Athlon 64 overheat issue \ VOGONS

Athlon 64 overheat issue

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First post, by th1r5bvn23

Posted on 2019-08-28, 14:45

th1r5bvn23 Offline

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Recently I was playing with Athlon 64s. But I found something abnormal: even with decent cooling, some particular CPUs may overheat like it had a short circuit. The CPU itself working normally, everything is OK with that CPU except temperature. The CPU may reach 80℃ or higher even under no load. The motherboard took other CPUs well except that one, and that CPU overheated on other motherboards too. The cooler got really hot. It's for sure that the CPU is to blame. But I wonder why this could happen?
My Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 754 E6) and one of my friends' Athlon 64 3400+ (Socket 754 CG) both overheat. Another friend experienced a lot of Athlon 64s that overheat (some AM2 ones).

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Reply 1 of 5, by canthearu

Posted on 2019-08-28, 15:03

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Seems some of the Athlon 64s have failed voltage codes that cause them to run themselves at too high a voltage. Try manually setting the CPU voltage to something more reasonable.

Reply 2 of 5, by The Serpent Rider

Posted on 2019-08-28, 15:17

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Read this topic:
Re: Socket 939 FX-60/Opteron 185 cooler recommendation for 110W TDP

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Reply 3 of 5, by matze79

Posted on 2019-08-28, 15:41

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On my X2 the Cooling Paste between Heatspreader and DIE failed.
After removing the Heat spreader and renew the paste everything worked fine again.
But not every A64 is affected by this issue.

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Reply 4 of 5, by cyclone3d

Posted on 2019-08-28, 15:59

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matze79 wrote:
On my X2 the Cooling Paste between Heatspreader and DIE failed.
After removing the Heat spreader and renew the paste everything worked fine again.
But not every A64 is affected by this issue.

This is my guess as well.

This was a known issue back in the day even with brand new A64 and Opteron CPUs.

I delidded my Opteron 175, which I still have, shortly after I bought it new, and it dropped the temps by 20C under load.

Another possible problem is that the heatspreader might be very unflat and causing poor contact with the cooler.

Pics of the spread of the thermal paste would be helpful.

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Reply 5 of 5, by swaaye

Posted on 2019-08-28, 17:42

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It seems like some 939 CPUs have thermal paste that hasn't aged well. I had a Opteron 180 that was overheating and powering off (I thought because of heat). Delidding it and reapplying paste fixed the temperature problem, but I think it had been damaged from overheating because it would still randomly power off. Sometimes it wouldn't even boot to Windows before turning off. I also cleaned its pins very thoroughly with a toothbrush and alcohol but to no avail. There's no way to know if it had spent a lot of time at extreme temperatures.

If I remember right the early A64 CPUs are rather sensitive devices. The memory controller(s) can be damaged in a variety of ways.

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