AMD athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ OVERHEATING!!

[Phil Rickard]

Hi everyone, just wondering if anyone has a solution or tips for this problem. First off, here are my specs:

ASUS M2N32- SLI DELUXE
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (2.2ghz) - With Zalman Cooling
4GB Corsair Ram DDR2
1tb Maxtor HD
Ge-force 8800gt PCI-E

Now 6 weeks ago I was having the same problem I'm having now, my CPU was reaching really high temperatures (over 110 degress) and was causing the PC to power off, but only when I was playing Games (Guitar Hero 3, COD 4) and if I left the PC on for more than 24 hours. I resolved this issue "temporarily" by buying a Zalman CPU cooler, which made a HUGE difference, I was able to run my games for a good 6 weeks before this problem occured again. Now it doesn't happen in GH3 or COD4, but it happened lastnight with Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and naturally I was angry! I can still run my other games, but the CPU is reaching over 100 degrees again and I don't know what to do! I know that if I keep using my games it's eventually going to cause long term damage to my CPU and possibly the other parts in my tower. I really don't know what to do, if I go out and buy a Phenom Quadcore and i have the same problem then I'll know it's not the CPU, but it's unlikely to be anything else apart from the quality of the thermal paste I am using.


I currently have some Arctic Silver 5 paste on order, but if anyone has any tips to help me with this problem I would be very grateful, i will try putting on some new paste, but I can't see this being a problem because I only put paste on a few weeks ago and I never put too much on...

[Bonsai Bill]

Do you move your case around at all? If so, maybe your HSF has become unseated.

How about the ambient temp of the room?

You say you have AS5 on order, what was the paste you are currently using?

After you receive the AS5, apply the paste and make certain the hold down's are secure and the HSF is seated properly.

Other than that, my guess would be poor airflow in your case unless you've added any voltage to the CPU.

[Chiefish]

First are we talking degrees in celcius or farenheight ? 110F = 43.3C which isnt all that hot, for a dual core to run at. Try running somthing to stress it like prime95 or orthos and stress both cores at the same time without any other programs running, then you should get true high temps for youre rig. What program are you using to get themps from, Asus monitor or somthing, becuase sometimes there are also big decrepencies between lets say speedfan and the asus monitor. The best place to see what you temps are at is in the bios, then boot it up and see if the softwares temps are about the same or not.

Once you have made sure its the cpu messing up from stressing it then start to look at the mounting o fthe cooler, somtimes they get hung up on parts of the M/B or a clip isnt snapped all the way in ect... Also what is it doing to make you say overheat? shutting down, locking up, blue screening, resatrting?

[suske]

if it overheats within minutes of starting a game look to the cpu paste/cooler. if it takes longer then it is case airflow.

[Phil Rickard]

Ok, the other day I took off the heatsink to make sure everything was ok, turns out thermal paste is extremely bad quality, i only applied it 3 weeks ago and when I took the heatsink off there were mere smudges of it left on there, almost no paste. But even with bad quality paste something is telling me it should not do that..

I re-applied paste and cleaned out the dust in the fan and it worked 70% better, but still too warm for idle temperature (at the minute the idle temp is 69)

My AS5 hasnt arrived yet but im still waiting. This whole thing is just driving me nuts!!

Oh and also at all times I have the side taken off my tower case, to allow more air flow (i cant see this being the problem though, it allows more dust in but I can clean it out)

To be honest I'm gonna try keeping my windows open, try not smoking in here too much cos I gotta be honest I have a lot of "erb" smokin' friends and im sure the constant smoke in the air doesnt do any good

[V3rt!g(o)]

hi there

today i received a pc from a friend. he says it shuts down after half an hour of any game.

so guess what:

cpu is athlon x2 4200+ and it reached 120°C in few minutes using the cpu toast aplication (2 instances). Idle temp was 45°C. So i said the same thing to myself: stock cooler sucks, and replaced it with zalman. I put arctic cooling silicone paste. idling was at 40, reached 100 after half an hour. So i took off the vent from sink, and stuffed a 15cm fan at 12 volts on it. It produces a lot of noise at 5k rpm, and it blows like all hell broke loose :p. Anyway, idle temp is 25 (room temp is 23 lol), toast gets it to 100 in half an hour again. Heatsink burns on touch. After i close toast, it comes down to 30 in 2 minutes. I can only conclude that the cpu is manufactured with this defect, since i have 2 pc-s with athlon x2 4400+. one has a stock cooler and is overclocked, other has a pasive cooler on stock clock, and they never overheat. Infact, i installed this cpu to about 20 people who wanted a good low budget computer - they all work fine on stock coolers.

[Neon]

Don't forget to check the CPU voltage. A little extra voltage can result in a lot of extra heat.

If the motherboard BIOS is older than the cpu, it is possible that the voltage is not set correctly.

There's been a lot of BIOS updates for M2N32-SLI. You can check Asus's support site to be sure your installed BIOS supports your version CPU. If not, then update the BIOS.

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=M2N32-SLI%20Deluxe&product=1&os=17