I think it's a Thoroughbred. Is there any way to easily tell which family
the chip is in? I don't recall offhand...
WCPUID would tell you based on the model/family info.
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002374/src/download.html
but easiest way is voltage, a Palomino is default of 1.75V, while
Thoroughbred is, hmm, I forget, around 1.6-1.65V.
I got a new motherboard. My EPoX 8RDA+ recently died due to the
capicitor problem that seems to have run rampant over the last few
years.
It happens, though a power-hungry CPU plus hot system will accelerate
their demise.
Yes. I dust everything fairly regularly and I totally cleaned everything
when I put the new motherboard in 2 weeks ago.
What do you mean by "interface material"?
That which is between heatsink bottom and CPU top.
On retail chips or with some OEMs, it's not grease or paste but a
gooey-waxy-bobblegum like wad of gunk. Well, not really a wad till you
scrape it into one.
Yes. I think there might be. I'm trying to determine the cause of other
problems that I seem to be having and I was thinking that they might be
heat related. You can read my post regarding those other problems
here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=a...TF-8&[email protected]&rnum=2
OH, well that's happening when you first turn the system on though, which
isn't overheating. If heatsink were quite badly interfaced with CPU it
could lock up that quick, but that isn't the case since it IS still
keeping cpu at 60C, which isn't great but plenty cool enough that it
shouldn't halt before it even finishes the first part of the POST.
See some of the other posts, how a basic introducton to all parts of your
system may help us narrow things down a bit. Although you may've
mentioned that in previous postings it's always good to carry over that
basic info to expedite things and get newcomers up to speed on your
situation.
So you've had two different boards and still potential problems. Is it a
decent power supply? Do you have the option of taking voltage readings
with a meter?
Have you tried using only one memory module, and testing memory with
http://www.memtest86.com?
If you unplug all non-essential (to POSTING, not booting the OS) hardware,
does it make any difference? How about if you underclock the CPU?
Sometimes nForce2 boards are picky about settings like 8X AGP, it might
help if you disable that or at least revert to lower, 4x, 2x multiplier if
those are options, and disable other AGP features for the time being.
How about the bios? If you check DFI's site is the version your board is
running a fairly mature bios or closer to 1st, 2nd release that may be
buggy, might need updated?
Getting a new build working right after a previous failure can be
difficult, especially when there are so many variables and it's
intermittent. Basically you can just tackle as many as possible and
disable features, pull components, set slow settings in bios, etc, till it
appears to be working. If that never happens then you'll have to take a
2nd look at those base components like video, motherboard, power, memory.
I just don't think the CPU, at 60C after it's been running a while, could
have any impact on the system halting after only a few seconds of POSTing.
Granted, it's the only thing I mentioned in this post. I have another post
that
details the actual problems I seem to be having (see above). And I wasn't
sure if 60C was too low.
Well you may have some bios settings you could use to downclock the CPU.
For example you can change multiplier and have motherboard running same
FSB rate but less power, or lower FSB but raise multiplier (if board
supports that) and be using same amount of power for CPU, only a tiny bit
less for motherbaord, but be putting less demand on memory bus (assuming
you're running synchronous memory bus, DO run synchronous (same speed as
FSB) memory bus.
I downloaded cpu burn-in this morning and it's running on that PC now.
CPU burn-in?
Not familiar with that one, I suggest Prime95 because it's Torture Test,
particularly the "in-place large FFTs" test will often catch CPU
instability within a minute or so... if it runs for longer than that it
may go for hours, which at that point would typically be beyond such a
thin margin of stability that it'd freeze at POST.
Well, mine is an Antec 400W PSU. As far as I know, that's a really good
brand. And the only reason I'm thinking it's low is because it's showing up
as red (whereas my CPU fan is showing up in a regular color). And I seem
to recall on my old MB (which was an EPoX 8RDA+), it had RPMs of up
to 3000-4000+.
Are you sure you have the fans' plugged into the correct headers? That
is, if the CPU fan header has a thermal RPM adjustment feature (slow down
fan if system not very hot) and you had the PSU fan plugged into that then
of course it'd reduce the fan speed, though I thought the fan had only an
RPM out, was still powered by the PSU.... almost certain of it.
