Desperate for PC help

[nullPointer]

I’m keeping my fingers crossed Han, I know this has been a huge pain in the butt for you. Bonne Chance!

[Draco1962]

Good luck!

[fRequEnCy]

Hope all turns out well!

[hansolo77]

Just a quick update;

Got home from work today and my mobo was waiting for me. Going to try to install it today/tonight/tomorrow. Hope it fixes my problem. I'm pessimistic though, so start thinking of another solution if I can't get it to work. Should work though...

[hansolo77]

Tested mobo out of case with cpu, ram, cheapass vga card and keyboard.. all powered up and bios was accessible. Put everything back into the case, then had a snag with boot up. Windows was hanging on the load screen. Tried going in safe mode, and it installed a whole buncha new drivers (expected). Loaded the driver disk that came with the mobo just to make sure I had everything covered. Now Media Center is all screwed up. Because this new mobo uses a different controller for the expansion cards, it re-installed new drivers for all the tuners. So my Media Center Guide had listings for 16 tuners even though I only have 8 (a total of 3 cards, some dual inputs, some hd/sd hybrids, etc). When I tried to watch tv, the channel numbers were all screwed up, and a lot of them had snow. So I have to figure that out tomorrow. I don't wanna run this computer for too long since the clips on the heatsink aren't down real tight.. don't want to risk a burnout.

Thanks again guys; especially you Adultery for nailing it.

[hansolo77]

Ok, so I mentioned I broke the pushpins for my heatsink on my processor. Today I got my replacement in the mail that I ordered from ebay. It was $10, new in box. Surprisingly, all the guy did was take the processor out of the box on the shelf, tape it up, slap the mailing label on it, and shipped it like that. It arrived fine, not damaged or anything. However, the box shows it was for a 45nm processor. The width of the heatsink is like half as thick as the one that I was using is. The ebay listing doesn't mention this at all, just that it's LGA775 compatible. The fan and everything is ok though. I'm concerned though about the heat transfer. Because it's half as thick, does that mean it's gonna get hotter quicker? Is this a bad thing? It has a fan on it too, and the BIOS is setup to control the fan speed as needed. Would the processor be ok with this heatsink?

[nullPointer]

Little bit more info might be helpful:

What model of Core2 Duo do you have, and what model of cooler do you have (or what processor was it originally paired with)?

Doesn't sound like you're overclocking, but . . . are you?

My gut feeling is that the cooler will be fine. If you're not overclocking you've got a pretty decent amount of headroom before you start hitting critical temps. When in doubt fire up a good temperature monitoring utility (or the BIOS, which is OK for initial checking, but not really great for load testing obviously). RealTemp is my favorite tool for this purpose.

Once you're feeling comfortable with day-to-day usage, you can load up IntelBurnTest (or stress test of your choice - traditionally Prime95 is the most popular) and see if your cooler is ready for the worst case scenario (this should always be used in conjunction with a temperature monitoring utility!).

[Draco1962]

The main things to be considered (in addition to null's points) when passive cooling is surface area of the heat sink and air flow through the case. The heatsink is probably sufficient for your needs, but it never hurts to install an additional fan to help push/pull air through your case. When I built my server and upgraded my desktop/htpc, I added an additional fan to each case and added additional cable ties to minimize any obstacles that might restrict the air flow.

[hansolo77]

Yeah air flow isn't a problem. I have a huge vent (no fan) on the top of the case, one (no fan) on the left side with the tuner cards, one (no fan) on right side by the power supply, and one (no fan) between the powersupply and the front of the case. In addition, I have a fan directly underneath the hard drives to pull in cool air through them on the front left. Then I have 2 70mm fans on the back directly over the motherboard (My case is a desktop style/horizontal HTPC case). There is ample room around the processor, and I have all the cables and such scrunched up either at the front of the case, or down underneath the motherboard so there's nothing near the processor or ram at all.

The processor I'm using is an Intel Core2Duo Dual Core E6600 @ 2.40gHz. The heatsink/fan combo the guy sent me came in a box for an Intel Core2Duo Dual Core E8400 @ 3gHz - 45 nanometers. I would think with the newer the processor, the more heat it would generate, but I think that was all the hype about the new 45nm chips that they don't cause as much heat. So thats what I got. Also, I'm not overclocking, never quite saw the need to do so.

I went into the BIOS upon reinstall of the new heatsink and checked the temps. At starting load, it was around 40c. I haven't checked it under full load yet. But, I configured the BIOS to send out an audible alarm if the cpu temp goes above 60c (thats the default lowest temp I can set, I can go as high as 100c in 10-degree increments). So far, it hasn't gone off, so I think I'm ok.

Edited August 17, 2012 by Draco1962
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