Building a computer? Need advice/suggestions? Come here!

[Cortexian]

Also, 'Lancer, he's not running a Sandy Bridge Core series, he's on Nehalem. Different tolerances.

Yeah but 50 degrees is still nothing, at least it should be.

[Caboos001]

Caboos001: First, is your system clean? Second, do you have adequate airflow for the fans? Even on liquid, it helps. Third, are your coolant levels OK? I might suggest removing the heat sink on the CPU, cleaning off the old thermal paste, and applying new paste. Oh, and what are your GPU temperatures? Also, 'Lancer, he's not running a Sandy Bridge Core series, he's on Nehalem. Different tolerances.

My GPU runs at 40c on average, I have yet to take a reading while gaming. My machine is very clean at the moment, nothing serious that could cause heat problems. My air flow seems alright. the systems seems to be ventilating ok; I am however considering picking up a PCI slot case cooler such as this,Link, to improve it some. Lastly, I honestly have no idea what my coolant levels are at, I'll have to check.

Edit: Ok so I took a look and my coolant levels are fine. I did manage to take off my heat sink, however, this is my first time doing so, and I have no idea weather or not I need to apply new thermal paste. I imagine doing it regardless can't hurt. I did snap a couple of pictures and from the looks of it I may need to do just that.



I'll be running some stress tests over night to see if the issue may be something besides heat problem. Though the fact that cooling the machine with an epic box fan seems to keep it from crashing keeps me leaning towards a heat problem.

[Warsaw]

If you take off the heat sink, you MUST clean off the old paste and put new paste on. I recommend using a coffee filter with rubbing alcohol to clean of the paste, as it will not leave residue.

[Cortexian]

I really hope that once you took that off you didn't just slap it back on to use the PC. You need to re-apply paste every time you remove your waterblock/HSF like Warsaw said.

[Caboos001]

I really hope that once you took that off you didn't just slap it back on to use the PC.

Nope, it's all stripped down and waiting for its new graphics card right now. Just ordered a new fan and some more thermal paste as well, so once it all arrives I should be in business.

[Zeph]

So I'm having a bit of a heat issue with my current machine. The issue is most prevalent when I'm playing more demanding games, such as, Crysis, BC2, and BF3. the problem seems to be with my CPU temperature. On average it's temperature reads at around 40c. When gaming for a lengthier amount of time the temperature shoots up to about 49c. It's at about this point that without warning my entire machine will completely shut off; One second everything is all hunky dory, and then, all power shuts off. The only thing I can do to stop it at the moment is shove a big box fan next to my tower; that usually keeps it at around 45c.

does anyone have any recommendations on a new cooling system that may solve this problem? my current system specs are as follows:

Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E
CPU: Intel Core i7 950 (4x 3.06GHz/8MB L3 cache)
CPU cooling: Liquid cooling system, with 120mm 2800 rpm fan
Case cooling: Two standard 120 mm fans at 1600 rpm
GPU: GTX 460 1GB soon to be GTX 570
Memory: 6 GB DDR3-1600
Power supply: 700 Watt (no cooling)

Go into your BIOS and find what you've got the heat shutdown threshold at.

[Zeph]

ZEPH WHERE ARE THE PICTURES!!

http://www.modacity.net/forums/showt...l=1#post597948

[Caboos001]

Mkay, so a little update here. My graphics card came in just yesterday, along with a tube of Arctic Silver 5, and another case exhaust fan. I'm having some mixed results here. The overall temperature of my CPU has dropped to 101F while idle and the temperature usually maxes out at about 138F while gaming; an overall improvement from what it ran at last. Then, my new GPU (GTX 570) idles at 113F and maxes at around 183F.

Now my system has shut down on me on at least 2 different occasion while playing BC2, with the same max temperature readings you see above. however, now instead of just completely shutting off, the system just restarts itself. I have tried looking at my BIOS for my heat threshold but it does not seem as though I have anything indicating what it is, nor do I have an option to change it. It seems odd to me that my system now crashes at a lower heat level than it did before. Could this problem be related to my power supply perhaps? over the past hour I've been putting my system under some more stress while gaming, I have yet to crash as of yet, so here's hoping the issue has somehow resolved itself.

EDIT: Well damn, guess what, it was a problem with my PSU after all. I was just casually gaming early when out of nowhere my computer shut down. I figured it was just another random shutdown and attempted to boot it back up. Well with a push of the power button all that turned on were the LED case light for a split second followed up with a faint, "PST" sound from the PSU. So how many other components do you guys think the PSU took with it?

[=sw=warlord]

Do you hear or feel any other fans moving at all?
The GPU should still have a slight movement of the fan if only for a second, depending on your card there may be a red LED saying if the card is damaged or not.
It can go either way, either the PSU only took it self out or wiped the entire system with it, it's happened to me before now.

[Caboos001]

Yeah, no fan movement whatsoever. It just does the same thing as before. Now there is one little red light just under my PCI slot that turns on and stays on when the power switch is in the on position, but the computer is not booted up. Looks just like this ( not my computer though)


Also, a couple of USB peripherals like my wireless adapter show a power light indicating they do have some kind of power. as for my GPU, I have nothing more than the fan to indicate if it has any power.