I am getting fed up now. Feeling withdrawal symptoms from having no computer. (I have been waiting something like 4 days now to test out the faster processor on a demanding game)
I took it into the shop on thursday morning because the CPU (bought on wednesday, along with a motherboard, memory, and case) was overheating. I rang friday morning to find out that they had only just started looking at it…
“I have turned it on, it reached 62 C for me. I am not sure what to do”
(over 1000 PC builds my arse!)
After discussing the options He said he’d ring me later when it’s ready. I gave him my home and mobile number and said he can ring any time (even though I work nights and will be going to bed). Alas no phonecall since then.
I do not look forward to the (now regular) morning call to the damn computer shop.
I had the same problem a month ago. Eventually (after trying several expensive and or frustrating repairs) said fuck it and purchased a new one. Good luck to you.
Well, luckilly for me it was not me who assembled the mobo, cpu, and fan. It was mr “over 1000 PC builds” white ‘technician’ coat pc shop man. In other words, it is their obligation to do whatever it takes to sort it, since I, the customer, can’t be blamed for faulty assembly.
Having said that. It is worrying to hear “I am not sure what to do”.
If they replace the mobo, cpu, and fan, and it still overheats, what *can * they do? It would be suggestive that they have never ever built that particular setup before (either that, or customer’s they’ve done it for have never bothered to check the cpu temp)
I am sure it will be ok, I just can’t help feeling fed up. It doesn’t help that I have to keep waiting up for them.
In the bios (press ‘del’ when starting the computer) there is a section called ‘PC Health’. One of the items within shows the temprature of the CPU (along with other things such as the temp of the motherboard chip, and the speed of the cpu fan)
WTF? If the CPU is overheating, you put on a better heatsink, or at the very least put a better thermal grease in between the CPU and the one you have now.
If it’s still too damned hot, you start adding airflow by throwing in more case fans, or routing the cabling better so that they don’t block airflow.
This isn’t fucking rocket science, and if he seriously suggests replacing the motherboard, just ask for your money back.
I almost don’t want to post this because I don’t want to be reminded, but I may as well update the thread…
I rang and they can’t figure out why it’s overheating. They’ve tried different mobo, cpu, fan, and psu (but the same brands). They have suggested I have a pentium 4 instead of an amd, and that that will be done on monday. Fuckheads.
Stop. Right. There. You need thermal grease, a better heatsink, and more case fans. Sure, AMD CPUs tend to need more cooling than P4s, but seriously. This is not a gigantic issue.
There’s no talking to them. The guy doing it claims to have been building PCs for 15 years. If they haven’t thought of better heatsink, thermal grease etc (they did try case fans with no luck) then it’s not worth mentioning to them. How do you think it’s going to sound coming from a customer - “Wait a minute, you need to try…”
To rub bastard bollocking bum buggering salt in the wound - the P4 will be an extra 50 quid.
I could say fuck off! I’ll have my money back. But I want the upgrade!
Is a P4 (3GHz) better than an AMD athlon XP (3GHz)? (I expect the answer will be no)
Ah, actually I can salve you somewhat. See, AMD has been playing fast and loose with their numbering system. The Athlon XP 3000+ actually runs at 2.167 GHz.
However, the reason why AMD has created its performance rating system is because clock for clock the Athlons kick the living shit out of the Pentium 4. Put a Pentium 4 2.4C up against a 3000+ and the Pentium will get smoked.
However, the P4 3.06 compares very favorably with the 3000+. It’s sort of a toss-up between the 3000+ and the P4 3.06, particularly with regard to games. You should’nt notice any performance difference.
The 3.06 also has considerable overclocking headroom. You can probably squeeze an extra 300 to 600 MHz out of it if your motherboard is friendly. If you have a choice of motherboards, I highly recommend the Abit IC7 MAX. My IC7-G, the earlier version of the MAX, is far and away the finest motherboard I’ve ever worked with.
Right now I’m running a 2.4C overclocked to 3.0, with a slightly overclocked run-of-the-mill ATI 9600 Pro, and it fucking rocks. Prior to the release of the Far Cry demo there was not a single game I could not run at super-high resolution with silky smooth framerates. It particularly excels with my fast cable connection in online first person shooter games. When Doom 3 comes out I’ll need to blow another 200 to 300 bucks on a new video card, but the chip will probably do just fine and I don’t anticipate replacing it until it is obsolete or I kill it–and they’re very hard to kill, unlike your former AMD chip.
Have they checked to see if it is a remasked chip? i.e. one actually rated at a lower speed but with a higher rating printed on it. Running at that temperature when unloaded is not good. Suggest they try a second CPU from a different batch.
If I were to suggest a solution to your somputer’s problem I’d suggest they think about looking at the vcore settings. My Athlon 2100+ plus ran like it thought it was gonna fuse hydrogen the way sun does it, with a whole lot of heat. Turning down the vcore to what the CPU was desgined for (bios auto configure my butt) worked thermal wonders.
Did the ‘experts’ at the computer shop even determine that the CPU was actually overheating? Were there any indicators or tests performed other than the BIOS reading? It’s reasonable for you (the consumer) to depend on the BIOS temperature readout, but I think the technicians could do better!
The temperature reported by the BIOS in some motherboards is highly inaccurate. I would think a fully equipped computer shop would have access to some other temperature measuring equipment that might be able to shed some light on the situation. I don’t depend on the motherboard’s self-reporting as anything other than a rough guide and if I were getting anomalous numbers, I’d look for some way to corroborate them before doing anything drastic. I have a thermal probe that I use as a double-check. It may not be perfect either, but it should be in the same general ballpark as the BIOS (when used correctly!), so it does provide some basis for comparison.
I’ve built dozens of AMD-based systems and, has been already said, it’s not an especially difficult task to get adequate cooling. I’ve only had two systems that gave me a bit of trouble. In one case, the computer was put together from assorted components (recycled, hand-me-down, a bit of new). The original heatsink wasn’t quite up to the task, but a new one fixed it right up. In the other case, the idle temperatures seemed a little high, even with high quality heatsinks and plenty of airflow. Turned out that there was a bug in the motherboard’s temperature detection, and the actual temperatures were much lower than indicated. A BIOS flash took care of that one.
I’m less than impressed with the solution of completely changing the system spec. Especially if it is going to cost $50 extra and provide no real performance benefit. I rarely use any kind of special ‘premium’ heatsinks, fans, or thermal compound. If the rest of us can achieve good system cooling on AMD systems wihtout heroic measures, this computer shop can do it too. I bet they are just overlooking something and they don’t want to fool with it anymore. If it were me dealing with them, I think I’d take my business elsewhere.
Argh! I am LIVID!
I rang up to find out how the change to a P4 was going. He said He had done the hardware and was not installing the motherboard patches.
<snip conversation about how you are NOT supposed to just start windows XP after a mobo/CPU install and that I intended to do this stuff MYSELF.>
I get the computer back and turn it on (nice LOUD fan that!) All seems well until I enter into the graphics settings panel - CATASTROPHIC ERROR (windows’ words, not mine)
OK, turns out I was right, I should run a restore from the XP cd.
I check the sound settings panel too. error too.
(gah, this is taking too long, I am not used to this laptop’s keyboard)
So I decide to do the restore anyway…
reboot the computer with XP cd in drive. Computer ignores it and conitnues into windows… dickwad has turned off the cd boot in the bios. OK, I’ll turn it back on. So I reboot and press del…
…“Please Enter the password”
ARGGHH I AM GOING TO KILL HIM!!! WHat kind of fucking TOOL puts a password on the bios of SOMEONE ELSE’S COMPUTER!!
(this is now well after 5:30 - the shop’s closing time.)
Now the next bit is perhaps my stupidity. I decide to just re install the graphics and sound drivers. Going off advice from getting new Graphcs cards in the past I uninstall the current drivers. Big mistake. now windows won’t start. Instead it tells me to … you guessed it… boot from the windows CD and run the recovery setup.
GHAAAAAFRUGAFRIGAHHRAAAHHH!!
since using this laptop is turning out to be a pain (the fact that the ctrl key is not the left-most key is particularly disasterous when it comes to using cut and paste), and it’s battery is low I will keep this short. It ended up only costing about 9 quid more. (not 50)
Rest assured. once I am satisfied that my computer is working (probably not long after I have got, and removed the bios password) I won’t be touching that shop with a ten thousand foot bargepole.
And I did think about reseting the bios password (removing the battery for a while) but I decided it safer to just wait until I call the most idiotic computer expert on the planet tomorow to get the password off him (and give him hell, if I am still angry at the time)
When you get the computer back, check the BIOS settings to see if your CPU is overclocked. If it’s an original CPU and not a pull from another computer, it shouldn’t be. Overclocked CPUs run hotter and are more prone to random crashes.
