This is something that seems to have defeated the best minds in the UK so
I thought I'd try here...;-)

I have a home assembled PC - about 18 months old - using an Asus A8N5X MB
and an Athlon 64 3000+ CPU. It's mainly used for semi-pro AV work.

After a year or so of faultless service, it started shutting down at
random. Would usually boot up again ok and carry on. After a few occasions
I took to having PCProbe loaded and noticed the CPU temp would shoot up
just before it shut down. So naturally removed the heatsink/fan, cleaned
and replaced with new thermal transfer compound.

All was well for a month or so, then the fault started happening earlier
and earlier - sometimes before XP had loaded. The bios power management
page again showed the CPU overheating - going from ambient to overheat in
around a minute. But the heatsink was cool to the touch. ;-)

I was intending to use the shotgun approach and simply replace the MB -
and possibly CPU - but it seems this design of MB is now obsolete so I'd
have to change lots of other things too.

I've not been able to find any description of how the CPU temp sensing
works let alone any clues on fixing what must be an intermittent fault -
as I've stripped and re-assembled the entire computer, cleaned all
connectors etc, and it's fine again once more. But for how long?...

Any informed guesses?

--


Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.