> Ok that was the problem, now to the cause. I'd venture a guess that you > guys perhaps didn't put the heat sink on properly. Did you ever take it > off again? You have to make sure there's plenty of thermal paste under > it when you stick it on again! You aren't supposed to reuse the same > thermal paste pad sticker either, but dunno where to get replacements > from. Other things to check are whether your cooling in the box is in > fact sufficient (have a lot of disks?). If your power supply isn't > strong enough you also get random system crashes, esp when disks spin > up etc.
The original AMD heatsink is basically a use-once device. Since you can't re-use the special-thermal-pad-thingy, you probably need a new heatsink. Please be frugal on the thermal paste! Some is good, but more is *not* better. Thermal paste is a much better carrier of heat than air, but much worse than the metal heatsink. The amount you should use should only be enough to fill up any surface roughness - any more than that and the heatsink is just getting separated from the CPU and becoming more useless. - Mark
