I've had this same problem, and have a couple recommendations:

1. make sure the inside of that box is clean - any dust you may have around
that cpu(which seems to be your biggest worry) clogs running whirly-parts
and helps heat things up.

2. If worse comes to worse, take the case off the box and point a little fan
towards everything-my current setup until I get my new machine(on Tuesday)
:)

3. The armoir certainly doesn't help.

Hope this helps...

Lucas

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kurt Granroth [mailto:kurt@granroth.org]
> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 6:20 PM
> To: PLUG Discuss
> Subject: Overheating system
> 
> 
> Does anybody here have any experience with overheated systems?  I am
> at a loss what might be wrong with mine :-(
> 
> Now I know what is generating the heat in the first place.  I have a
> 900 Mhz Athlon (SocketA), two 7200 RPM ATA100 hard drives, a DVD drive
> and a CD-RW drive, two ethernet cards, my video card (cheap $20 one,
> though), a TV card, and a sound card.  I also keep it in an armoir to
> keep it out of sight.  Alas, that probably cuts down the airflow a
> bit.
> 
> The problem I have is that my system locks up on a fairly regular
> basis whenever I do compiles or anything else CPU intensive.  I have
> narrowed the problem down to the heat.
> 
> Now it *is* hard getting an accurate temperature reading of the CPU
> since my chipset (as99127f) isn't very well supported by lm_sensors.
> But with various reboots checking the BIOS readings, I think I have a
> good idea of the temperatures ranges.
> 
> Basically, my motherboard hovers between 35C and 42C.  My CPU goes
> from 51C to 65C!  Since everything I've read says that anything over
> 45C is a bad thing, I'm quite worried.
> 
> So I bought an Enermax 300W power supply since they are so well rated
> on overclocker sites.  It has an extra fan on it which supposedly
> cools down a case quite a bit.  I just got a Thermaltake Aircooler
> (Socket 462).  I also have a standard (no-name) intake case fan on the
> bottom front of the case.  I used to have a fan that attached to the
> case and blew directly on the CPU... but I couldn't tell any
> difference in temperature and it was loud.
> 
> I'm going to buy one of those "Twin Turbo" case fans that supposedly
> push 80cfm and see what happens.
> 
> But I'm still a bit worried.  Why does the CPU heat up so much and so
> fast?  With only the BIOS setup screen running, it will go from about
> 40C to 55C in less than a minute.  This seems very odd to me.  Could
> it be that the CPU is "broken" and pushes out a lot more heat than it
> should?  How could I tell?
> 
> Anybody have an experience here?
> -- 
> Kurt Granroth            | http://www.granroth.org
> KDE Developer/Evangelist | SuSE Labs Open Source Developer
> granroth@kde.org         | granroth@suse.com
>             KDE -- Conquer Your Desktop
> 
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