Troubleshooting

[Steve]

I have been having problems for the last few months, where when playing any game other than WoW, my PC would black screen, and then 5-10 seconds later the fans and psu shut off. I figured my shit 4850(s) was/were failing.

After not having opened my HAF-932 since building the computer back in spring 2010, I finally opened it up. To my horror it wasn't my video cards that were caked with dust, it was my heat sink. Between the fan that pushes air onto it and the metal was a solid 4" by 4" by 2 cm wall of dust to prevent air from cooling my proc(early model i7, don't remember which 1, i think 47 has the same). I am concerned that this long term heat exposure has damaged the processor.

What I am wondering is, is there anyway for me to test my processor via program or diagnostic tool, other than swapping in another proc (which I don't have)

Edit: ... is it just me or is the edit post feature broken now on the forums? I click edit, and the box pops up empty without any text, and if I type something in it it doesn't get updated to the post ? (by bj)

 

[everyth1ng]

You could download CPU-Z and use it to determine if your processor is running at the speed it's supposed to. It shows you in real time exactly what your base clock speed is running at. You could then deduce from this information whether or not your CPU is alright. Keep in mind, though, that you will most likely have EIST on, so your base clock speed might be fluctuating.

I actually just opened my case about a week ago, too, and found a ton of dust caked in the areas you mentioned. I used a vacuum cleaner to clear everything out, and my temperatures dropped sharply after I did this.

EDIT: I don't know why I didn't state this before, but you probably wouldn't be able to post if your CPU was damaged. The motherboard is usually the first to go, though.

 

[$alvador]

Sounds like you hit the safety shutoff, which would mean CPU temps hit the mid-90s. Hitting that point is not really as dire as sustaining temps near that point, and heat in itself is not harmful unless it's caused by overvolting which can fuck with the fragile circuitry in newer chips. Having said that, that's what I was told when 45nm first came out and I overvolted the piss out of my chip without any performance dips. The margins are thicker than Intel will admit to on the spec sheets because of binning. There's a lot of variance in chip quality so everyone errs on the side of caution in respect to the lower binned chips but even those will take a pretty good beating every once in a while.

And this brings me to why I prefer leaving the side panel off my case. When that shit gets grimey, I sees it and I cleans it ASAP. Just the other day I had a can of duster stick to my palm because I was spraying for so long the condensation on it froze lol

 

[OG buckshot jr]

Go buy some good thermal paste (Arctic Silver, for example - but be careful with this one, it conducts electricity, so don't be sloppy or you're shit's fried), and take off your heatsink and re-paste a nice layer on it. I guarentee after that kind of heat the paste's almost non-existent. This will drop your temps a lot.

Throw us an update, does it still do it?