Author Topic: Bloom25 (Read 1629 times)

Tyro48 · « **on:** June 26, 2001, 08:03:00 PM »

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?

Lephturn · « **Reply #1 on:** June 27, 2001, 07:47:00 AM »

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.

Grayarea · « **Reply #2 on:** June 27, 2001, 02:32:00 PM »

I have just finished bulding my second Athlon based system.

Running win2k it does not hang.

Grayarea.

vatiAH · « **Reply #3 on:** June 27, 2001, 02:58:00 PM »

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

Tyro48 · « **Reply #4 on:** June 27, 2001, 05:12:00 PM »

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?

bloom25 · « **Reply #5 on:** June 27, 2001, 05:35:00 PM »

Hmm, a thread with my name on it.

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.

)

vatiAH · « **Reply #6 on:** June 27, 2001, 07:23:00 PM »

Sounds alittle high For a 1ghz Athlon, RoadRash.

Tyro48 · « **Reply #7 on:** June 27, 2001, 08:07:00 PM »

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.

bloom25 · « **Reply #8 on:** June 27, 2001, 08:14:00 PM »

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.

Tyro48 · « **Reply #9 on:** June 27, 2001, 08:51:00 PM »

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.

Tyro48 · « **Reply #10 on:** June 28, 2001, 12:07:00 AM »

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!

bloom25 · « **Reply #11 on:** June 28, 2001, 01:03:00 AM »

Funny thing is that I've seen worse fans than that that were rated for a Tbird (socket a)!

Tyro48 · « **Reply #12 on:** June 28, 2001, 01:58:00 AM »

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 ]

Tyro48 · « **Reply #13 on:** June 28, 2001, 01:59:00 AM »

Go to www.amd.com and there you'll find the heat/sink fan combos that AMD sanctions.

Tyro48 · « **Reply #14 on:** June 28, 2001, 02:12:00 AM »

I should add to the above click on support and then ask AMD it's about the second response down I beleive.