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I baught a celeron 400 second hand for $180Aus, came with a huge heatsink and a pretty big fan, 256mb pc 133 ram, and an old 16Mb riva tnt. Along with that i got an an old extractor, one of the ones that sit in a PCI or VESA slot with the twin fans and vent on the back. Any way its overheating like all the time, i'll be asleep or watching tv, just having the BBS up and nothing else, and i'll wake up too it beeping at me and i have to take off one of the sides. Do you think that its just the cpu overheating or do u think it just needs to have a clean? the fan seems operational, and is there anyway to keep an eye on the temp while the comp is on?

id say if you are comfortable working on it, go ahead and take the heatsinc and fan off and see if theres plenty of thermal paste between it and the CPU... if not then squirt some more in there.. if so then go buy a better fan/heatsync that moves a lot of air...

copper=good.. aluminum=crap



in the case of monitoring your cpu temp in windows, that depends on your motherboard. check online for downloads...

My video card overheats my computer all the time. Run to walmart and grab a $10 big floor fan. Open your case, and put the fan on it 24/7. .. Hey, it worked for me. I'm lazy.

Dust is a big enemy of computers.

Id take out all the boards (except for the MB) and use a can of compressed air at the same time, clean your fans. Then if your able, check the thermal coating to see if theres enough.

If not, add more. As for fans, you can go to a store like Best Buy and purchase a stronger cpu fan. Also check to see if your case is capable of having another fan, sometimes you can have one in back and one in front. Unless its the fans themselves, its most likely the dust inside.



Oh, check your BIOS and there might be a setting for the case temp. Depending on the software, you can have it do different things one which would be helpfull is to turn the computer off if it gets to hott. nothing sucks worse that having a CPU burn out

If its an old celeron 400 chances are its running using an old,crusty thermal pad between the HSF and CPU. My recommendation is this: Tear off the HSF and see if its using s thermal pad,if so use some acetone to remove it and take some nice fine grit sand papaer to it and wet lap it. Then use some Arctic Silver II thermal paste on the CUP and slap her back on. Might also want to check and see if the fans for the Processor (Slot1? or Super Socket) arent crusted and bogged down, celerons never overheat so something is causing an issue.

Take out the cpu, heatsink and fan.



Clean off everything, buy some Artic Silver 3, sand down the heatsink with 1000 grit sandpaper.



retail and cheap heatsinks have a rough surface, so it doesn't contact the cpu die 100%. Sand it to a mirror finish, and it will make better contact. AS3 will help transfer the heat fom the cpu to the heatsink.



That will probably help a lot, but airflow through the case also matters, how much CFM does the case have on the intake and exhaust? Is it even, or does the exhaust have more? Even is better. Also depends on where the intake/exhaust inlets/outlets are.



Also, try turning the fan upside down, some heatsinks work better pushing vs pulling, or visa versa.



For the motherboard, use some of that AS3 for the chipset, if it uses a fan, make sure it works ;)



I am at work work right now...so I can give more advice later..good luck





Alum heatsinks are good = it dissapates heat faster then copper, but doesn't asorb heat as fast as copper.

Copper heatsinks asbsorb heat like a mofo, but doesn't dissapate it as fast, you need a higher cfm fan to cool a copper heatsink vs an alum, but if you have a higher cfm fan, then copper is better.



Higher cfm = more noise, but the bigger fan you get, the quiter it will be at high CFM.



SLK-800 can hold up to a 80mm fan, and they make brackets to hold bigger fans on smaller heatsinks..



again, at work...more advice later

What if every single video card you put in your machine overheats? I don't think it's the fault of the past 10 cards I've tried. Would the motherboard heatsink/fan be causing the video cards to overheat?

sounds like possibly too much power ... 0.1 voltage running through something makes it hotter... if it can't handle the voltage... it can get REALLY hot... or not near enough fans runnin in that thing! More fans are always good.... my computer has 2 fans in the power supply and 4 fans keeping the air moving in side the case... also you might want to look into the round ribbon cables for your drives.... those flat ones block ALOT of air flow!!



I don't know the cfm of my fans.. but when the puppy is turned on... it sounds like a 747 in my room :D

Are you sure its your video card that keeps overheating? Your video card wont cause your motherboard, or CPU to overheat. It would be your video card overheating, and locking up. If you have replaced the video card 10x, then its more then likely something else.



Tell me the whole system specs, mobo, case, fans, cpu video card ect.

I was just asking a general question, I'm not going to get it fixed. When I get the cash, I'm buying a whole new system so I'm not worried about it. I do know it's the video card overheating, the mobo and cpu are not, they are both staying at good temperatures. I know it's the video card seeing as when I power my computer up, if I try to watch a movie or play a game w/o a walmart fan on it, it gets hot to the touch. I mean hot. Like, burn finger hot. I've had this cpu for a couple years, it's a 900mhz athlon, I am going to junk it or give it to a friend when I get a new one.