Constant restarts after cleaning up inside case - heat issue?

[Deleted]

First and foremost, my system is ancient. I'm rocking a P4 LGA 775 3.2ghz. I have been doing so for 6 and a half years and managing pretty well, since wow is the only game I play. Yes, I do plan on upgrading soon.


My issue started after I cleaned up inside my case, prepairing for an upgrade that's soon to come. After taking out the cpu heatsink, memory sticks, hard drive and graphs card for a clean up I set them all back in their rightful place. Obviously, I re-applied a new coating of thermal paste and made sure the heatsink is well secured. However, ever since then, my system has become unstable, constantly restarting when under cpu stress. I monitored the cpu temps from bios and they seem to have climbed from the usual 60º celcius to 85-100. I have tried running a couple of temperature monitoring utils and they show my cpu at 50º at idle but then it rapidly climbs to 80+ up to the point where the pc restarts when cpu usage climbs. This has made playing wow impossible.

I have had some heat issues before but nothing like this. During heavy heat in the summer I used to open the case and stick a house fan pointing inside to avoid throttling(wich made wow unplayably slow) - this may sound ridiculous but there's a reason the old pentium architecture got dumped, they were just too damn hot and P4 775 were the last of these and also the ones that ran the hottest. I just don't realise why this is happening right after cleaning up the shitloads of dust I had accumulated from last summer's open case+fan. Could it not be CPU related? Is there any way this is a power source issue? I also noticed my CMOS battery is dying(sometimes the system date is screwed up when starting OS), could it be related to this?

I'd appreciate any help I can get. Thanks

[velfurious]

First and foremost, my system is ancient. I'm rocking a P4 LGA 775 3.2ghz. I have been doing so for 6 and a half years and managing pretty well, since wow is the only game I play. Yes, I do plan on upgrading soon.


My issue started after I cleaned up inside my case, prepairing for an upgrade that's soon to come. After taking out the cpu heatsink, memory sticks, hard drive and graphs card for a clean up I set them all back in their rightful place. Obviously, I re-applied a new coating of thermal paste and made sure the heatsink is well secured. However, ever since then, my system has become unstable, constantly restarting when under cpu stress. I monitored the cpu temps from bios and they seem to have climbed from the usual 60º celcius to 85-100. I have tried running a couple of temperature monitoring utils and they show my cpu at 50º at idle but then it rapidly climbs to 80+ up to the point where the pc restarts when cpu usage climbs. This has made playing wow impossible.

I have had some heat issues before but nothing like this. During heavy heat in the summer I used to open the case and stick a house fan pointing inside to avoid throttling(wich made wow unplayably slow) - this may sound ridiculous but there's a reason the old pentium architecture got dumped, they were just too damn hot and P4 775 were the last of these and also the ones that ran the hottest. I just don't realise why this is happening right after cleaning up the shitloads of dust I had accumulated from last summer's open case+fan. Could it not be CPU related? Is there any way this is a power source issue? I also noticed my CMOS battery is dying(sometimes the system date is screwed up when starting OS), could it be related to this?

I'd appreciate any help I can get. Thanks

The symptoms you describe sounds like a simple issue of an overheating cpu.

Are you sure the cpu fan is spinning, and that it was mounted to blow air down on the heatsink? Is the fan settings in bios at it's maximum setting for fan speed? Is there a fan speed setting that is on the low setting attached to the cpu fan?

You should remove the heatsink, and make sure you clean off all the thermal compound on the heatsink and top of the cpu (no need to remove cpu from socket, but be careful with it, clean both thoroughly). Use this as a guide for cleaning thermal compound - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3gx6c62D7I

Another common problem I encounter is under the fan on the heatsink, dirt is so gummed up that air can't actually get down between the fins of the heatsink itself. It requires the fan itself to be taken off and use of a can of air to get all the dirt out (remove it from the case first).

It is also possible that the cpu is dying, and as you said, that series of cpu's had very high cpu temps due to their design. You may want to consider a larger, premium cpu heatsink (I use Zalman) or replace the system if spending $50 bucks on an old system doesn't make sense to you.

Keep in mind, under no circumstances should you use a vacuum cleaner to clean inside the case where electrical components are.


Ed

[Deleted]

Thanks for the reply, it was very helpful. I took out the heatsink, cleaned the thermal compound and re-applied following the link you posted(last time I applied it by spreading over the cpu, now I just left it in the middle and placed the cooler on top).

So far temperatures seems lower overall for the cpu. I've done a quick stress test(WoW orgrimmar) and so far the CPU does not seem to be heating past 80º celcius. I've had one restart since re-applying the thermal compound(a few minutes into the first try) but other than that system seems stable. I'll keep an eye on it and see if the issue remains.

As for buying a heatsink.. I should have done that when I first bought the cpu... Like you said, it's way too expensive to buy one for such an old component. I have plans to upgrade my system soon anyway so might as well spend the money there.

[Ghâzh]

As for buying a heatsink.. I should have done that when I first bought the cpu... Like you said, it's way too expensive to buy one for such an old component. I have plans to upgrade my system soon anyway so might as well spend the money there.

A lot of the aftermarket coolers actually fit with wide variety of sockets. Like for example, noctua nh-d14 works with LGA1366 / 1156 / 1155 / 775 and AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / AM3+ . Coolers are as well pretty much timeless, as in, if you buy one now it'll most likely be as good with your future setup (and probably even one after that). They don't break easily or wear out either. Perfect spot to futureproof.

[velfurious]

Thanks for the reply, it was very helpful. I took out the heatsink, cleaned the thermal compound and re-applied following the link you posted(last time I applied it by spreading over the cpu, now I just left it in the middle and placed the cooler on top).

So far temperatures seems lower overall for the cpu. I've done a quick stress test(WoW orgrimmar) and so far the CPU does not seem to be heating past 80º celcius. I've had one restart since re-applying the thermal compound(a few minutes into the first try) but other than that system seems stable. I'll keep an eye on it and see if the issue remains.

As for buying a heatsink.. I should have done that when I first bought the cpu... Like you said, it's way too expensive to buy one for such an old component. I have plans to upgrade my system soon anyway so might as well spend the money there.

Glad I could help.

As for how you put the thermal paste on before, don't worry, that's how I've always done it until I saw that video heh

60-80C though :\ that is pretty toasty. hopefully it will last ya until you can get the new system

And I agree, save the cash and put it towards the new system.

A P4 system isn't worth more then 100 bucks nowadays, 50 for a new fan for it would be silly.