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I recently experienced my computer (P-4 HT 3.0E, 2@200GB Seagate, 450W PS, XP PRO) shut off immediately. I went to investigate, turned the power back on and WHAM!!
Shot sparks(power supply). I replaced the PS and now the BIOS starts up VERY slow, starts to boot up and shuts down. I tested the RAM (Kingston 4@512mb) one at a time thinking maybe a stick went bad. Still doing the same thing. It almost acts like the hotter it gets the sooner it stops/shuts down. Maybe MB??? SOYO Dragon 2. I certainly hope I didn't fry the processor. Would it even start if the processor got fried?
PLEASE HELP!!

I hate this old HP I having to fire up til I get mine fixed.

Thanks in advance.
Shanefl2002

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4516, old post ID:36060

The P4 processor is designed to shut down when the temps get too high to prevent damage. For some reason the system is still overheating.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4516, old post ID:36061

Should I try putting more heatsink gel in? I just vaccumed out the heatsink as it was full of dust. Actually, the entire case. I have like 8 fans total. I may have criss-crossed the fan in the process and have them blowing the wrong direction. Is it best to have them suck air in or blow heat out?

Thanks for your quick reply.



Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4516, old post ID:36062

You had sparks come out of the PSU? So definately it blew, and occasionally when those blow they can unfortunately harm the hardware as well. The first thing I would suspect is the motherboard being semi fried. Bios slow, etc... its not fried to the point of not working, but it is acting funny. The shut downs could be due to this as well, or like Wren said, could be an overheat issue, so if you can get into the bios check the temperature of the cpu to see if it is overheating.

I'm not familiar with Intel as much as AMD but I would guess safe temp ranges are about the same. If it's under 60 I would not suspect overheating causing it to shut down. Those thresholds are usually set pretty high. so if the CPU is at like 80 degrees or more, then I would worry and definately do something about the cooling to see if that's the issue. But if this started after the PSU blew I would suspect some hardware damage was done.

As for blowing vs sucking, there's two sides to this story. The cpu generates heat, so if its set to suck, it will suck away all this heat, but if its blowing, then it's blowing cooler air against the heatsink, moving the hot air away. I always have my cpu fans set to blow on the heat sink, and most of my cases have side fans, so the air from outside of the case ends up being sucked in by the cpu fan, and onto the heatsink.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4516, old post ID:36063

Thanks guy....
I'm going to put more cooling gel on it, as well as change some of the fan flow directions. If, by chance, the MB got it...I got it free after rebate...so, I got my fair use out of it.
I'll also check out the temps in BIOS once I put more gel in. I'm thinking that the gel maybe the problem. It has very little in between the heatsink and CPU.
I'll let you guy's know!!

You guy's have been great help!!!

What a AWESOME site!
Shane

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:4516, old post ID:36064