Is the fan still turning? That would be the first thing I would check. Also, just because it's been running for 3 years doesn't mean it's been getting adequate cooling all that time. This is why I don't make homemade coolers and stick only to parts made for that purpose. Parts don't always burn up all at once, sometimes they go through a drawn out burning up period before they finally die.

From the picture of your heatsink it looks like your Athlon is a slot A and that's a shame if it is because the 1ghz K7 and Tbird in slot A form factor are both extremely hard to find. Up to about 900 mhz is still relatively easy with the 800/850/900 mhz parts being the least common but still obtainable. 950 and 1000mhz are almost irreplaceable. I searched for a long time trying to max out my slot A Athlon collection and only succeeded in finding 950mhz of both models for a price that wasn't out of the ballpark and those were the exception rather than the rule. I went a year with 900mhz as my fastest models before I found those. I have yet to see a 1ghz slot A reasonably priced when they become available.

PS: You wouldn't have been OCing this CPU with a Golden Fingers device were you? That's something I would never consider doing with such a hard to find CPU for this very reason.

All of my slot Athlons that see regular use have one of two styles of cooler on them.

The Golden Orb type

Or the dual fan type

sliderider wrote:

Is the fan still turning? That would be the first thing I would check. Also, just because it's been running for 3 years doesn't […]
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Is the fan still turning? That would be the first thing I would check. Also, just because it's been running for 3 years doesn't mean it's been getting adequate cooling all that time. This is why I don't make homemade coolers and stick only to parts made for that purpose. Parts don't always burn up all at once, sometimes they go through a drawn out burning up period before they finally die.

From the picture of your heatsink it looks like your Athlon is a slot A and that's a shame if it is because the 1ghz K7 and Tbird in slot A form factor are both extremely hard to find. Up to about 900 mhz is still relatively easy with the 800/850/900 mhz parts being the least common but still obtainable. 950 and 1000mhz are almost irreplaceable. I searched for a long time trying to max out my slot A Athlon collection and only succeeded in finding 950mhz of both models for a price that wasn't out of the ballpark and those were the exception rather than the rule. I went a year with 900mhz as my fastest models before I found those. I have yet to see a 1ghz slot A reasonably priced when they become available.

PS: You wouldn't have been OCing this CPU with a Golden Fingers device were you? That's something I would never consider doing with such a hard to find CPU for this very reason.

All of my slot Athlons that see regular use have one of two styles of cooler on them.

The Golden Orb type

Or the dual fan type

I keep it at the stock speed. Here is a photo of the CPU:

Lol, slot A? more like socket 462! And no, I'm running at the stock speed.
The fan runs fine.

Oh,OK. For some reason the heatsink looked like it was longer in that image.

BTW, Athlons of that period were known for having weak thermal protection compared to Pentium III chips of the same period. It only takes a few seconds with a failed fan before you release the magic smoke. Pentium III's could power down if the fan failed to save the CPU.

From the pic the base of that heatsink doesn't look perfectly flat, which is important for good heat exchange. I'd check for flatness and lap the heatsink, then put some fresh decent thermal paste.

sliderider wrote:

Oh,OK. For some reason the heatsink looked like it was longer in that image.

BTW, Athlons of that period were known for having weak thermal protection compared to Pentium III chips of the same period. It only takes a few seconds with a failed fan before you release the magic smoke. Pentium III's could power down if the fan failed to save the CPU.

Guess it's bad huh? Guess it's time to use a better heatsink, or even new Cpu.

TELVM wrote:

From the pic the base of that heatsink doesn't look perfectly flat, which is important for good heat exchange. I'd check for flatness and lap the heatsink, then put some fresh decent thermal paste.

Lol, just caught that. I'm gonna need some scrap.

You can still find cheap socket A heatsinks on ebay cheap. The last Athlons before they made the XP line run hot as hell, same with the Durons (ceramic chips). Socket A heatsinks are not 100% flat because they have to clear the socket edge on one side.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Cooling-Fan-Socke … r-/170959168095 is kind of cool.

Anybody tried Sonic Tower with just case fans blowing at a 1.4 GHz Athlon? If a Prescott can survive it then I would think that a 1.4 GHz Athlon would be a cakewalk, but "hot as hell" doesn't inspire confidence.

Unknown_K wrote:

You can still find cheap socket A heatsinks on ebay cheap. The last Athlons before they made the XP line run hot as hell, same with the Durons (ceramic chips). Socket A heatsinks are not 100% flat because they have to clear the socket edge on one side.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Cooling-Fan-Socke … r-/170959168095 is kind of cool.

I bought a whole bunch of Arctic Cooling - Copper Silent HSF's a while ago, they are great for the job. Silent and very decent coolers

Unknown_K wrote:

You can still find cheap socket A heatsinks on ebay cheap. The last Athlons before they made the XP line run hot as hell, same with the Durons (ceramic chips). Socket A heatsinks are not 100% flat because they have to clear the socket edge on one side.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Cooling-Fan-Socke … r-/170959168095 is kind of cool.

Maybe I should dump the athlon for the XP

Well since the old one is well roasted (over done) you may as well hunt down a mobile version if the board supports it (same chip but lower volts) and buy a Good cooler not some cheap junk. Go all copper if you can and if you are lucky to be on the right site at the right time you might find a heat pipe equipped socket A compatible cooler as those are the best.

There are way too many Athlon XP's in this world (and my basement). I purchased the original 1Ghz Athlon for a board I have that has an AGP Pro slot just to have something different (same reason I purchased a spare Slot-A board in case my other one dies). Also have a Duron 1.2Ghz in the collection just to try different things.

While the Socket 462 Athlon CPUs will be around forever (made in the many millions and no gold content), decent heatsinks will not so stock up.

MatureTech wrote:

Anybody tried Sonic Tower with just case fans blowing at a 1.4 GHz Athlon? If a Prescott can survive it then I would think that a 1.4 GHz Athlon would be a cakewalk, but "hot as hell" doesn't inspire confidence.

No idea about that one, but my SI-97 cannot run an AthlonXP without a fan mounted on it (but the fan can be pretty wimpy (read: quiet)). Full passive cooling requires substantial sinking - as far as I'm aware only the NoFan CR95 is really capable of attempting it with higher TDP CPUs; even the new Thermalright (which is also hilariously huge) didn't fare so well in an SPCR review (it failed the long-term load test if I remember right). If you can find the spec TDP for the chip you're interested in, it can help quite a bit for determining its sinking needs - if memory serves even the later AthlonXPs are only in the 60-70W range though (that's "a lot" compared to something like a Pentium III or 486, but it's "low average" compared to a modern CPU).

I'd suggest an SI-97 for Socket A or 370 if you can still find one; they weigh substantially less than the various solid-copper models, and remember that Socket A takes all of the heatsink weight on the clips - you can rip the socket (and CPU) off the board with a heavy heatsink and a good rattle.

On the Sonic Tower - I have the fan version of that, Big Typhoon, it works pretty well, but I wouldn't even attempt running it without a fan. It's on a Core 2 Quad (95W TDP).

Unknown_K wrote:

There are way too many Athlon XP's in this world (and my basement). I purchased the original 1Ghz Athlon for a board I have that has an AGP Pro slot just to have something different (same reason I purchased a spare Slot-A board in case my other one dies). Also have a Duron 1.2Ghz in the collection just to try different things.

While the Socket 462 Athlon CPUs will be around forever (made in the many millions and no gold content), decent heatsinks will not so stock up.

Ok, just bought an Athlon 1.33ghz cpu with 2 coolers.

obobskivich wrote:

If you can find the spec TDP for the chip you're interested in, it can help quite a bit for determining its sinking needs - if memory serves even the later AthlonXPs are only in the 60-70W range though (that's "a lot" compared to something like a Pentium III or 486, but it's "low average" compared to a modern CPU).

According to cpu-world, it has max TDP of 72.1 W but the maximum operating temperature is an amazing 95 C. Sounds like an Nvidia chip 🤣 If Athlons were really that robust I don't think this thread would have started; it just would have kept running.

I have a 2.8 Ghz Northwood P4, max TDP 68.4 W, Tcase 75 C, doing OK with a Sonic Tower with a case fan and PSU fan pulling air over it vaguely. It gets up to 50-something C on typical loads. Seemed reasonable to try it on the Athlon right up until I read that it has no thermal throttling.

I think its just stupid to use such `el-cheapo` heatsink on such processor.. If you known better you had bought earlier a more decent cpu cooler.. Didnt know that people where that poor..
Now you need a cpu and cooler instead 😘

I believe Athlon CPUs are stable up to about 75C. But they get unstable above that. I had a friend in college with one in a small case that had the PSU blocking the CPU fan and games started crashing at >80C.

They don't die unless much hotter though. 120C seems to be a common death zone for silicon. GPUs typically do a total shutdown it they get that hot for example.

Anyway, Athlon XP-M is where happiness is. They run much cooler, similar to a Pentium M.

I think it was just a bad connection from the cooler to the core.. If he just used a good quality one, there was nothing wrong..

Never seen a burning core on those socket A athlons?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSdcMqWM1DE

Yeah the problem with AMD CPUs before Athlon 64 was they had no internal thermal protection and the BIOS's thermal protection (if even enabled) was far too slow at reacting to a situation where the die has no cooling at all. The die can actually detach from the CPU package. It gets extremely hot very quickly.