Stuttering audio and mouse - PSU fan too slow perhaps?

[potatan]

Hi,

I have an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ in an Antec Sonata
chassis with the supplied PSU. All about 2.5 years old.

Recently I've been experiencing poor mouse response (it seems to
stick, and/or move slowly). Also sounds frequently stutter (including
my startup wave file).

Checking my BIOS, the CPU temp and CPU Fan speed are 68C / 2986. MB
temp is 24C. The power supply fan speed is ~1500 and this displays in
red in my BIOS display.

A. I realise this is a bit like "how long is a piece of string", but
does my PSU fan speed look a bit low?
B. If it is, could this cause the problems I am experiencing with
audio and the mouse?

I have the latest drivers for mouse/audio, and there are no background
processes sapping my CPU (current usage about 1-5%).

All help appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[Paul]

Hi,

I have an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ in an Antec Sonata
chassis with the supplied PSU. All about 2.5 years old.

Recently I've been experiencing poor mouse response (it seems to
stick, and/or move slowly). Also sounds frequently stutter (including
my startup wave file).

Checking my BIOS, the CPU temp and CPU Fan speed are 68C / 2986. MB
temp is 24C. The power supply fan speed is ~1500 and this displays in
red in my BIOS display.

A. I realise this is a bit like "how long is a piece of string", but
does my PSU fan speed look a bit low?
B. If it is, could this cause the problems I am experiencing with
audio and the mouse?

I have the latest drivers for mouse/audio, and there are no background
processes sapping my CPU (current usage about 1-5%).

All help appreciated.

Thanks.

One thing that comes to mind, is an "interrupt storm". It is possible
for a broken chip to continuously interrupt the processor, leading to
the processor spending a lot of time servicing empty interrupts. That could
prevent timely servicing of other things that need real time service.

In my Win2K install, if I go to the "Administrative Tools", there is
an item called "Performance". That item shows a moving plot with time.
You can right click in the pane, and "Add Counters". There is a list
of statistics to choose from. "Interrupts/sec" is one of them. If
I don't touch my PS/2 keyboard or PS/2 mouse, the "Interrupts/sec"
reads around 130. If I have a 3D game playing, and I alt-tab
out of the game, my interrupts rise to a couple thousand (even though
in my test case, the game was displaying its status screen at the
end of a match). So pick a "quiet" set of conditions, and check
the interrupts per second. If you are using USB keyboard and mouse,
you are going to get a different number than me, and someone with a
USB setup is going to have to contribute their baseline level of
activity.

Another thing that has upset sound in the past, is a disk drive that
goes from DMA to PIO mode. That can prevent "winamp" type applications
from playing music smoothly. PIO means every disk read becomes processor
intensive.

Paul

 

[SteveH]

Hi,

I have an ASUS A8V Deluxe mobo, AMD Athlon 64 3500+ in an Antec Sonata
chassis with the supplied PSU. All about 2.5 years old.

Recently I've been experiencing poor mouse response (it seems to
stick, and/or move slowly). Also sounds frequently stutter (including
my startup wave file).

Checking my BIOS, the CPU temp and CPU Fan speed are 68C / 2986. MB
temp is 24C. The power supply fan speed is ~1500 and this displays in
red in my BIOS display.

A. I realise this is a bit like "how long is a piece of string", but
does my PSU fan speed look a bit low?
B. If it is, could this cause the problems I am experiencing with
audio and the mouse?

I have the latest drivers for mouse/audio, and there are no background
processes sapping my CPU (current usage about 1-5%).

All help appreciated.

Thanks.

The PSU fan speed looks ok to me (depends what it usedto be of course), but
I don't think that's the problem.
The first thing I would do is look at reducing the CPU temperature, it looks
way too high. Is that idle or loaded temps?
I have the same MOBO, but with a X2/4600 (I used to have a Venice core 3500)
and the only time my CPU even gets to 50c is if I absolutley hammer it. When
I had the 3500, again I would be hard pressed to get it above 51-52c.
I would look at refitting (with new grease)/replacing the CPU heatsink/fan
and getting cool and quiet enabled, if you don't already.

HTH
SteveH

 

[Michael Hawes]

The PSU fan speed looks ok to me (depends what it usedto be of course),
but I don't think that's the problem.
The first thing I would do is look at reducing the CPU temperature, it
looks way too high. Is that idle or loaded temps?
I have the same MOBO, but with a X2/4600 (I used to have a Venice core
3500) and the only time my CPU even gets to 50c is if I absolutley hammer
it. When I had the 3500, again I would be hard pressed to get it above
51-52c.
I would look at refitting (with new grease)/replacing the CPU heatsink/fan
and getting cool and quiet enabled, if you don't already.

HTH
SteveH

As well as the above advice, check for virus or spyware. What AV
software? Download Ad-aware and Spybot.

Mike.

 

[potatan]

Thanks for the advice.

I'm not sure what the normal psu fan speed would be as I don't tend to
check it.

ASUS probe is noting that my chassis fan speed is zero, but I checked
and it's definitely spinning! I think the problem is probably my CPU
fan, it seems to be harbouring quite a lot of crud/dust so I'll try
cleaning it up and see how I get on.

The CPU temp starts quite low but climbs to (currently) about low 70's
C, so this would seem to tie in with an inefficient (as opposed to
plain broken) CPU fan.

Oh, and it's not a virus or spyware - but good advice, thanks for
offering.

 

[potatan]

Well that certainly lowered the CPU temp. Hoovered out about a small
mouse-worth of dust from the heat sink, and now running at a more
respectable 47C, even after 10 minutes of Half Life 2 (gotta hate
those ant lions!).

So that leaves either a PSU fan problem (I'm still not convinced), or
some interrupt problem.

My disks are all in DMA mode, and I ran perfmon to check CPU
interrupts - average 160 per second which doesn't seem way off.

Beginning to suspect some kind of software/driver issue rather than
hardware. Maybe I'll reinstall Windows as this problem (I think)
seemed to start around the last rebuild.

Anyone have any other ideas of things I can check? Or can a slow PSU
fan cause these kinds of issues anyway? My voltages are all reporting
correctly at (+12) 12.16, (+5) 4.919, (+3.3) 3.296 and (Vcore) 1.518 -
which seem within tolerances - so I think the slow PSU fan may be a
red herring.

Paul

 

[Frank McCoy]

Thanks for the advice.

I'm not sure what the normal psu fan speed would be as I don't tend to
check it.

ASUS probe is noting that my chassis fan speed is zero, but I checked
and it's definitely spinning!

Does the fan have a three-terminal connector that's connected to the
motherboard also having a three-terminal connector?
That third terminal measures chops that tell how fast the fan is
turning.

I think the problem is probably my CPU
fan, it seems to be harbouring quite a lot of crud/dust so I'll try
cleaning it up and see how I get on.

The CPU temp starts quite low but climbs to (currently) about low 70's
C, so this would seem to tie in with an inefficient (as opposed to
plain broken) CPU fan.

More likely a clogged, poorly mounted, or high thermal impedence
heat-sink. Some old plain aluminum heatsinks were pretty much
worthless.

I also had a similar problem once, where the *power supply* was blowing
*hot air* onto the CPU, instead of exhausting it from the case.
Fricking fan was mounted in the PSU *backwards* at the factory. Took me
*months* to track that shitty problem down.

Oh, and it's not a virus or spyware - but good advice, thanks for
offering.

Check your heatsink for proper mounting, good thermal compound, (Arctic
Silver is good.) clean air passages, and good solid copper ... the more
copper in the heatsink and the thicker the better. I use a solid-copper
"gamer's" heatsink in mine.

 

[Bill]

Well that certainly lowered the CPU temp. Hoovered out about a small
mouse-worth of dust from the heat sink, and now running at a more
respectable 47C, even after 10 minutes of Half Life 2 (gotta hate
those ant lions!).

So that leaves either a PSU fan problem (I'm still not convinced), or
some interrupt problem.

My disks are all in DMA mode, and I ran perfmon to check CPU
interrupts - average 160 per second which doesn't seem way off.

Beginning to suspect some kind of software/driver issue rather than
hardware. Maybe I'll reinstall Windows as this problem (I think)
seemed to start around the last rebuild.

Anyone have any other ideas of things I can check? Or can a slow PSU
fan cause these kinds of issues anyway? My voltages are all reporting
correctly at (+12) 12.16, (+5) 4.919, (+3.3) 3.296 and (Vcore) 1.518 -
which seem within tolerances - so I think the slow PSU fan may be a
red herring.

Paul

Check the Current Mode for Primary IDE Channel in Device
Manager....IDE Controllers....Primary IDE
Channel....Properties...Advanced Settings....

The Device 0 or Device 1, whichever corresponds to your hard drive w/
Windows should be running in Ultra DMA Mode 5...

If it is running slower it can cause studder in your startup wave file
and downright slow performance all around....

 

[potatan]

Check the Current Mode for Primary IDE Channel in Device

Manager....IDE Controllers....Primary IDE
Channel....Properties...Advanced Settings....

The Device 0 or Device 1, whichever corresponds to your hard drive w/
Windows should be running in Ultra DMA Mode 5...

If it is running slower it can cause studder in your startup wave file
and downright slow performance all around....

Interesting angle there. Device 0 is currently running at Ultra DMA
Mode 4 - maybe that's the highest it can support (the build is coming
up to three years old now). It is a SATA Maxtor 6Y080M0 80GB model.
I do have two other HDD's attached, one is another SATA 160GB, the
other an IDE 20GB. I think I'll try unplugging them and see if it
makes a difference at all.

And yes, the startup wave file (the Windows 95 one, for my sins hehe -
though I'm running XP Pro) definitely stutters.