Sulphur on 3/11/2010 at 20:45
That does sound slightly ominous. I've had my core i5 overheat due to slightly aggressive overclocking settings courtesy of fiddling with the ASUS OC tuner, and it usually restarts when that happens. I checked your MB manual, and there don't seem to be any BIOS beep codes for a faulty CPU. You might want to leave that story out when you take the machine to the shop.
Aja on 3/11/2010 at 20:56
I've had CPUs overheat too, but don't they usually start up again after they cool off? I can't even get to POST—I push the power button, the fans all turn a half inch and then nothing. Running the CPU in idle with no heatsink for about 10 seconds shouldn't be enough to do any damage. And like I said, I did reapply thermal grease afterwards, just to make sure. But, point taken—the shop didn't hear a word of that story ;)
Sulphur on 3/11/2010 at 21:16
It's generally not a good idea to keep the PC running without the fan or heatsink, even if it's for a very short period of time. These things can generate massive amounts of heat.
And yup, they usually restart once they get too hot... but not if they're fried. Given that an idling junction temp for me is ~40 deg. C (probably runs cooler for you), a jump of ~60 degrees sans fan or heatsink in 10 seconds does sound like a bit of a stretch, given that the chips normally throttle down before they get too hot. I hope that's what happened here.
Fingers crossed, hope it's something minor in actuality.
Brian The Dog on 3/11/2010 at 21:52
My AMD managed 110'C before it shut down (the cooler fan was faulty) but it managed to be fine for about 20min before overheating. I just left it to cool down and then it started up again after about an hour or so. Now I've fixed the fan, it's all working fine now.
The main thing is to have the heatsink attached. It should at least get to the POST screen if that's OK.
Edit - a fried cpu would normally give a beep code, but it seems your motherboard doesn't have that, as Sulphur said.
Aja on 6/11/2010 at 01:29
So... it was the graphics card.
The only component I didn't suspect (and thus didn't check). For whatever reason the card was preventing the system from turning on. Everything else checks out (CPU fan is still a bit noisy though :mad: ).
They gave me a new card over the counter and the system seems to be fine now, though I'm a little afraid to start putting it under any load.
Sulphur on 6/11/2010 at 07:51
That's slightly bizarre given it's brand new hardware. Anyhow, check the temps on the new one - you can see them by going to 'ATI Overdrive' on the Catalyst Control Centre. Shouldn't push over 85° C on load as far as the benchmarks go.
Aja on 6/11/2010 at 10:18
This thing is amazing: Crysis, Stalker, Mirror's Edge, Mass Effect, I don't have a game that it can't run flawlessy at full details at 1920x1080. I never knew proper PC gaming was like this. Anyway I ran the Just Cause 2 demo fora about 15 minutes just now (come home from the bar, what else you gonna do) and the gpu temp was around 66 degrees C. So I think its safe to assume all's well. Now I just gotta wait for more steam sales. But man, things are running better than I expected.
SubJeff on 7/11/2010 at 10:05
I was going to say! Afraid to push it with that set-up? There is nothing it shouldn't be able to handle.
Sulphur on 7/11/2010 at 11:08
Yup, those temps seem good. Check them after an extended session on load, though - an hour or more, just to be sure.
And I'm sure there's going to be a Thanksgiving sale on Steam soon enough, so you won't be waiting too long, most likely. And hey, Christmas is just 'round the corner. ;)
Aja on 7/11/2010 at 18:00
For such a small case the airflow is surprisingly good. There's two 120mm fans in the front and one on top. The fan controller at the back, when set to High, makes the system pretty noisy, but I think it'll move more than enough air to keep things cool at stock clockspeeds.
But this damn CPU fan still rattles when it speeds up. Maybe I can put hot glue on the plastic pins, or better yet, just find a replacement.
