From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Aug 25 8:46:52 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from symbion.srrc.usda.gov (symbion.srrc.usda.gov [199.133.86.40]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 66DCA37B422 for ; Fri, 25 Aug 2000 08:46:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from glenn@localhost) by symbion.srrc.usda.gov (8.9.3/8.9.3) id KAA52116 for hardware@freebsd.org; Fri, 25 Aug 2000 10:46:39 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from glenn) From: Glenn Johnson Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 10:46:39 -0500 To: hardware@freebsd.org Subject: overheating AMD K6-2 400 Message-ID: <20000825104639.A51927@node1.cluster.srrc.usda.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2i Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org About a year ago I purchased an AMD K6-2 400 MHz processor for my FreeBSD system at home. It had been working fine until recently. The last two months I have been seeing some rather strange problems like corrupted files from cvsup, bad dependencies from a buildworld even with a fresh object tree, and signals 4 and 10 during compilation. The last week I have had two spontaneous reboots which caused severe file system damage. I knew it was hardware trouble and I finally pinned it down to the CPU. The problems definitely start showing up after the CPU has warmed up a bit. It is obviously a thermal problem or at least temperature is a factor. I checked to make sure that the CPU fan was working and it is. I remembered people on the FreeBSD lists saying that they had to underclock there AMD K6-2s to get them stable so I clocked this one down to 350. The problems took a little longer to surface but still do. I should mention that the motherboard is a FIC VA503+ and the system had never been overclocked. I pulled the CPU out and put my old Cyrix 133 6x86-MX chip in. This is working fine but is slow of course. My questions are: Does it sound like the AMD chip is shot or can I try to enhance the cooling somehow and still use it? Or would I be better off getting another CPU? If I get another CPU should I get another AMD or should I go with one of the Cyrix MII models? I would want to put in a CPU that was at least 400 MHz. I know this is not specifically FreeBSD related but I have found that the people on the FreeBSD lists are the most knowledgeable. All responses are greatly appreciated. Thanks. -- Glenn Johnson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message