Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2001 20:49:54 -0700 From: "Charles Burns" <burnscharlesn@hotmail.com> To: ovanes_m@yahoo.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Athlon CPU health.. Message-ID: <F192edbyuJfEg897Bqg000082db@hotmail.com>
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>Hi, > >I'd like to know how to capture the current temperature of my CPU. >I suspect that its overheating for some reason(I haven't overclocked >it) and halting during a large operation. > >The operation is processing a huge file (200MB) and with perl modules >adding the processed data to an SQL db. You can get the "Temp Check" sensor from www.1coolpc.com. I have one, and other than the fact that the only way to turn it off is to remove it's battery, I am happy with it. > >This computer's previous CPU was experiencing similar problems. During >large compilations, it would just halt, and it kept getting worse >with time. Could be an unstable motherboard, RAM, a certain piece of hardware not liking another piece... It could very well be your power supply. One common and often overlooked cause of random instability/flakiness is a power supply that is cheap or that cannot supply sufficient power to the system. You can find a list of AMD recommended power supplies at AMD's website. The best brand of power supply, period, is PC Power & Cooling. Those are overpriced the likes of which you would not believe, though, so a nice Antec or Enermax would work and would be affordable. >I've added another fan to my chassis and it really isn't >overloaded with extra hardware, so I'm not sure what else to do to >make my CPU run cooler. Athlons can often run stable at up around 100c, the boiling point of water (though I wouldn't try it!) You could get a better heatsink for it. Most stock heatsinks suck. The Thermalright SK6 is about $30 and is an excellent heatsink. Pair it with a $7 SunOn fan (which you can get from 1CoolPC and many other vendors) would solve that problem... If it is the problem. >For now, I'm planning on just capturing >statistics during the running of this huge program to see if my >hypothesis is true. > >I'm also looking for suggestions on what else I can do to debug this: > a) verify if its really the CPU overheating > if not, then what's causing the cpu to halt? Get the temp sensor (which will be useful later, anyway) and check the temp of the CPU. If it is over 70C, get a new cooling system like that mentioned above. Do the classic "weird problem troubleshooting" steps of tearing the PC down to its minimal components and then testing to see if it is stable. If not, must be a required component... Memory, CPU heat, Motherboard, cheapo power supply. If so, add components one at a time until you can reproduce the problem. Note that this method will not tell you if the power supply is bad, because you might overload the power supply on any random component that you add back to the system, which would point at that innocent part rather than the power supply. Better try swapping it too. > b) how to solve this problem. Once you find the part causign the problem, it would be a simple matter of replacing it or changing its PCI slot, etc (depends on which part) Charles Burns _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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