Artgal wrote:

The tower was shipped via US Mail from Kentucky to California in
December but was working pretty good until the first crisis in
February. My son did however, when he owned it, leave it running for
literally days at a time downloading song and movies.

Did more cleaning and did reseat memory sticks and connectors, but I
also noticed quite a bit of scorching on the CPU chip and the
heatsink case. Cleaned this off with alcohol as well as verifying
all fans are operational -- still shutting down.

Well, the scorching doesn't sound good and cleaning it doesn't solve the
cause of it. Maybe the heatsink/fan was never all that great to begin with,
I.E. marginal.

It may be that it's pumped the thermal compound out or that moving it did
(or broke loose the thermal pad contact). I don't know your experience in
these matters but I'd remove the heatsink and redo the thermal compound.

How does the athlon case feel to the touch when it's running? How about the
heatsink? If the athlon feels quite hot but the heatsink feels cool then
it's (thermal compound) not getting the heat from the processor TO the
heatsink. If the heatsink is real hot then it isn't cooling well enough
(fan may be 'running' but not at full speed).

Just occurred to me, the moving might have popped a heatsink retaining clip
loose, maybe on just one end.

What motherboard is it? Is there a BIOS temp readout?

The young man who built the computer for my son insists that a new
Antec 350 or above will set me right, but I'm worried that after
putting out money for a new PSU it might not have been the problem.

Well, it's possible. Power supplies can go bad too (bad capacitors, etc.),
but since it was apparently working with the unit you've got in it now I'd
be suspicious of someone saying it was due to being under powered.

The Athlon 900 is 50 Watt max, 44 Watt typical, and while that isn't
exactly 'low power' it isn't exceptionally high either and I didn't see
anything in your equipment list that looked unusual.


And as far as the exterior temperatures in the computer location, we
have air conditioning running constantly and room temps do not go
above 75, which is close to our pre-summer temps.

It's often warmer at a wall and rooms have warm spots regardless of what
the thermostat says, especially with a PC blowing hot air into that area.
It can easily be 85F near a PC even though 'the room says' 75F. Anything
close to the case obstructing airflow? It's not in a desk bay or under a
table, is it?


Why can't these things ever be easy??

Murphy's law.


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