Hardware Question - A7N8X oddity

Michael A. Peters mpeters at mac.com
Sat Jun 11 18:51:47 UTC 2005


On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 14:33 -0400, kas wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-06-11 at 02:05 -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> > On Fri, 2005-06-10 at 23:06 -0500, Dave A. Marquis wrote:
> > > Sounds like a dieing cmos battery to me.....
> > 
> > It's a CR2032 which seems fairly cheap - I'll try that first.
> > I hope that's it.
> > 
> BIOS has determined that your system won't run properly at the full
> rated front side bus of the processor and has throttled it down to 100
> mhz rather than the desired 166 mhz.  Possible reasons for this
> happening:
> 
> 1. CPU is running hot, probably because the heat sink/fan is covered in
> cruft.  Clean throughly.  Removal for cleaning is *not* recommended
> unless you are experienced as you can kill an Athlon in less that 10
> secs if the HSF isn't reinstalled properly.  Look to the net for
> instructions if you feel removal necessary.

Cleaned (removed fan and cleaned out dust etc. in heat sink and on fan)

> 1a. CPU is running hot because the heat transfer compound or phase
> change gook between the CPU and HSF has gotten old and is acting more
> like an insulator.  Athlons don't have a heat spreader so a good thermal
> interface from the chip to the HSF is mandatory.  I use Arctic Silver (a
> small tube is practically a lifetime supply) but there are even better
> things these days. Don't remove the HSF if you don't have fresh compound
> on hand. 

AC3 is what I used when I originally built it - I think 2.5 years ago
(maybe 3.5 years ago - winter before RH9)

Anyway - thanks for the tips!




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