesor. my xp1900 is a 1.6 ghz prossesor. I'm not sure off the top of my head what the xp1800 is... 1.5 ghz?
thats all. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">1.53 ghz

[arclight]

Yeah, I have it all set right. I'm going to use that house fan idea. That is both hilarious and brillient. I appreciate all the help guys. I think I'm going to hop on newegg right now and order a volcano.