First post, by RoozerXC
- Rank
- Newbie
Over the past few months I've been trying to tackle a problem that's been causing me lots of headaches. I have tried scouring the Internet and VOGONS (hello!) for a solution, but nothing worked really. I do not know if this is the right forum to post issues like this but I'm hoping that I could get some solutions from this site. I do not have any picture attachments at the moment because my phone got repaired, and I couldn't take pictures with my camera app anymore due to a myriad of issues with the refresh rate, touchscreen and whatnot
Anyway, when I boot up the computer the temps skyrocket to 131 C, even on BIOS so the CPU is literally getting toasted to death as I turn on the machine. Since this is a COMPAQ Presario SR1820NX desktop that was given to me by a relative's boyfriend, I do not have any options to control the voltage or clock speeds on this machine. I can check the motherboard's revision, but since I'm running out of time I'll just check the motherboard revision later (tomorrow hopefully). It's a Socket 939 board
When I disassemble the machine and remove the CPU from the heatsink, it looks like it's barely making any contact despite the entire CPU being covered with the thermal paste, and most of the thermal paste just dried away quickly. I have made sure that I latched the heatsink tightly so that it makes proper contact with the CPU
I did try a couple of things
- cleaning all of the dust so it has better airflow
- repaste the CPU and heatsink together
- spread the paste on the CPU evenly with a spatula so it covers the entire thing
- try different thermal paste (recently I ordered Arctic MX-4)
I have here the following specs, although I haven't been able to install other drivers (besides the GPU) because of this issue
- Bestec 300W ATX power supply
- AMD Athlon 64 3700+ @ 2.2 GHz
- 1GB / 1x1GB @ 400MHz DDR1
- PNY NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (PCI Express)
- Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! CT4830
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB HDD
I also tried Arctic MX-6 a while back but I just simply wasted it out of frustration, only to get above 80 C on idle after POST and this is even before booting 98 SE. I really don't want to be wasting any more money and thermal paste fixing this issue, and I'm certainly doubtful that replacing the heatsink and everything else would even fix anything. I was considering getting thermal pads instead since I've seen PCL (phil) use them for all of his machines, but again I'm very doubtful that it would make the difference at all and would only make the CPU temps skyrocket even further
Has anyone ever experienced the same overheating issue as I have? Is this just a user error and I'm applying thermal paste wrong all the time? Is it just a bad PSU (even though I have never experienced any shorts), or simply a bad heatsink? It's just confusing and it's a pain in the ass to have to repaste every time, only to get even worse temps. This project has gotten extremely messy for me these past couple of weeks