f13.net

Ok guys.

I'm getting some big fucking issues with my computer. When the house hits 78 degrees F (exactly) or above - my shit starts getting delayed write errors. This happens nearly every day in AZ.

I have an E6600 and an 8600GTS in this box and a beefy power supply. Someone recommend me some shit within the next couple hours so I can go to Frys and Fix this before all my Mozilla and Thunderbird shit gets erased again.

Also, it won't boot up for a good 30 minutes after shutting it off from that issue and sometimes it says "CPU is Unworkable or Has Been Changed."

Help a brother Out.

Do you have a fan on your hard drives? If not can you? If not consider a case that you can. Delayed write errors are screaming hot hard drives to me. Can you jury rig a fan on them to try?

Hot hard drives would make sense. I'll buy a fan at Target and strap it to the case. See if that helps.

Another thing to think about is that maybe your CPU fan isnt set completely correctly. I had a friend who had a problem where when the house temp would hit a specific temp, his system would just shut off, we reset his CPU fan and it went away.

Some thing else to check would be to just open the side of your case and see if you still get the error. Thats a way to tell if its the airflow.

Case is open. It's a desktop. Also, CPU fan spinning nicely. Also, fans turned up to high.

With some cases opening it up actually does more harm than good, they count on the air being forced a certain way and when the side is open it can't drive as much air over the components.

Don't stack the drives next to each other in the cage, there should be at least a drive height gap between the drives. If there's already a drive height gap move them further apart if possible. I can reliably get a drive to fail "prematurely" by sticking it between 2 other drives without any significant gaps in between. Get a SMART monitoring tool or other temp monitoring utility and check the temps of your drives. Install a case fan in front of the drives. Check the temps of the drives with the panel open and closed. Try it with the fan pulling air from outside the case and expelling air from inside (normally you would have it pulling from outside but it sounds like your ambient air temp is really high). Also check the temps of your CPU, GPU and chipset with the panel open and closed.

I only have one drive in the cage. There is no fan on it. I will afro-engineer one, going to target soon. I don't really have a way of installing an actual case fan :(.

Get a better case n00b.

Not starting makes me think CPU, I'd reseat the fan.

Also could be your chipset overheating. Depending if it's an intel or nvidia board check the heat of the northbridge or mcp chip. Or stand the case on its side with a big ass box fan blowing in.

(http://blogs.pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/dumb-terminal/fan_casemod.jpg)

Problem solved.

No, seriously.  Install a SMART util and check your drive temp before going off and buying gear.  Also, you can check your CPU temp in the bios.  Not sure if there's a reliable way to do it from the OS.

Graphics card temp is 62C. My roommates is about $42. Pretty sure my case is just too hot. Ugh.

I'd just go with your Target fan solution at this point. Your entire system is running too hot so just get a big fan and blow it into your case. I used to recommend that back with CoH was first released because it would easily overheat the stock NVIDIA 4x00 GPUs (the reference board fan sucked) and it worked great.

Otherwise I would need pics of your internals and the components you are using to figure out how to get it cooled down sans-external fan.

Will post pics tonight. Will hit up target later.

I second the notion that you should first get a regular fan to blow into the case. However, that said, 78 degrees isn't -that- hot ambient temp, so it may be something wrong with the termal paste on the CPU. Use CoreTemp for CPU temp monitoriing while in the OS:

http://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

Here's my current solution, which seems to do well. (22 degrees at idle, 33 at load)

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2019/2437018917_78ca9165ac.jpg)

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2278/2437019109_f9636a267f.jpg)

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3028/2437840224_5669efb9e6.jpg)

Sorry for crappy image quality; done on the el Iphono in a hurry. Anyway, its a Antec Lanboy, but many cases come with a similar cooling mechanism.

Along with the already good advice make sure you clean the crud out of your fans.  It can make a big difference.

First thing I did, got another delayed write error afterwards.

Still need to know your other temps as well (CPU, chipset, hard drive).

(http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/7638/temperaturesjy5.png)

Is that under load, or at idle? 43C on an idle Core 2 Duo seems a bit high.

Could just turn your air conditioner on, I mean, 78 is pretty warm.

78 is with the AC on. I live in Phoenix.

I've never gotten read errors, but I've had my system auto-shutdown on me before due to heat.

Make sure everything is seated. Make sure the case isn't bundled up, and has proper ventilation. I cannot keep my PC in a desk cubby, as the AMD chip will burn up.

Your CPU is way too hot.

What heat sink/CPU cooler are you using? You need to reseat it like Numtini said. You'll need to disconnect the power and enough crap to get at the cooler (you may have to take the entire motherboard out of the case). Then unscrew/detach the locking mechanism and *carefully* pry it off without twisting or sliding it too much (some twisting will likely be required to "break" the hardened paste). You want to inspect the CPU and the bottom of the heat sink to see how the paste was distributed onto both sides to see if the heat sink was misaligned, not enough paste/too much paste was applied or in the worst case the heat sink or heat spreader on the CPU is not totally flat.

Yeah, now that I think of it, that's far too hot for a C2D.

That's actually a great under-load temp for my old AMD though.  :oh_i_see:

I figured Core 1 and Core 0 were the CPU and the other Core was the GPU.

Hmm...maybe. That looks a little odd. What does your NVIDIA control panel say for temps?

Edit: run a pair of copies of CPUburn and check your CPU temps. Is your power supply fan working properly? How hot is the air being expelled from the back of the power supply?

Yea, Core 1 & 0 is the CPU. Under CPU Burn when things hit max load, they capped at 50c.

Core is the Graphics core.

It took less than a minute for both CPU cores to drop below 40C again. I think it may just be HD fans. Also, the CPU0 fan went above 1500RPMs at max load.

Okay so we're back to your GPU or maybe your PS. What's your video card?

It's the graphics card and hard drive. There's absolutely no circulation at the hard drive and the graphics card is too close to the sound card, not enough flow. Going to buy an external fan for both tomorrow and just sit them outside the case blowing in. C'est la vie. That's what I get for buying a home theater case that doesn't have adequate cooling.

Hard drive temp is fine. Not being able to restart your computer until it "cools down" for 30 minutes suggests a larger problem.

Ok. Booted up after 1 minute of cooling down. Absolutely identified the problem. Graphics card. It hit 73C and totally hard locked. Everything went to shit. Getting a fan and aiming it directly at the fucker.

If there's anyway to move the sound card you could install a slot cooler like such (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010110573+1372526581&Configurator=&Subcategory=573&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=).

Other options would be to take out the sound card and use an external USB sound device or rip off the cooler on your video card and install a 3rd party cooler.

There's an open slot between the soundcard and gfx card. I could probably wedge a slot cooler in there. Definitely going to just get a giant fan and aim it at it for now though.

I hate picking out cases because case manufacturers often have no discernable sense of style.

Here's one I at least find tolerable: http://www.amazon.com/Antec-P182-Advanced-Super-Tower/dp/B000P0CTSQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1209012735&sr=8-5

Lian Li still makes a pretty nice case for my tastes too: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112099

Which video card do you have? The single slot 8800s run damn hot with stock cooling, and seem to have unreliable fans. You could always got for an aftermarket cooler, or as has been suggested, a slot cooler.
I ended up replacing the stock hsf setup on my 8800gt with a thermalright cooler, went from 70c under load to 40c.

As for cases, I've gone through quite a few over the last couple years, the Antec p182 or 900 are fine, as are most of the coolermaster I've used. Currently using a monstrous cosmos 1000http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119138 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119138) which is huge, heavy, and runs cool with a ton of quiet fans.

For schild's needs, I suggest the LianLi above. They are very nicely made, with smoothed out interior edges and decent working room. The P182 is ginormous and cable management is a pita.

8600GTS.

Ok. Not getting many (any) delayed write errors anymore with my bigass fan.

Am however hanging in some games, Guild Wars and Far Cry notably. Completely hard locking at the login/menu screen.

What are the temps like now? I think your heat sink is probably not installed properly.

Illustrator and Photoshop doing their thing, Thunderbird and Firefox, Trillian, Steam and Speedfan.

36/35C.

No I meant what are your GPU temps like with the fan blowing on the card.

about 50-56C.

Still seems too high. You may have already fried the card.

Runs COD4 at 1920x1200 maxed out without a hitch.

I'm pretty sure you're incorrect.

My GPU (7800 GT) "idles" (only Windows desktop stuff, no 3D) at 53 C.

Ya, that's not outrageous. My 7950gtx here at work is idling at 60

My 8800 runs at 64 just displaying windows at 1900x1200 and I've never had a problem.

Except for the time someone put a glass of red wine on top of my Lian-Li during a party, then knocked over the glass, directly into the top fan hole. OK it was me.

And there wasn't a party either, rite?  :grin:

I posted this somewhere nerdy at the time:

Red, red wine
In my PC
Dropped glass, went through the top fan
Oh no, no, no, no

Red, red wine
Ran down the IDE
Pooled on the graphics card
Splattered around

Red, red wine
Swore at the guests
Yanked out the power cord
And played some Wii

Red, red wine
It's up to you
All I can do, I've done
Main screen turn on.

Red, red wine
First boot just fans
Second a post then a hang
Oh my poor PC

Red, red wine,
Third boot it's back again
Never so glad to see Windows
Who needs paint jobs?
It's red, red art

That's pretty good.

Why don't you just move some place with a temperature that can sustain human life and their computers?

Replaced my Fatality Mobo and E6600 with a Q9450 and a ASUS P5KC.

heh

it's uhhh faster.

Asus MOBOs (P5/LG775 series) REQUIRES FLOPPY DRIVES FOR BIOS UPGRADE? WHAT?

Hmmm, I'm not sure about Asus, but Gigabyte now has a bios flasher that can be used within the OS. That's a fairly new development, however. Traditionally Bios flashes where always done via bootable floppy.

Found out ASUS can flash from any USB drive. Already done. Purring like a kitten.

This machine is DISGUSTINGLY fast.

Alright, everything runs a million times better than before. I put it in the zalman case. Everything runs cool, perfect, no overheating.

It had to be the case + stupid hot graphics card + bad mobo or processor before. Because I can run CoD4 at 1920x1200 with EVERYTHING turned on including soft smoke edges and 4xAA which I couldn't before.

Got myself a Gigabyte X48-DQ6 with a Q9450 and 4GB of ECC RAM. This thing is sure fucking fast.

Ah, you went with the X48? Do you like it? I almost got one, I just couldn't be bothered to make the price jump.

I went with the P35 Combo motherboard so I can upgrade when prices drop. The Q9450 is probably the most joyful processor I've ever had the pleasure of getting to work though. It is a disgusting beast of silicon that will end the world if unleashed. Speaking of, when I booted up, ASUS Bios read:

UPGRADE THE BIOS TO UNLEASH THE FULL POWER OF THIS PROCESSOR.

I was like, well fuck yea I will.

Nice machine. I think the quad cores are still largely wasted in current gaming, but it's nice to have more power than currently needed.

Now you just need a faster/cooler video card.

His heating issues were about the case, and it seems he replaced it. His vid card is an 8600GT, which isn't exactly a slouchy vid card.

Grats on the new build, schild :)

Can someone link me to a MB+CPU utility?  Preferably one that shows RAM information as well...

edit: just competent reporting, no tweaking necessary.

edit2:  Grabbed http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

I wanted ECC RAM, so I had to go with a X38 or X48 mainboard (or the old ass 975X). I also looked for a better PCIe slot layout, because I have a PCIe NIC, PCIe soundcard and obviously the graphics card (board has from top down: 1x (NIC), 16x (Graphics), 1x, 1x, 16x (Sound)). I wanted as much air as possible between the soundcard and the rest. Gigabyte offered the best option in regards to that. Additionally, their DQ6 boards have all solid capacitors, high quality voltage regulators and crap like that, thought I might want those gimmicks. Between the X38 and X48 boards were just a few Euros, so it was an easy decision.

Hey, did us PC gamers ever welcome you back into the fold? :awesome_for_real:

wb

I'm in Photoshop and Illustrator about 30% of the time. Having just used it for one night, the quad core was fucking worth it.

I was also going to suggest you run rivatuner and up the speed on your video card fan.

Already had, was already at 100% on the previous machine :) So were the toher fans :(