Build It yourself, Fix it yourself

[edawg]

About a year and a half ago I built my own computer. AMD Athlon XP3200, 1gig mem, 120gig HD, 256 video card, asus NF7-s motherboard, winXP, anyway, it was all working fine for a long time, no problems at all, untill I went out and bought Battlefield 2, and for the first time in its young and very happy life, my computer CRASHED!!!, no blue screen!, just went black, crashed, and beeped at me, in a high-low siren way, until I turned it off?.
After a few more days of playing the game, it was fine??, then again it crashed the same way, so I updated all my drivers, cleared the CMOS, update the BIOS, and still crashed!!, more frequently recently!, then I found that this could be the cpu overheating, but I had 7 fans in my case!!!, so anyway to cut a long story short, the other day I had enough, crashed 7 times monday, 8 on tuesday, then I finally broke, and I must say, I struck my computer!!!, thats right!!, and I dont feel good about it, I HIT THE THING!!.
After walking away, and leaving it, not talking to it, and it not talking to me, I went back to it, opened up the case, and gave it a DAMN good spray with AIR DUSTER!!!!, downloaded Motherboard Monitor, bought System Mechanic6,
and put it all back together!!, yesterday, I played BF2 all day, ran Messenger in the background, virus scaned, and downloaded anything all at the same time, and NO CRASH!!!!!, my cpu is idle at 47o, case at 32o, and now it seems to be ok???, what the hell did i do???, now it works ok, but I have no idea what was wrong in the first place????, surley it wasnt just the AIR DUSTER was it????. i dunno??. thats the thing with building your own, you are the desinger, the builder, and your very own tech support!!, i bet best buy dont punch there computers to work!!!!!!.

[rspassey]

47º still seems a little high for an idle CPU. (though nothing to worry about really) - how are your case fan's configured?

It very well could have just been overheating - crashes without warning when your CPU is under heavy load like BF2 would cause the temps to rise a lot, if there was enough dust - you could have been overheating.

As for beating it, well there *could* be a capictor or something lose on the motherboard which was slightly coming lose until you hit it and poped it back into place....

[Cricket]

What You Don’t Know Can Cook You: How Dust Impacts a CPU’s Temperature.

Cricket

[Dark Nova]

ok that was a very nice story, now with the problem

yes Dust can be a big problem, see it dosent matter how many fans you have in your pc, if they are full of dust, they wont work properly witch can cause overheat. Your CPU fan was probably full of dust and did'nt spin properly so when you clean it it work. And it dosent matter if you build it yourself or not dust will come at some point.

[Science_guy]

More fans doesn't necessarily mean better cooling. Seven fans blowing in will compress the air within your case, and we all know that when air is compressed, its temperature rises. Seven fans blowing out is no better; you will create a hard vacuum within your case, making convective heat loss impossible.

Ok, so I was exaggerating... but having a lot of fans can lead to a lot of turbulence and hot spots of poor airflow within the case. Ideally you want cool air coming in the front and warm air being exhausted out the back, and possibly the top. You might be able to rearrange your fans for better performance.

[Strider]

I would take off the Heatsink, clean it off and redo the tim on it. This would be a good prevented measure and I plan on doing to my computers (I'll be doing this to one of my computers soon for it's been running for a while) when they start to have a long run cycle plus kill the dust bunnies every so often .

[edawg]

Thanks that was some great advice from you all, from now on i`ll make sure to dust out at least once a week, also i`ll take another look at those fans, and maybe purchase a new heatsink for my cpu, try and get that temp lower!!. thanks again!!.

[rspassey]

Originally Posted by edawg Thanks that was some great advice from you all, from now on i`ll make sure to dust out at least once a week, also i`ll take another look at those fans, and maybe purchase a new heatsink for my cpu, try and get that temp lower!!. thanks again!!.

Once a week is overkill unless you have a major dust issue within your house. I do mine once every month.

[edawg]

once a month it is then, I was told that another reason for high heat, could be high moisture in the air, and as my computer is in the basement, that could be a reason too, at the moment my cpu is at 43o and the case is at 32o, and ive only been using it 20mins, so ill just need to keep tabs on it. could it also have anything to do with the power supply??, i have a 420watt psu that came with the case??, maybe I should think about a 500watt????, what would be the advantage with that??.

[rspassey]

The wattage wont make a difference in heat (or shouldn't as far as I know), but PSUs give off a lot of heat. It should have a fan on the rear of it, and if you are lucky, aslo have a fan on the bottom of it. That should provide the best removal of heat from the PSU.

Check my temps, (33 CPU and 33 mobo), your CPU seems to be a safe temperature - it has to get a lot hotter to cause lock ups and crashes.