Help with overheating.

[phikhue]

I posted under "Motherboard" and have not got any response so I am seeking help here.

We got the ECS K7S5A Pro from Fry's and tried to upgrade my friend's computer which currently had the AMD 900 MHz.
The computer was running fine with that AMD 900 MHz. We only put in a new motherboard (ECS K7S5A Pro), Athlon XP 2000+ (Palamino version), and a heatsink.
Everything seems to run fine at first, I was able to install Windows XP Pro and all the software that he needs. Then I play a simple game (Tetris 4000) and the computer just restarted while I was playing the game. It was weird so I ran Norton Antivirus to scan the harddrive and it restarted again. Now that I just left it alone and it would restarted by itself. We suspected something was wrong with the motherboard because we have heard a lot about these ECS motherboards (although I built 3 computers before with this board and no problem at all). I went to Fry's and exchange for another board. Again everything ran fine, got Win XP Pro installed and all the software. But after that, the whole PC got really hot. We left it idle for a while and the same thing happened again (shutting down and restarting). We could even smell something was burning. Shut it down and the power supply was hot to the touch. We thought Dawn it, cheap power supply. It is a Powmax 400W power supply that we got from CompGeeks. We pull the Antec 450W from a good running computer and put it on this computer to see. Running for about an hour and the same thing happened. The Antec was running really cool on the other computer but it got really hot when running on this computer also. So it's not the power supply. We tried one more thing. Turn on the computer, go into BIOS and run the AMI BIOS hardware monitor and watch the CPU and System Temperature. The CPU temp only showed around 48C but after a while the whole computer heated up (while we were watching the BIOS screen and doing nothing).
I am stuck now. All we were replacing is the motherboard, CPU, heatsink, oh and just 1 brand name memory stick PC2100. I tend to think it's the motherboard again but I already replaced it once with a brand new board (no return stickers for anyone who knows Fry's). I don't want to replace it again until I know exactly what the problem is.
Can someone help me with this? Thanks.

Phi,

 

[Crazymofo]

Is this a stock AMD heatsink? How many case fans does he have? What did the temp go up to while sitting in the bios? Did the machine reboot when you were sitting in the bios?

 

[phikhue]

Thanks for your reply, Crazymofo.
It's not the stock heatsink. It seems to do its job fine because the CPU seems to stay around 48 degree Celcius.
Currently there only 1 case fan. We do realize that and left the case open.
Sitting in the BIOS, the CPU shows around 48 degree.
It rebooted when sitting in BIOS.

Well, weird thing is everything seems to be working now. My friend left it running (not BIOS but into Windows and running all kinds of applications) for 3-4 day without turning it off. I could not believe it and kept reminding him to check the PC to make sure it won't cause a fire in his house. He told me it's been running quite cool now. Can anyone give me some guesses on what caused the problem before but not now? All he did was taking off the Antec 450W PS and put the Powmax 400W PS back and the problem seems to be gone.

 

[pspada]

I've had 5 or 6 of those POS Powmax 400w powersupplies from Compgeeks die in the past 8 months, one shorting out and taking several components with it.

 

[phikhue]

pspada, sorry to hear about your experiences.
My first thought was also pointing to the PS. But the "quality" Antec 450W PS also experienced the problem. And when my friend switched back to the Powmax PS, the problem was gone. My only guess is that there might be a bad contact between the PS and the motherboard or some other components. After it got too hot, whatever caused the bad contact got burned out.

 

[INemtsev]

No offence HA HA...CRAZY MOFO