Board overheat

[Cei]

Interesting one this...just built up a "new" system, specs are:

Sapphire AR9DV480adv Mainboard
Sapphire X800GTO 256Mb GPU
AMD Athlon 64 4600+ Dual Core (skt939)
Scythe Infinity Heatsink
1Gb Geil RAM (Matched 512 pair)
Enermax Noisetaker 600W PSU
Lian Li PC-7 Case
Creative Audigy2 Platinum Soundcard
Dual DVD-RW drives (Rounded Asaka cabling)
IDE 160Gb HDD
Windows XP Home SP2
Apple 23" Cinema HD Display @ 1920x1200 (60Hz)


Machine boots up fine. Windows is happy. However, when you run a game (pick a game, it doesn't matter which, I''ve tried HL2 Ep1, Civ IV, Empire at War, you name it) the system will crash. The crash may occur within 30 seconds of starting, or after 30 minutes, or anything inbetween. Sometimes the crash is a complete reboot, thrown back to desktop or a lockup. You can't replicate the problem on demand either...it just happens.

ATi System Manager is giving my temps as follows:
CPU: 30-40C (sounds good to me)
NB: 58-70C (sounds high for a NorthBridge?)
AMB: Random numbers, some up to 100C, then dives to -20C. Not sure what is going on here


Any ideas as to what the hell is happening? Is the NorthBridge overheating for some reason? Or is it something else entirely?

 

[Rob43]

The NB temps are very high & could well be causing the crashes.
I take it ,it's all at stock settings ?
Do you have decent airflow through the case ?
Try running memtest just to check your ram is ok as well

welcome to the forums

 

[Cei]

All at stock - I wanted to see if it ran first before OC'ing it.

Airflow is a 120mm input fan at the front bottom, another 120mm at the top rear taking out (just behind the CPU) and the CPU heatsink has another 120mm drawing from front backwards. PSU also has active fans drawing upwards and then out the rear. There's no impedence to airflow apart from the GPU in the master slot. In fact, here's a rubbish drawing:

From what I can see, there shouldn't be a reason for the NB to be overheating. It's got a passive heatsink on it - is it worth putting an active on?


Thanks