low power supply cause lockups? cpu overheat at 60 degrees?? help!

[kurrent]

I'm usually able to successfully pinpoint most problems on my pc, but
this time I am really stuck!

My PC (see system specs at bottom) has been running fine for the last
18 months I've been using it and last night it, for the first time
ever, it froze up completely, in the middle of doing some photoshop
work and listening to music.

I had to power off the computer and reboot it to regain
'consciousness'. I resumed my photoshop work and winamp player and
within 10 minutes, freeze again! Graphics on screen froze and music
off!
I immediately though, heat issue. I powered off, rebooted, check my
temperatures in the BIOS and found:

Case: 28 degrees.
Cpu: 50 degress.

(Fan RPM's were around 3000)

While checking some other settings in the BIOS, i paged back to my
screen displaying the temperatures and found that the case temp had
dropped by one degree and the cpu dropped by a 2 more degrees. Seems
normal to me.

I booted back up, but on loading of my windows desktop, and installed
motherboard monitor so I could actively monitor my temperatures.

MBM showed case at 28'ish and CPU and 49'ish. I have never overclocked
anything on my PC so I couldn't understand why anything would be
overheating...especially under normal desktop usage.

So I put my system under load to see what would happen...I ran every
photo and video editing app on my system and watched my case
temperature go up a degree and my CPU temp rise from 49 to 52...to
56....to 59...freeze!

Power off, boot up...system freezes at BIOS screen.

Power off, try again....no signal to monitor at all, but system still
powers up.

(something is too hot i'm thinking)

Power off, waited a minute, power on and checked temperatures in BIOS
immediately. Case temp high 20's....CPU temp low 50's.

Power off, case off, check the guts and everything looks fine. No
sizzling, no smells....I felt around the case and nothing seemed
excessively hot. I don't get it!

It's been awhile and I'm not exactly up to speed on hardware all the
time...but low 50's and high 50's of CPU temp may be "a tad" high...but
nothing to the point where they would lock up a system and fry the CPU
itself i would hope.

Powered back on my PC on and while just idling in BIOS, i checked the
back of my case to have a look at the power supply to make sure the fan
was spinning (my BIOS doesn't report the rpm or temp of my power fan)
and it was indeed spinning. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but
although the fan is spinning, I can feel barely any warm air coming out
of it at all (or any air for that matter..fan seems to be maybe
spinning slower than others).

I left my PC off for the remainder of the night and thought i'd have
another crack at it this morning.

Power on....system appears to power up fine, lights blinking...fans
spinning, no beeping.....and signal to my monitor. Nothing now!

So now, my computer powers up, but no signal at all to screen and no
beeps.

So i'm stuck and don't know where the problem lies.
Leaving the computer off overnight since the problems and to have it
not just work at all anymore 8 hours later is perplexing to me to say
the least. Cpu? Video card? Power supply??

Arrggh I have no idea now.

Anyone.....anyone??


System specs:
---------------
gigabyte 8I-8145 motherboard
Intel P4 2.8ghz
1 gig ram 3200
ATI radeon 9600 pro
120gig seagate ata hd
300W power supply

 

[Paul]

I'm usually able to successfully pinpoint most problems on my pc, but
this time I am really stuck!

My PC (see system specs at bottom) has been running fine for the last
18 months I've been using it and last night it, for the first time
ever, it froze up completely, in the middle of doing some photoshop
work and listening to music.

I had to power off the computer and reboot it to regain
'consciousness'. I resumed my photoshop work and winamp player and
within 10 minutes, freeze again! Graphics on screen froze and music
off!
I immediately though, heat issue. I powered off, rebooted, check my
temperatures in the BIOS and found:

Case: 28 degrees.
Cpu: 50 degress.

(Fan RPM's were around 3000)

While checking some other settings in the BIOS, i paged back to my
screen displaying the temperatures and found that the case temp had
dropped by one degree and the cpu dropped by a 2 more degrees. Seems
normal to me.

I booted back up, but on loading of my windows desktop, and installed
motherboard monitor so I could actively monitor my temperatures.

MBM showed case at 28'ish and CPU and 49'ish. I have never overclocked
anything on my PC so I couldn't understand why anything would be
overheating...especially under normal desktop usage.

So I put my system under load to see what would happen...I ran every
photo and video editing app on my system and watched my case
temperature go up a degree and my CPU temp rise from 49 to 52...to
56....to 59...freeze!

Power off, boot up...system freezes at BIOS screen.

Power off, try again....no signal to monitor at all, but system still
powers up.

(something is too hot i'm thinking)

Power off, waited a minute, power on and checked temperatures in BIOS
immediately. Case temp high 20's....CPU temp low 50's.

Power off, case off, check the guts and everything looks fine. No
sizzling, no smells....I felt around the case and nothing seemed
excessively hot. I don't get it!

It's been awhile and I'm not exactly up to speed on hardware all the
time...but low 50's and high 50's of CPU temp may be "a tad" high...but
nothing to the point where they would lock up a system and fry the CPU
itself i would hope.

Powered back on my PC on and while just idling in BIOS, i checked the
back of my case to have a look at the power supply to make sure the fan
was spinning (my BIOS doesn't report the rpm or temp of my power fan)
and it was indeed spinning. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but
although the fan is spinning, I can feel barely any warm air coming out
of it at all (or any air for that matter..fan seems to be maybe
spinning slower than others).

I left my PC off for the remainder of the night and thought i'd have
another crack at it this morning.

Power on....system appears to power up fine, lights blinking...fans
spinning, no beeping.....and signal to my monitor. Nothing now!

So now, my computer powers up, but no signal at all to screen and no
beeps.

So i'm stuck and don't know where the problem lies.
Leaving the computer off overnight since the problems and to have it
not just work at all anymore 8 hours later is perplexing to me to say
the least. Cpu? Video card? Power supply??

Arrggh I have no idea now.

Anyone.....anyone??


System specs:
---------------
gigabyte 8I-8145 motherboard
Intel P4 2.8ghz
1 gig ram 3200
ATI radeon 9600 pro
120gig seagate ata hd
300W power supply

I'd start by trying another power supply.

You should also consider improving your CPU cooling, if another
power supply brings it back to life. If you used thermal paste,
it could be as simple as reapplying fresh paste to it.

Your CPU likely has two levels of protection - throttling slows
the processor execution down a bit, when the processor gets too
hot. If the temps still continue to rise, then the THERMTRIP
signal from the processor, can be used to switch the system off.

Both the power supply and the processor, can switch the system off
if there is a problem. I would think the processor would have
to be a lot hotter than you report, for the processor to do it.

Paul

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

My PC (see system specs at bottom) has been running fine for the last
18 months I've been using it and last night it, for the first time
ever, it froze up completely, in the middle of doing some photoshop
work and listening to music.

I left my PC off for the remainder of the night and thought i'd have
another crack at it this morning.

Power on....system appears to power up fine, lights blinking...fans
spinning, no beeping.....and signal to my monitor. Nothing now!

So now, my computer powers up, but no signal at all to screen and no
beeps.

But I thought you said "nothing now".

System specs:
---------------
gigabyte 8I-8145 motherboard
Intel P4 2.8ghz
1 gig ram 3200
ATI radeon 9600 pro
120gig seagate ata hd
300W power supply

Maybe capacitors have slowly gone bad in the motherboard's CPU voltage
regulator, or the PSU was marginal from the beginning (not all 300W
PSUs are really 300W PSUs) and has gotten weaker, also because of
capacitors. BTW if you haven't tried unpluging the PSU from the AC
outlet, do so because in case of an overload it won't reset unless you
do.

 

[JAD]

I'm usually able to successfully pinpoint most problems on my pc, but
this time I am really stuck!

My PC (see system specs at bottom) has been running fine for the last
18 months I've been using it and last night it, for the first time
ever, it froze up completely, in the middle of doing some photoshop
work and listening to music.

I had to power off the computer and reboot it to regain
'consciousness'. I resumed my photoshop work and winamp player and
within 10 minutes, freeze again! Graphics on screen froze and music
off!
I immediately though, heat issue. I powered off, rebooted, check my
temperatures in the BIOS and found:

Case: 28 degrees.
Cpu: 50 degress.

(Fan RPM's were around 3000)

While checking some other settings in the BIOS, i paged back to my
screen displaying the temperatures and found that the case temp had
dropped by one degree and the cpu dropped by a 2 more degrees. Seems
normal to me.

I booted back up, but on loading of my windows desktop, and installed
motherboard monitor so I could actively monitor my temperatures.

MBM showed case at 28'ish and CPU and 49'ish. I have never overclocked
anything on my PC so I couldn't understand why anything would be
overheating...especially under normal desktop usage.

So I put my system under load to see what would happen...I ran every
photo and video editing app on my system and watched my case
temperature go up a degree and my CPU temp rise from 49 to 52...to
56....to 59...freeze!

Power off, boot up...system freezes at BIOS screen.

Power off, try again....no signal to monitor at all, but system still
powers up.

(something is too hot i'm thinking)

Power off, waited a minute, power on and checked temperatures in BIOS
immediately. Case temp high 20's....CPU temp low 50's.

Power off, case off, check the guts and everything looks fine. No
sizzling, no smells....I felt around the case and nothing seemed
excessively hot. I don't get it!

It's been awhile and I'm not exactly up to speed on hardware all the
time...but low 50's and high 50's of CPU temp may be "a tad" high...but
nothing to the point where they would lock up a system and fry the CPU
itself i would hope.

Powered back on my PC on and while just idling in BIOS, i checked the
back of my case to have a look at the power supply to make sure the fan
was spinning (my BIOS doesn't report the rpm or temp of my power fan)
and it was indeed spinning. I'm not sure if this is normal or not, but
although the fan is spinning, I can feel barely any warm air coming out
of it at all (or any air for that matter..fan seems to be maybe
spinning slower than others).

I left my PC off for the remainder of the night and thought i'd have
another crack at it this morning.

Power on....system appears to power up fine, lights blinking...fans
spinning, no beeping.....and signal to my monitor. Nothing now!

So now, my computer powers up, but no signal at all to screen and no
beeps.

So i'm stuck and don't know where the problem lies.
Leaving the computer off overnight since the problems and to have it
not just work at all anymore 8 hours later is perplexing to me to say
the least. Cpu? Video card? Power supply??

Arrggh I have no idea now.

Anyone.....anyone??

reseat the video card.... if there is no change try integrated video if
available or another AGP or PCI (x)?
Other than video I would suspect the PSU

 

[kurrent]

well, problem fixed.

tried swapping the PSU, no luck.

replaced the motherboard. powered up, everything working fine

(also, after reinstalling cpu and heatsink with new coat of thermal
compound, cpu is running in low 40's to mid 50's under high load)