I seem to get very high temp readings from my Athlon XP 2000+ 1.6Gb, board Epox EP-8RGA, Std AMD supplied HS+F. From what i have heard, the motherboard recieves temp info from the chip itself, thru 1 of the pins in the socket, not thru a sensor pressing against the chip, i don't know if that's actually true or not, but i've not seen any sensor in the middle of the socket. Using USDM (hardware monitor on supplied EPOX cd) at idle i show a cpu temp of 56C/132F and mainboard temp of 38C/100F. The board and chip are new additions to this machine, about 3 weeks old, and my old system (ASUS A7V/Duron 850) had temps about the same temps. taking a quick look at the logging from USDM, the highest temp hit is 73C.
Another problem i have also regards the mainboard, this has happend twice now, within 24 hours...
First time:
i left the computer running overnight with disk defrag yawning away, woke up expecting to see it had got past 2% (that's another complaint of mine, how slow can disk defrag run!?!?) but the screens had all gone blank, keyboard lights were on, so i knew the thing was still alive. I thought that windows (ME) had gone into standby (i have the power settings set to never, but once in a while it seems to ignore these, and it always wakes up again) but i couldn't get the computer to respond, even the 3 finger salute didn't do anything. No choice but to reset, pressing the reset button did nothing, had to hold the power button down til it went to soft-off. powered on again and the computer fired up fine, thought "hmmm... strange, but oh well..."
Second time:
After running winamp for about 30 minutes, the computer did the same thing, screens blank etc. after going to soft-off, i powered back up, but...
when pressing the power button, the lights flash on once on the case, fans spin, then the fans stop, and the computer turns back off, altho the power light remains on. If you listen closely, you can bearly hear beeping, long beep, short beep, long beep, short beep..... and the only way to get the system to power again is to press and hold the power button and switch off the supply on the back of the case, after a couple of seconds the beeping will stop, and i can switch it back on.
The computer has done that a couple of times, but until now it was only once in a while while rebooting, the only way i can get the computer to boot properly is to reset the bios using the jumper inside, then boot and reconfigure the bios again. There is a nice little led module on the board for diagnostics, and watching this when booting (with the above error happening) flashes the usual "FF" (boot attempt) then flashes "CF" (test CMOS R/W function) then shuts down, the manual has 2 different sections for the codes, the descriptions above are from the full list at the back, however the FAQ at the front says "FF" or "CF" are errors meaning "Incorrect insertion of the bios chip/Updated the incorrect BIOS version/Mainboard problem/Incorrect installation of add-on card) the thing is, any time i power on the computer, those same codes flash up, even when the computer boots normally, so i think the FAQ data is incorrect I've looked at the logging for the CPU temp for times when this problem happened, highest temp was showing 62C, and the system runs stable above that temp, so i don't think that's a problem.
My complete system specs are:
EPOX EP-8RGA Mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 1.6Gb
512Mb (2x256Mb) PC2600 DDRAM (running 2x133Mhx)
On-board Graphics Disabled
Main Graphics - Nvidia G-Force 4MX 440SE (PCI, actually runs better than my AGP card)
2nd Graphics - Nvidia G-force 2MX (AGP)
3rd Graphics (i do a lot of DTP, so lots of screen area is good) - Hercules Kyro 3D Prophet 4000XT (PCI)
On-board sound
All running from 300W P/S and APC Back-UPS Pro 650 UPS (so power spikes are not a problem, i assume anyways)
Any idea's on what the problems are will be greatly appreciated, just found out that my g/f is expecting, so i can't afford to throw money away buying a new system when this 1 dies, so i gotta take care of this for a while.
Thx in advance
C_130_Herc
