In article ,
AJH wrote:
On Fri, 09 May 2008 09:44:19 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

Started the machine (for the first time today) in setup and found the
page which gives CPU temperature, etc.

In the BIOS?

Think so. I'm not really a PC person. ;-)

Said should be 72C.

I think you must mean that this is the CPU shut down temperature,
which explains what was happening.

No - it said something like target temp. Can't look at it now as it's in
bits.

Over the short period I watched it it climbed from 50C to 80C then shut
down. The fan was running normally.

It points to a poor joint between the heat sink and CPU, your wiggling
it may have made it worse. After you clean both surfaces (propyl
alcohol maybe) use some heat sink paste to get a good connection.

It seems to have been making pretty good contact - although it's possible
I was over generous with the paste. I've removed it all including CPU and
cleaned it all up. Will re-assemble after this coffee. ;-)

Is there anything that could cause the CPU to overheat this quickly -
some form of abnormal load?

I forgot what CPU you have but IIRC a p4 2GHz dissipates 67W, so it
cooks in seconds.

Right. It's an Athlon 64 3000+

One other thing I found - not being well up on cable select, or even
reading the instructions on the HD - I'd set it to master but had plugged
in into the slave connector of the cable. So the BIOS reported no master
but slave only. I'd also set the two CD writers to master and slave on the
other IDE bus.

--
*Save a tree, eat a beaver*

Dave Plowman London SW
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