I've just put together a new 8.1 system but after 20 hours of operation the system failed. Details: ASUS A7V333 motherboard AMD Athlon AX-1800 processor with Speeze cooling fan (3 wire/ ball bearing) installed 512 MB DDR RAM and the rest is probably unimportant. After approximately 20 hours up time the system froze solid. Upon reboot the motherboard reported "system failure, CPU out" repeatedly until I turned the power off. Thinking it could be just an over heat problem, I let it stand overnight and tried again only to get the same verbal report from the motherboard. I disassembled the unit, removed the cpu, and exchanged it for another. This morning as I prepared to reassemble the box, I noted upon wiping off the heat sink compound from the bottom of the cooling fan, that etched on the surface was all the information from the center of the CPU, i.e., AMD Athlon, AX-1800DMT3C, AGOIA02288PAW, Z16622860122, 1999 AMD, but backwards which suggests to me that it got so hot that the chip info was transferred to the base of the cooling fan. The board, CPU, RAM, and cooling fan were all purchased from a dealer (Tiger Direct) who recommended the fan for the CPU. The fan came with a packet of heat sink compound already on its base, so I didn't add any additional. The motherboard has verbal warnings for CPU overheat, and is supposed to shut the system off if the CPU starts to get too hot. Neither of these things happened. The bios has setting for clocking chips up to 2300, but the best I could get from this combination was using auto setup at 1500, well under its rated speed. My question is, I guess, have I done something wrong, did I just have a fluky CPU, did under clocking cause a problem, or am I way off track. Any advice greatly appreciated. tia, dave -- David C. Johanson Linux Counter # 116410 Powered by SuSE Linux 7.1 People who behold a phenomenon will often extend their thinking beyond it; people who merely hear about the phenomenon will not be moved to think at all. -- Goethe
On Sunday 03 November 2002 2:05 pm, David Johanson wrote:
AMD Athlon AX-1800 processor The bios has setting for clocking chips up to 2300, but the best I could get from this combination was using auto setup at 1500, well under its rated speed.
The AMD chip runs at around 1500MHz, but with a rated "processor speed" of an 1800+ You may note the "+" sign when dealing with these processors. Thats because, I believe, the whole MHz thing is a load of cr-p anyway :o) It doesn't necessarily tally, what with quantispeed etc. My AMD 1800+ runs at: cat /proc/cpuinfo cpu MHz : 1527.258 And it is nice and fast. My cooler has no "heatsinking compound" [the white gunk] but does have a pink "tab" that is a bit sticky and AMD do not guarantee the processor if it isn't used [IIRC] as the gunk breaks down over time, where the patch doesn't. You *MAY* have been missold the cooler. If the dealer recommended it, then take it up with the dealer, and the MHz rating of the Athlons [1500+ upwards I believe] isn't the speed of the processor, more its equivalent I think :o) Don't take any of this as 100% accurate, it is just my experiences. Take care, Jon
My question is, I guess, have I done something wrong, did I just have a fluky CPU, did under clocking cause a problem, or am I way off track. Any advice greatly appreciated.
tia,
dave
On Sunday 03 November 2002 09:50 am, The Purple Tiger wrote:
On Sunday 03 November 2002 2:05 pm, David Johanson wrote:
AMD Athlon AX-1800 processor The bios has setting for clocking chips up to 2300, but the best I could get from this combination was using auto setup at 1500, well under its rated speed.
The AMD chip runs at around 1500MHz, but with a rated "processor speed" of an 1800+ You may note the "+" sign when dealing with these processors. Thats because, I believe, the whole MHz thing is a load of cr-p anyway :o) It doesn't necessarily tally, what with quantispeed etc.
My AMD 1800+ runs at: cat /proc/cpuinfo cpu MHz : 1527.258
And it is nice and fast.
My cooler has no "heatsinking compound" [the white gunk] but does have a pink "tab" that is a bit sticky and AMD do not guarantee the processor if it isn't used [IIRC] as the gunk breaks down over time, where the patch doesn't.
You *MAY* have been missold the cooler. If the dealer recommended it, then take it up with the dealer, and the MHz rating of the Athlons [1500+ upwards I believe] isn't the speed of the processor, more its equivalent I think :o)
Don't take any of this as 100% accurate, it is just my experiences.
Take care,
Jon -------------------------------
Jon is right about the clock speed reading which appears is what you might have been reading, from your mail David. Usually when you turn the machine on though, it should give you a readout of the cpu type and model. Of course this happens rather quickly and is easy to miss. None of the Athlon cpus that I have gotten from my distributor have had a fan cooler that used the white heat sink compound! In fact, that is usually not recommend for these newer cpus and I have never seen anything like that in the official packaged AMD cpus! If you purchase a packaged AMD chip, the correct cooler/heatsink is included. Sounds like Tiger "upgraded" your cooler and possibly sold you the wrong one! I have an upgraded heatsink on my 1700+, but my distributor is pretty knowledgable about such things. I did get the correct fan/heatsink as well in my 'official' AMD package. The cpu gets very hot very quickly and I am not sure your motherboard would have time to react to it's eminent demise. My first guess would be that the white compound kept the heat from being transferred correctly and things got out of hand before anything could react. You could have had a bad cpu also, that's really hard to tell what caused it to fail. Patrick -- --- KMail v1.4.3 --- SuSE Linux Pro v8.1 --- Registered Linux User #225206
participants (3)
-
David Johanson -
Patrick -
The Purple Tiger