Friday, March 14, 2003

Heatwave

I guess the AMD AthlonXP 2600+ gets flaky around 50-52C. I've been having horrible trouble with EQ crashing to the desktop at odd times (and BSOD'ing about 1 in 20) for the past 2 weeks that I've been trying to get back into EQ. My case temp was consistently 38-40C and the stock AMD CPU heatsink (aluminum, probably a 15-20 cfm fan that came with the CPU) was keeping the processor around 50-52C. I had also added a chassis exhaust fan (quiet, 27 cfm, 21 dB) to help with sucking the heat out of the case.

Dropped a copper heatsink with a 35 cfm fan in (oy, 45dB is a good bit noisier too) and case temp is now 40-42C (due to increased air movement) while CPU temp is now down to 46-48C. Apparently, 4-6C is just enough to keep the AMD chip stable.

If that's not enough, I'm going to have to switch from the desktop case that I'm using to a large tower where there is more room, or add in a slot cooler in my 3.5" external bay to try and move just a bit more air through the case. (Tower cases result in cooler temps simply due to the fact that the components aren't all smashed together.)

posted by Wuphon's at 12:29 PM