Installed a CPU fan, now computer is crashing.

[PJYelton]

Lately my computer has been acting up, although I'm not sure of the specific cause because I kind of did many modifications all at once, including installing a new video card, sound card, memory, as well as stupidly running registry editors. The computer crashed every once in awhile, and some programs ran kind of funny sporadically, but luckily I got most of it fixed. However the main problem was that the computer FELT a little hot when you touched the top of the casing near the back fan, and CD's often time felt a little too warm when taken out of the CDROM. Problem was, since I'm a complete computer newbie and this is my first real computer to muck with, I didn't know if I was being paranoid and wasn't sure if it was something to be worried about.

After I had a couple more problems with some programs not working properly, I decided to go out and get a fan hoping that it would help. I bought a CompUSA Mirrored Copper Heatsink, SKU#299253, took out the old fan, installed the new one. Well, the computer feels MUCH cooler, but all of a sudden now the computer freezes constantly, usually when the CPU percentage gets a little high like when playing a game or running two apps at once. Complete freeze, no keyboard or mouse functions, no BSOD either. The problem is I don't know if its because of the fan I just installed or if its a long term problem possibly from overheating that just now sprung up. Like I said, I'm a newbie to all of this, don't even know where to begin and really want to avoid formatting everything and starting over. I've run defrag, checkdisk, diskcleanup, AdAware, Norton, HiJack This, and SpySweeper, none of them fixed the problem.

I'm running an Athlon XP 1800+ and over the last couple of months have installed the following:
512 RAM
Radeon 9600XT
SoundBlaster 220

Let me know if you anyone needs any more information, like say a dxdiag report. Thanks for any help in advance, I really appreciate it!

 

[Fragino]

I know this sounds stupid but did you take off the plastic tape off the bottom and put thermal paste on the heatsink before you put it on the cpu? Is the fan running? The reason your system probably feels cooler is because your heatsink may not be dissapating the heat from the cpu. The case probably felt hot before because the cpu heatsink/fan was spreading the heat it was taking off the cpu. If you did do the above make sure the shim (if you're using one) is installed properly and try reseating the heatsink on the cpu.

 

[PJYelton]

Okay, its quite likely I did an unintentional yet very bad blunder here, but to my defense nowhere on the heatsink/fan package did it mention anything else had to be done!

Heres a pic of what I installed: .http://www.thehistoryofcomputers.com/items/3462891034.html

There was no tape to peel off at all, it was all copper underneath. Was I supposed to put thermal paste?? The box said just click it on which is what I did. I did reseat the heatsink to no avail, and it is sitting correctly with the groove hitting the groove of the cpu perfectly.

So is my case supposed to feel hot and now that it feels cool I should be worried? I'm a little confused by what you said.

Thanks for the help by the way!

 

[kboy]

Yeah Dude ya gotta use Thermal paste ALWAYS!!! Forces out any air pockets on the heatsink, not alot though. Try this link out & get ya some Artic Silver.


http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions.htm

 

[Fragino]

Just like kboy said, "ALWAYS" got to use thermal paste. If you didn't put any other fans or make any other changes beside replacing your cpu heatsink/fan then the case being cooler worries me. That probably means that the heat that was being drawn off the cpu by the old heat sink and dissapated by the fan is not being done so by the new heatsink/fan that you have. It's sounds like an overheating problem. Hopefully the cpu hasn't been burned out from the overheating, although I don't know of anyone personally that has done that. Heard of it though.

 

[CrossMX]

Hey, everyone makes mistakes we think are stupid. Granted I never made this one I have shorted things out on a motherboard so I know while some may not admit it, when starting out we have messed things up. I destroied my sisters Mac for college because I decided to plug in an old mac into the scsi. (And it should have just ignored it or shown me a HD but I am not sure anymore it was a IIe and I am sure that it was due to me knowing next to nothing about the older mac systems.

Anyway I have never done this but they are right thermal paste is always a good thing but use it Lightly and I can not say that enough. Using to much will cause the system to over heat as well think of it as a thin coat because you do not want to over do it. (You will fry the CPU becuase you are going to increase the heat instead of decrease it). Now the one question I have is didn't you have to wipe some paste off the old CPU fan and Processor? Just curious but anyway you should have a tube or plastic ziplock looking thing with some paste in it.

Welcome to the world of computers but heres some advice for you, get an external HD. It will save you from ever having to worry about losing files. Also reg edit programs are not all bad when you know what your doing. Just be sure you use them correctly. They can mess up at times I have had it happen only once. But they can speed up your system as well getting rid of unwanted things in your reg. esp if your installing an removing things. I would say use Systweaks Reg Cleaner it is your safest bet it also claims to optimze it as well. Either way it does help keep some unwanted keys from staying where they should not be.

 

[becroydon]

not only that if the back of your pc is hot near the fan, this could be your PSU, i had the same problem, i had a 300w and kept adding to the pc, i got really hot fast because i overloaded it