CPU overheating

[Malcolmkeith]

I bought my PC about a year ago . It contains an AMD Athlon 64 3200+,bus 2200Mhz, 1024kb ram, 204Gb Maxtor HD and NEC RW ND3540A DVD.

I loaded Itunes just after I bought it and over a period, loaded CDs on to it usually 6 or 8 one after the other without a problem. A few weeks ago, after loading about 3 Cds in succession the PC shut down. After leaving it for half an hour I could continue.This condition continued for a while but now I cannot load one CD without it shutting down. In normal use (surfing etc) it is fine.

I loaded PC Wizard and checked the CPU temperature. Under normal use it reports a CPU temperature of about 45C but when I start to load a CD it immediately rises at the rate of about 3 to 4 degrees C per minute so in a few minutes it hits about 80C at which point it shuts down.
I opened it up and found that the two case fans were both pushing air in so I reversed the rear one so it sucked air out but it has made little difference. The CPU fan is reported by PC wizard to be running at 3013rpm and when I feel the heat sink it only feels warm not hot. I suspected it was not making good contact to the CPU so I removed it but I can't see anything wrong. It has a thin film of heatsink compound and the clip is holding it very tightly to the CPU. The inside is all very clean . There is no dirt or debris on the heatsink fins.
I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Igorian]

There is an issue with the BIOS on some Athlon64 boards in that the CPU temperature is reported incorrectly. If the CPU feels cool, but your BIOS is reporting 80, then this is probably the cause.

Check the board manufacturer site for a BIOS update or post the model here and one of us will post a link.

However, if you have reached 80 degrees, you have exceeded the maximum temperature (70), although 64s are pretty good at shutting the cores down if they get too hot.

 

[Malcolmkeith]

Thanks for that. Do you mean that the temperature being reported is incorrect so the PC shuts down unneccessarily?
I opened up my office PC and touched the heat sink on the CPU and it is too hot to keep my fingers on it. I am wondering if the heat sink on my home PC is making good enough contact with the CPU.

 

[Igorian]

The CPU fan is reported by PC wizard to be running at 3013rpm and when I feel the heat sink it only feels warm not hot.

Correct. If it only feels warm but the BIOS is reporting 80 degrees, this could be related to the problem I spoke of (ie, it is not reporting the correct temperature). Which board and BIOS revision are you using?

I don't know the spec. of your office machine, but 40-50 degrees is pretty normal for a CPU with a standard heatsink/fan. which is pretty warm to the touch.

 

[Malcolmkeith]

Motherboard is ASRock K8 upgrade VM800.
Bios is American Megatrends P1.20 11 Marcg 2005.