Thermal Destruction...

[snafupen]

ok...so me and my friend built a pc with an intel board (im not sure which model because he bought most of it) with a new LGA 775 3.0ghz processor. we have the stock fan and HS and its all in an antec tower case. SATA hdd radeon x600xt graphics, antec smartpower 400W psu, 2 dvdrw drives, 2x512 corsair DDR dual channel. im not sure if i missed anything, but we start it up and it gives us the "im too hot so im gonna shut down" beep. then when we start it up again it shows a message saying that the system was shut down due to critical thermal levels or some BS like that. basically it thinks its overheating. there is thermal compound on the HSF and it is hardly warm to the touch when it shuts down. because of this message i am pretty sure the problem is in the board, but i have never encountered this so i really have no clue. i reset the bios once and we had more time than usual before the motherboard shut the pc down, and im not sure what it all means but it was interesting how we had more time after i reset the bios. we have never gotten it to start up past about 10 seconds. if anyone knows why this might be happening and how i could resolve this issue please let me know. if you need more info also let me know. we are going to unhook everything tomorrow and rebuild it only using the critical components at first, but i thought i would post up here and see if anyone else has had the same problem.


thanks.

 

[Nubius]

Ouch, it does indeed sound like a motherboard problem. I believe we had one member who this happened to and it was due to the BIOS having incorrect readings as far as the temperature gauge goes. I believe he fixed it with a flash, but if his computer didn't boot up for more than 10 seconds like yours then he would have had to do a BIOS Hotflash and had to have had the exact same motherboard =/ and I'm pretty sure that's out of the question....

Hmmm that one is rather tricky and my first guess like yours immediately points to the motherboard. Unless you can hotflash it then I really don't know what to tell you and the plans you and your friend have as far as rebuilding it sounds like the best approach.

 

[snafupen]

describe this "hotflash". i am unfamiliar with the term. we got it from newegg so i think if all else fails we can probably get a new one.

 

[Nubius]

Here ya go man:

http://www.techist.com/computer_articles/bios-flashing-recovery.php

I wrote an article for this site regarding BIOS Flashing, and Recovery of a bad BIOS Flash which covers Hot flashing

You remove your bad BIOS Chip, put in the good one from the exact other motherboard or if you ordered a spare BIOS Chip, turn your computer on and get to the flash utility within DOS via floppy disk, with your Computer STILL ON and this is why it's called 'hot' flashing, because your system is still 'hot', so with your computer on, you remove the good chip, put in the bad one, and proceed to flash it to correct the bad flash.