Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => Technical Support => Topic started by: Tyro48 on June 26, 2001, 08:03:00 PM
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Hey yaz Bloom I know your a big fan of the Athlon ( I have a 1Gig ) have you ever heard of athlons causing systems to hang up ( Freeze )? I heard that at work and strangely enough my system hangs up quit a bit, usually happens when I make a mouse input or keyboard input, but seems to only do this in AH, so seems strange to me that the story is getting around of this happening but I only get it in AH?
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That's not true.
These "freezes" are almost always caused by device drivers, resource conflicts, power problems, heat problems, or even bad hardware. Problems like that are, in my experience, always solveable and I've never traced one back to a processor, AMD or Intel. CPU's generall either work, or they don't.
If you put the details of your machine, drivers, OS, and hardware here in a post, we'll try to help you solve the problem. Sometimes it can take time, but these things are always solved in my experience. Also, freezing only in AH is very possible... nothing else you run likely stresses your systems video, audio, and processing power all at once like AH does. Even other games I've played don't stress my machine as much as AH, so if there is an underlying problem, often AH will expose that problem when nothing else will.
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I have just finished bulding my second Athlon based system.
Running win2k it does not hang.
Grayarea.
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Tyro,
Take a good look at your CPU temp while playing AH. I can't say for sure but I know these Thunderbirds sure do put out alot of heat. your troubles may be heat related
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Well on your advice I fired up the VIA hardware monitor, and ran Ah, was only maybe 5 min and I was getting overtemp warnings, default warning temp is 140 deg F and I was hittin 142 easy. Stole the wifes 5" fan ( I'll get my butt kicked for that <G> )and sat it next to the case with both side panels off, start out at about 104 at the desk top, Made a n1K2 run just for fun, temp climbed to about 138 and stayed there for awhile but eventually went up to 141 again, if a 5" fan don't keep it cooled down what the hey am I gonna do?
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Hmm, a thread with my name on it. :D
Like others have said, a cpu itself does not make a system unstable. Instability issues are most often caused by heat, inadequate power supply, and poor quality motherboards (and or chipset on the motherboard.)
On an athlon system that is unstable the first thing I do is to check how hot the mb and cpu is. Your temperature of 64 C tells me that your CPU is getting far too hot. All the Tbird and Duron systems I've done, I've checked to make sure they run at no hotter than 50C at full load. My personal system runs at 44C (111F) and is overclocked.
Your problem sounds like you have a cheap heatsink and fan. (Do you have a digital camera to take a picture of it? ) You should also be sure that you have at least 1 (preferably 2 ) case fans in your system. The one in the front should be pulling air in, and the one in the back pushing air out.
I would warn you not to attempt changing the heatsink and fan on the processor yourself, it is very easy to damage the CPU.
I never could understand how anyone would think that a cpu could cause a system to be unstable. Heat, power supply, and/or drivers & bios are going to be at fault most of the time. The majority of the rest will be caused by bad ram, errors on the harddrive, and a defective motherboard.
(Maybe you could "accidentally lose" your 5" fan inside your computer. ;) )
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Sounds alittle high For a 1ghz Athlon, RoadRash.
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Shoping around for new heat sink and fan now, been lucky I havent fried the cpu. looking at a DUO462-2 since the abit mother board cramps me for space.
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I wonder if a artic cooler ( made by agilent <- )or thermoengine would fit on a kt7? I know that board has some capacitors that make mounting large heatsinks difficult.
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The DUO462-2 is roughly 2.5" wide and 1.8" tall, flows about 22CFM and drops close to 60W with a Tj rise of 40 deg above ambient so I think this will cover it, it's made by Thermaltake.
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Went back and rumaged through all my computer paper work and found the purchase order for the cpu/motherboard & fan, turns out the heat/sink fan combo I was sold was rated for an AMD K6 tops, not even close enough for an AMD Athlon 1G processor so once again buyer beware even on the internet through a so called computer store!
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Funny thing is that I've seen worse fans than that that were rated for a Tbird (socket a)! :eek:
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Yup theres a gaggle full of em out there but they won't cut the mustard if AH is your game just as mine didn't, worst of all they could cost you the cpu! A 38 deg temp rise is quit a few watts of dissipation to contend with and if the heat sink/fan isn't wicking it off fast enough it's adios, can't beleive my cpu didn't pack it in, the lit. also wold lead me to beleive that the heat sink was rated at 7W which just can't handle the heat dissipation that AH creats, there must be an ungodly amount of computing going on, Toms Hardware should use AH as their test bed software <G>.
[ 06-28-2001: Message edited by: Tyro48 ]
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Go to www.amd.com (http://www.amd.com) and there you'll find the heat/sink fan combos that AMD sanctions.
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I should add to the above click on support and then ask AMD it's about the second response down I beleive. :cool:
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http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/cooling/roundup0601/index.html (http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/cooling/roundup0601/index.html)
Nice roundup of high performance Heatsink/fan units there.
Some of them are very new. Back up to HardOCP's main page and look for some of the older HSF roundups for specs on some of the more common parts on the market. I know I can get a good Thermoengine with 7k fan here at my local place that would do the trick. See if you can find somebody that will install it for you too... with proper heat compound of course.
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Haha, I thought I was the only one who's ever seen Hardocp here. :D (BTW: Read the disclaimer in tiny print at the very bottom of their home page...)
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Ok got the new DUO462 from Thermaltake, installed it and still got temp problems, so I put on my wrist strap and touch the fins of the chrome orb and they are reasonablely cool. The fan is turning at about 6k RPM, so I checked the BIOS temps against the via hardware monitor and they also say the cpu is pretty dang warm, felt around as close as I could to the cpu itself but couldn't make any kind of contact with it, wouldn't it stand to reason that if the cpu was really 156 deg F that the fins on the bottom of the heat sink should be warm at least :confused:
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Either you have a defective thermal sensor, or you installed the heatsink/fan improperly.
You have to check always before installing that the core and the mating surface actually touch (on some heatsinks there are small plastic feet which you have to remove before installing them on AMD cpu's)
Secondly you have to use a good quality thermal paste, apply a very THIN layer of it evenly on the core and then carefully install the heatsink.
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Did you mount it yourself? Are you sure the heatsink is sitting PERFECTLY flat on the CPU? Did you clean it first? Did you use a good quality thermal compound?
If they CPU is not making proper contact with the heatsink it would cause problems such as you are describing.
Lephturn
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Did I read..CHrome Orb? They rot. I think www.coolerguys.com (http://www.coolerguys.com) has many great fans. I bought a wincak38 all copper HS with big ol loud fast fan and it does well.
xBAT
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Batdog,
The Chrome orb is not a bad Sink if your not overclocking. It is not as good as some of the other out there, but certinaly does not rot. I think Tyro made an error in the instalation of the Heat sink. I hope it does not prove to be a costly one. I think, but i'm not sure, the Orb's come with the rubber feet on the bottom for use with a Pent III or IV processors. The Athlon Socket A chips have the rubber feet on the chips so they are not needed on the Cooler. If the Sink is installed with the feet still on, there will be a gap between the Sink and the chip. This is normaly fatel for the chip :( I hop he didn't try to loadtest the machine yet!!
vati
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Bloom25: Are you [H]ard? ;-)
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have a FOP38 on my tbird 1.2ghz. Works great, if a little loud.
It took me a while to clean off the sticky heat compound pad. I installed it with a dab of artic silver.
I'm running at around 33-34C, and 36-38C with the case closed (running aces). I also have 1 fan in front sucking air in, and a 7200rpm fan at back pulling air out.
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Have worked in Electronics 30 years <G> pretty sure I have the HSF installed correctly, knew I was in trouble when I opened the box and saw the DUO462 ABC up front and personal <G> it just doesn't have enough mass to handle the heat, same prob with the old heat sink but it does better, so gonna have to look around for a heat sink that will not foul with componets on the KT7 Raid Motherboard and stll comes in under or at AMD's recommended weight restrictions for the 462 socket, any KT7 users out there who have solved this problem and still meet the 462 socket weight restrictions?
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Take a look at the Thermalright SK6. :D (Don't know about the weight though...)
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Tyro,
The wieght restrictions apply to shipping. AMD does not reccomend shiping a computer with that heavy a Sink on it do to the extra forces that wieght adds when the Box gets moved around. The wieght is a NON- ISSUE if your going to mount it and just set it under the desk :)
Vati
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Thermoengine and SK6 both fit the Abit Kt7 range of motherboards.
Had em both and no bending or mods needed of anything for them to fit.
Close call with the SK6 tho fitted it in a hurry fired up comp, on a whim thought lets check CPU temp in Bios before loading windows, the temp was at 80c and climbing fast !
Never killed the supply to the PSU as fast in my life.
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214th, is it a design flaw, or did you just not get it on properly? I'm planning on ordering one of those and an AXIA pretty soon.
Also, what fan did you put on it?
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Bloom the bad fitting was my fault.
Not design flaw at all, i was in such a hurry to fit it as AH was calling :)
Lol you know the heat sinks have a step on them that corresponds with the socket edge, well basically in my hurry i did not get the step in the heatsink centred correctly over the sockets edge and of course was very lucky not to fry the cpu.
I have win98 set up with with 2 different hardware configs so it stops at a menu and asks which i wanna use, first boot attempt it froze at the menu which got me suspicous which is why i checked the temps in Bios next boot attempt.
Fans tried with the default SK6 ystech first temps were same as my Thermoengine with delta but quieter.
Fitted Delta to SK6 load temps dropped 3-4 degrees C.
One good thing that came from it my 1 Gig Axia Y overclocks higher and stabler now after being nearly fried :)
Totally stable at 1.4 Gig now not bothered to push it higher yet.
One other thing to bear in mind with Tbirds higher than 1.33 gig a lot of motherboards are freezing a couple of seconds after finishing loading into windows.
This is caused by windows ACPI power management, specifically the HLT instructions to cool down the cpu, as soon as it starts to cool down windows locks.
Cure is to install windows with ACPI disabled in the bios or with an install command line option "setup /p i".
Of course you can also disable ACPI in the bios of a current windows install but be prepared to have to reinstall all your hardware drivers upon windows startup.
Disabling ACPI will make your comp run at full load or close temps all the time mine currently 50c reported.
But for a huge overclock from 1 gig to 1.4 i can live with it :)
Actually keep meaning to try a software cooler like softice or similar to see if they cause the freezes as well or just windows ACPI implementation.