I running an Athlon 2800 2.08 GHz cranked down to 37% due to high temperature readings from SpeedFan. Reading up on the subject, it's best to keep it at 50 C or lower, 40's even better, even though the mgf. states 85-90. The life of the processor is affected.

I've now got a 2nd freebie Athlon PC hooked up to F@H now, it's only a 950 GHz, but it's way outrunning the faster one!

I'm trying to figure out ways to get that CPU speed back up. Anyone else having heating issues?

Does anyone know if the CPU goes out, does that mean you would lose all your harddrive data and programs? Or does that remain intact? I know you would have to reset the BIOS. I am tempted to buy a new case with a bunch of fans in it before I lose the processor to heat problems; just an all around good idea. I dunno. Learning all about this stuff. Makes me nervous. About the harddrive too. Don't want to take it off the Folding Project - I am committed!

~ Zin

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AMD processors have a tendency to run hotter than their Intel counterparts.

If you blow the CPU, it might affect your motherboard, but a hard drive should be unaffected.

What temp are you running at anyway. It's not unusual for AMDs to go up to 65C and from what I've read that is acceptable range for them.

One well placed case fan might be all that you need. Another option is a better heatsink and heatsink fan. These could be clogged with dust also. Make sure the circulation around the PC is adequate. If you have this in one of those enclosed PC spaces in a desk, this is probably not a good thing.

Also, be sure all intake air vents aren't cureenty clogged. Are you positive there isn't something running on that PC stealing resources? The Athalon 2800 should be ~2x as fast as the other one, not vice-versa. How about the hard drive? Is it congested and fragmented?

Though it's rare that F@H will cause a CPU to heat up considerably, it does happen on occassion. Incidentally, how much RAM is on the 2800?

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If the air vents are clean and circulation is clear, put another fan or two into the case. I had to do that with a friends AMD 3gb.

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If nothing else, open the case and place a fan blowing on the cpu area. That will take care of the problem in most cases until you add case fans.

I should be a nice guy and leave this alone.....but....I can't....It's no wonder THAT processor is fast!!!

Zin wrote:

I've now got a 2nd freebie Athlon PC hooked up to F@H now, it's only a 950 GHz, but it's way outrunning the faster one! ~ Zin

Ok, hey, fast responses, wow.

Tried fan on the case already and there was no change. I've had the box open for a couple months; before installed the F@H, and it ran really cool all the time. 30s and low 40s. I just put the panel back on, which seemed to make no difference.

It's real clean inside, sitting on the desk, with 6 inches space in the rear and 8 inches on the sides. Is that enough? All the air vents have quite cool air coming from them, except for the power supply. Of course, it's running at 40-48 C. If I crank the CPU to 600% the temp jumps way up to 70 and above. The high temp is not normal for this PC.

What it's running is a few security apps at start up, the firewall, My NetWatcher, EMIII and F@H, totalling 11. Along with a horrifying number of running services - 34. It's networked to the other PC.

It's 512 MB, one of those HP's they put together with the bells and whistles that impresses the consumer, who is often real under-educated, like I was at the time. Then load in el cheapo "unlabeled" components, like the fans and heat sinks. The mfg. website has no info about the quality or brand of the CPU fan and heatsink.

Thing is, I can't figure where I would even put an additional fan. And it could probably use two more.

So for $100 I can get a way cool case with 5 fans loaded in it. Hmmm, I'm a thinking.... The power supply has been squealing like crazy, on and off, practically since I bought it. (more cheapo stuff I think) This poor machine has been through the ringer; I'm thinking, well actually, worrying, that those fans are going go. Is there any way to diagnose them?

The 950 Athlon is in a big tower case, and is slower, so that's why it can stay at full speed. Actuallly have at 90% just to be sure not to burn it out, cause don't have any monitoring on it. I can't find a darm thing in that regard. All the downloads are either discontinued, unsupported, don't work, or they freeze the system. The free stuff, that is.

So.... think some new fans is in order?

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Oops! That's 60%not600!
And, there just might be more running on here than visible that I just thought of. Got this cursor disappearing act/screen flashing thing going on and not a clue why; been getting help on that....

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Phew! I guess I can stow the overclocking question.

"Cursor disappearing act/screen flashing thing", could be old graphic driver issues, but a power supply beginning to malfunction can sometimes seem like a few different things.
DirectX might also need upgrading/updating. Somewhere, it was posted about SP2 and the proper order to upgrade DirectX amongst other things. ALas, though I spent a portion of yesterday looking for that post for my own use, but could not find it.
Thrown in together with your other observations though, (the squealing power supply fan being a tell-tale give-away), my arm-chair analysis and advice would be to replace that first. If that $100 cas has a good power supply and everything else can migrate to it, GREAT
My only concern for you migrating the MB to a new case, is the form factor of the MB supported power supply Being a HP, I'm willing to bet, it is using the mini-ATX form factor, where you would need that type power supply. Just be sure to check the specs before you jump into anything.

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Seafsee, I so appreciate your knowledge and assistance.
You can blush, if you want. (please do)

...I'm not running XP on it anymore, are you aware of any certain order for drivers and direct x with W2000? I'll check on all that, fairly sure it's current, but ya never know.

Yeah I've checked all the specs and it says uATX. What the h..... is that? It looks small to me, measures approx 10 x 10 and its an ASUSTeK. Then it's got some Gateway OEM stuff in it, but it's not clear just what. Is OEM only related to software? Got the info off the serial # and the HP website. Case is 15 1/2 x 14 1/4 in dimension. Does that sound mini to you? The case I want only takes ATX, but there's many hella fine ones out there. Shoot I have the feeling you will say its a mini; hope there is a good selection. Not ready to replace everything yet.

Okaaay, that's it!....weird. My other PC just opened up an Excel F@H report, all by itself!!! I"ve not even done that yet myself. It's a keyboard hijacking!

PS is 250 watt. Sounds like that's probably going to be the cause? I'm going to get a better case, add several more fans (it has 2 ) new PS, new CPU fan. It's going to end up being mostly rebuilt, as the CD and CD/DVD both malfunction sometimes. as well. So besides the heating up and a lousy power supply from day one, by the time I get all that done the HD will be shot, huh? And the processor. I want to build one, not buy somebody's hodgepodge, weird, aka "cheap" decisions. When it's done, it's gonna be lit. (maybe purple, probably blue)

Okay, I'm dreaming....sorry! (it just sounds like so much fun!)

You built many PC's, Seafsee?

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The u in the uatx should indicate micro and from the size of everything it is a micro or mini tower. The 250 watt power supply should be sufficient. I have a aptiva (IBM) I bought in 1998 and stopped using yesterday and it has a 95 watt power supply with an additional tap on the primary to the secondary of 50 watts. Total power supply of 145 watts. I have run windows 2000 professional with 2 harddrives a CD burner networking card for DSL, floppy disk drive, 256 megs of memory and AMD K6-2 550 Mhz CPU Giving it to a friend to use full time. Oh yes, I have been running it 24/7 for the past several months. 60 days to complete a WU for 241 points. Replacing it with the one in the other post that I discussed the problems I had in the BIOS.