Comp shutting down, power source or CPU?
 

Hi all, thanks in advance for any help.

AMD 1700XP CPU with some cheap ERS motherboard (about 3.5 years old)
Newer 400w power source(about 1 yr old)

My shuts down or over heats after about 5 minutes of running. I think the problem is the CPU overheating or a faulty powersource. The computer does seem to get fairly hot, but all the fans appear to be running.

I plan on upgrading the CPU and motherboard soon anyways, but has anyone ever had a powersource that has problems like this? It seems more likely to me that it is a CPU issue, but I want to get some more experienced opinions.

Thanks!

Try using Aida32 to monitor the temperature of your CPU and motherboard before it goes down. Post some numbers here and we'll have a look. Alternatively it may be crashing (to bluescreen) but windows is helpfully rebooting automatically for you - make sure /My Computer/System Properties/Startup and Recovery/System Failure/Automatically Restart is unchecked to see the error (assuming you're using Windows).

Thanks, I'll run that program when I get home from work.

More info: I'm running XP

When the computer shuts down, it goes down completely. Won't turn back on for about 10 minutes or so, when it does it will shut down again after about 5 minutes.

Sounds a bit like an overheat. I had this happen a lot to my dad's computer and interestingly it turned out to be the motherboard northbridge (rather than the CPU) overheating! Eventually solved it with a large fan suspended spiderman-like in the middle of the case over the NB heatsink.

Yeah... sounds like an over heating problem to me too.

One suggestion is to check how much thermal grease is under the heatsink on both the CPU and the Northbridge. I know many manufacturers don't put enough thermal compound under the heatsink. If you don't have a HS on your Northbridge, then you can easily get one at CompUSA for around 20 bucks.

You say "all the fans are working" but how many do you have? I currently have a total of 5 fans on my machine. One in the front, one in the back, one in the top, one on the CPU and one on the NB. The more the better.

Good luck.

DB.

This may sound obvious, but try blowing all the dust bunnies out of your CPU fan/heatsink and case. It definitely sounds like overheating, but if it didn't used to overheat and it's starting to, we should be looking for fans that aren't turning or airways that are obstructed.

One more comment about "the more fans the better" - if you go adding case fans and so on to your 'puter, make certain that you understand what direction the fan is driving the air. If all your fans are sucking air in, or all are blowing air out, they won't work effectively. Ideally, you want your front fans sucking air in from the bottom of the case, and the rear fans blowing air out near the top - cross ventilation across your CPU heatsink/fan combo, video card and NB being the goal. Oh - and try to tidy up the rats nest of cables if you have one - the tidier it is in there, the better the airflow.

Good luck!