Older Athlon Overheating?

A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his computer which has
been giving him problems, it's a Gateway with an older Athlon (1.2GHz,
motherboard uses PC133, runs WinME). The machine does boot up, I got it
going in safe mode and I have no doubt that it's infected with at least
two virus's and some spyware / adware. It was pretty dusty inside the
case and I blew it out with some compressed air (I told him he's got to
clean it out more often) but the 60mm CPU fan and both fans in the power
supply seemed to be working but I noticed after about five minutes that
the heatsink was getting pretty hot and so I shut it down and replaced
the CPU fan with a 60mm to 80mm adapter and a 3000 rpm fan and I added
another fan to the back of the case. I restarted into safe mode and
started scanning with Spybot / Adaware and after about fifteen minutes
when I checked the aluminum heatsink it was so hot that I burned my
finger.. I was able to shut it down right away and I don't believe that
anything is damaged since it still posts and will boot but I really have
no idea what's causing it to so severely overheat.. I know these older
Athlon's ran hot but this is crazy.. could this be a bad power supply or
is it likely something else?

Thanks,
- Chris LeFebvre

On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 15:00:38 -0400, Chris LeFebvre wrote:

A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his computer which has
been giving him problems, it's a Gateway with an older Athlon (1.2GHz,
motherboard uses PC133, runs WinME). The machine does boot up, I got it
going in safe mode and I have no doubt that it's infected with at least
two virus's and some spyware / adware. It was pretty dusty inside the
case and I blew it out with some compressed air (I told him he's got to
clean it out more often) but the 60mm CPU fan and both fans in the power
supply seemed to be working but I noticed after about five minutes that
the heatsink was getting pretty hot and so I shut it down and replaced
the CPU fan with a 60mm to 80mm adapter and a 3000 rpm fan and I added
another fan to the back of the case. I restarted into safe mode and
started scanning with Spybot / Adaware and after about fifteen minutes
when I checked the aluminum heatsink it was so hot that I burned my
finger.. I was able to shut it down right away and I don't believe that
anything is damaged since it still posts and will boot but I really have
no idea what's causing it to so severely overheat.. I know these older
Athlon's ran hot but this is crazy.. could this be a bad power supply or
is it likely something else?

If the HS is getting that hot, then it's probably a real old one and
possibly designed for a socket7 or 370 cpu. A very good cheap replacement
would be a TR2-M1 (or -M3). It's big, copper/aliminum hybrid with a quiet
80mm fan. Now it could be that the one he has is just clogged with so much
dust it won't disipate the heat and nneeds a good washing, but if the
original fan was only 60mm then you can bet it's not very good compared to
newer ones. Another problem may be he has it overvolted. Default for that
cpu is 1.75v. With a decent cooler 1.85v won't hurt, but with the cooler
you obviously have now, that's just too much. Cheack the bios for temp
monitoring. Most have it.

--
KT133 MB, CPU @2400MHz (24x100): SIS755 MB CPU @2330MHz (10x233)
Need good help? Provide all system info with question.
My server http://wesnewell.no-ip.com/cpu.php
Verizon server http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.htm

Hi Wes:
Yeah, the current one was pretty clogged with dust but as I mentioned
one of the first things I did was to clean off the motherboard and
heatsink with compressed air.... I found a Vantech copper heat sink
which should fit online and I'll give that a try and see what happens.

I couldn't seem to find the right key to get into the bios when I was
working on this the other day but I'll give that a another try tonight
and see what is says as far as temp and voltages... trust me when I say
this guy knows nothing about overclocking or even that it's something
that's possible to do (and I'm not even sure that this Gateway has any
ability to do that) so it's got to be still set at whatever the factory
config is. So I guess if I see that the core voltage is too high then
there may be some type of problem with the power supply and it needs to
be replaced.

Thanks,

- Chris

"Chris LeFebvre" wrote in message
...
Hi Wes:
Yeah, the current one was pretty clogged with dust but as I mentioned
one of the first things I did was to clean off the motherboard and
heatsink with compressed air.... I found a Vantech copper heat sink
which should fit online and I'll give that a try and see what happens.

I couldn't seem to find the right key to get into the bios when I was
working on this the other day but I'll give that a another try tonight
and see what is says as far as temp and voltages... trust me when I say
this guy knows nothing about overclocking or even that it's something
that's possible to do (and I'm not even sure that this Gateway has any
ability to do that) so it's got to be still set at whatever the factory
config is. So I guess if I see that the core voltage is too high then
there may be some type of problem with the power supply and it needs to
be replaced.

Thanks,

- Chris


I would put my bets back on it just being the heatsink&fan ..
On top of that I would half expect that you'll find a thermal pad instead of
thermal grease....

I would suggest you changing the heatsink/fan out (dont forget to clean it
properly and get some thermal grease)..

Thanks for the reply, first off I had to wade through Gateways tech
support docs to find that it's press and hold F1 to get into the Bios
(go figure, it just had to be something non-standard) but after going
through each and every option on every menu there's no place that shows
any temperature, fan speeds or voltages... looking at the motherboard
it's a Microstar 6389 V1 and I'll have to see what I can find in the way
of monitoring software on Microstars web site.

After swapping the PSU, I still had the same problem, I took the
motherboard out and the fan and heatsink off and there were a few big
dust balls under the mb and a rim of dust around the cpu that the
compressed air didn't move. You were right that there was a thermal pad
and no grease so I've cleaned the heatsink and CPU off and I'll clean
them again tomorrow with alcohol to make sure there's no residue from
the citrus based cleaner I used. I think I have a tube of Arctic Silver
3 and 4 here somewhere from my own system building efforts and I think
that should do okay so I hope that after I get the heatsink remounted
that things will run a little cooler.

- Chris LeFebvre