TR Forums

Ok so I built my box just after thanksgiving and I've been running fine since then, i'll list the specs at the bottom of the post.

One day I'm doing some research on the web and BOOM, computer just turns off. No Windows shut down or anything. I couldn't turn it back on until i turned off my power supply (it has a switch) and unplugged it.

Obviously i first figured that it was my power supply, so i unplug my 2 western digitals and start up again. well everything works fine but it happens again within 10 minutes. This time it turns on just fine and turns off during the boot process.

So i go into my BIOS and my rails are dead on.. 3.3, 5, and 12 all look completely normal. All my fans are spinning. All the temperatures look good.

So i leave it off until the next day, where it starts up just fine. I open up CoreCenter (MSI's little Windows-based monitoring tool) and it starts blaring this siren saying I have an abnormal processor temperature. But it lists it as 37C .. thats totally normal!!

So wtf is going on??

Specs:
Athlon 64 3200+ (@ stock)
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
1gig HyperX
18.4 gig 15K.3 Seagate Cheetah (SCSI)
1x 200 Gig WD
1x 120 Gig WD
GeForce 6800NU.
LSI u160 scsi card (pci).

This does sound just like CPU overtemp, I'd check the heatsink/fan and clean and replace compound, as this never hurts anyway. If temps stay low, but problem persists, try disabling the MSI proggy that monitors, and monitor with another CPU/fan app. If the MSI proggy is corrupt, this could be causing the shutdown.

I'd agree the description does sound like the BIOS is shutting it down when it gets a high temp. reading. This is what my Tbird was doing for the last 5 months until I bought a new HSF and AS3'ed it on there. Its CPU fan had broken a fan blade, and I think it probably heated up and melted off the thermal pad under it (this was bought pre-built 4 years ago). It also burned up the PSU, I believe.

After the new PSU, it would sit there running, pretty hot (CPU temp. upper 60's C), and then just shut off. Because it's a heat monster I put off fixing/pouring more money into it (after replacing the PSU with another "on sale" $36 Thermaltake job from newegg), but then newegg had a HSF for $6 total and I got it, put it on there, and now it's running at upper 50's and I expect at least a couple of degrees C more reduction eventually.

Yup, I'd suspect a problem with the CPU temp (or the CPU temp monitoring) first. It may not be a coincidence that it ran fine over the winter, and is starting to act up now, as the weather warms up.

It could also be a PSU problem. The fact that you had to unplug the PSU to fix it sounds like the PSU's own internal protection circuit tripped somehow. This can be due to either something drawing too much current, or the PSU detecting an internal fault (over temp, out of tolerance voltages, or the protection circuit itself has gone flaky).

Any updates on this, sativa?