Re: PCWorks: Why does my PC shut off automatically?

[Keith Thompson]

Boy, that sounds like my first go round with my Athlon 1800+ chip.  I 
had a custom machine made and first thing I had to do was add a couple 
more case fans.  I still had heat problems and first they (the shop) 
told me that Athlons ALWAYS run hot.  I still encountered occasional 
shutdowns and started monitoring the chip temp with a software program. 
When doing an extended search, I could watch the temp go up to a point 
where I would discontinue the search and let the temp come back down.  
It finally failed completely so taking it back to the shop (under 
warrenty) they dissasembled the chip from the heat sink and found that 
there was no thermal grease between the two.  Your situation is sounding 
much like what I experienced.  Even tho you have the extreme in coolers, 
etc, if there is not sufficent or no thermal grease or epoxy connection, 
the AMD chip will run with hot spots and cause the behavior that you are 
describing.

Keith Thompson
Jason Arroyo wrote:
I have a PC that seems to shut itself off. Gigabyte brand motherboard
running an Athlon XP 2400+ processor. 512MB of memory (not generic, I
don't remember what tho), sitting in a new Thermaltake Xaser III case.
The case has 7 ball bearing fans, a temp sensor probe that sits under
the CPU, and a temp readout on the front as well as alarm settings. The
CPU fan I use is a CoolTek Aero V, which looks like a snailshell design
(you car fanatics would see it and think "supercharger"), that evenly
distributes air across the heatsink better than a helical fan can
(helical fans leave a hotspot in the center of the fan, not extremely so
but this is even flowing). The Aero V is knob adjustable. Between the
Aero V and the seven ball bearing fans in the the Thermaltake Xaser III
case, the case and CPU are COOL. Thermaltake makes excellent aircooling
cases, it's where they get their name from.
So why does my PC shut off?
It can be sitting there, in a cold room or warm, and be fine for days.
Or it can shut off at random times. Sometimes if I do a large file
search (say images with thumbnails search) in XP (SP1), and scroll
around, it locks up and sometimes shuts of. When it DOES shut off, the
screen goes black, and a a two-note sound comes out of the PC speaker
(sounds like a bios sound). A low note, then a hgher one, then a low
note, then it shuts off. For you music buffs, it's like a low C note,
then an A, then it repeats (although generally it goes C, then A, then
C, then shuts off before the next A).
I had suspected that the bios had a shutoff setting for temp and that it
was set too low from the factory, but all it had was warnings, and they
were all disabled. In fact everything in the bios section called "PC
Health" was disabled after I went through it. And yet this thing still
shuts off! It can be sitting there, or I can be doing things. It seems
tho that sitting there does it. Not always tho, some nights I wake up
and the monitor is sleeping, I bump the mouse, and the thing wakes.
Other times I wake up to find it completely off. Other times I see it do
it and hear the bios beeps I described above.
Any ideas?
I've swapped out memory twice now, and that doesn't help, btw.
 

--
Keith Thompson, Worthington, OH 
Home Web Page: http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/~kthompson/
Genealogy Web Page: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~kthompson
The only thing worse than a sorcerer is his apprentice.
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