madmatt10583

I am building another pc with some old parts that i have lying about. I have a 3ghz northwood p4 cpu. When i boot it up it gets as far as the windows loading and thenwill restart. Sometimes i'll get a blue screen. I clocked it back to 2ghz and now it's running perfect. This happened when i tried it on other mobos aswell. Other cpus run fine so it's not the rest of the system. My first thought was maybe i need better cooling but the one i'm using says p4's upto 3.2ghz. I've tried other stock coolers and the same thing happens.
Hope someone could help me with this problem.
Cheers.

madmatt10583

Perhaps this might do the job if it is the cooling? I want to avoid spending money if i can though. http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx...avigationKey=0

linderman

which power supply, make and model are you using

madmatt10583

I've tried a few power supplies. I'm using an ezcool 550w psu. It has on board graphics and that so i would have thought that would have been enough. i tested it with my thermaltake toughpower 750 aswell.

linderman

check your temps in the bios when running the northwood at 3.0ghz


your issue is either heat or defective CPU ?

madmatt10583

51 @ 2ghz and 57@ 3ghz

1 g0t 0wn3d

it seems as it would be getting to hot under load if that is idle

madmatt10583

but surely the stock cooler should suffice? What do you think, new cpu or better cooling?

linderman

thats way to hot for the Northy


it should be 35C to 40C wile idle and 50C to 55C max workload


dont think its your cooler thats making the high temps


thermal grease is not fresh or too much grease or not enough ????????????

a stock cooler is plenty capable of keeping a northwood near its correct temps


did you apply fresh thermal grease when you installed the cpu

did you remove the old grease or thermal pad

each time you lift the heat sink away from the cpu / even if just to look / you must remove the grease and re-apply ??????


please clarify where we are with this issue ?

madmatt10583

I cleaned the old off with alcohol. I have a zalman cooler for my other pc and had some thermal paste left over. On the zalman instructions it says to apply a layer to the cpu and the heatsink. That's what i did in this case. Painted a thin layer on each.
Is this thermal greese useless? Shall i get some different stuff?

1 g0t 0wn3d

only put the paste on one (*the cpu) and then put the clean heatsink on.

Tumbleweed36

Best guess at this point, too much thermal paste as outlined by 1 g0t 0wn3d, but that may not be the whole problem. Talk about your case cooling, how many fans, where located, and which direction are they blowing. Talk about your heatsink fan, blowing down or pulling hot air up???

linderman

Tumbleweed has some excellent inquires there



does sound like too much paste ???????




the purpose of the paste is to fill microscopic pits in the metal lid of the cpu heat spreader >>>>>>> those pits dont need much of a bridge

but if too much paste is applied, it becomes an insualtor and the heat is not tranfered to the heat sink effectively

madmatt10583

Ok. I re applied the thermal paste as you said. I have 2 case fans, 1 at the front and 1 at the back so i have air blowing across the mobo. The problem still persists. Any other ideas?

linderman

what are the temps and voltage readings in the bios as the system is running ????

linderman

is the stock cooler tightly secured to the cpu ????? many times I have serviced systems where the "plastic hook" on the corner of the heatsink hold-ons was broke off ???? verify

madmatt10583

Everything is tightly secured. the cpu that i had in here was a celeron d 2.8 and that was fine. I don't understand why the system runs fine when i clock back to 2 ghz and will not run at its stock speed.

Attached Images

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linderman

could well be your northwood is crippled


can you try it in another computer system ?????

madmatt10583

I've tried it on 3 different motherboards and they all do the same thing. On the asrock board it actually boots in to windows but strange things happen. It won't install programs and wont finish downloads etc. then i'll get a blue screen eventually. This is the first time i've had the cpu running fine. That's because i've clocked it back. This is a strange problem. I would have thought if it runs fine like it is, then why not at its stock speed. I thought if a cpu was dead, it doesn't work at all?

linderman

defective cpu