Need Some Athlon XP Temperature Comparisions

Had some odd (and very annoying, in the throwing-computers-out-the-window variety) crashes while using my windows box lately. Nothing diagnostic, just the whole box locking up and the audio stuttering. It’s an Athlon XP2600+ (barton) on an Asus A7N8X motherboard with an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO and 1G of 333 (I think) RAM. Nothing hugely odd here. As the crashes are pretty random, I’m not sure what the cause is, though I suspect heat. Sometimes it’ll crash while playing a silly flash game and sometimes during quake, after quake, or just while typing in word. Not always when the box has been on for a long time, not always during processor intensive stuff (the system runs SETI@Home screensaver at night), no always anything.


I started watching the temperatures on my system tonight, and even spent some time playing quake… erhm…. “system load testing” on q3ctf4 with a large fan sitting agains the side of the case (no crashes).


According to AsusProbe when I boot the system the CPU is about 43degrees C and the motherboard is about 35C. The MB stays that temperature but the cpu will go up to 51 or 52C while under 100% load (ie: SETI@Home running in the foreground. I have no idea if this is normal or not. The case I have only has a rear fan and a side fan (both blowing out) and while there is room for front fans, the from of the box has no grill for air to be drawn in. Since I never really see the temperature when I crash I can only guess that that’s the problem and I know this office is smokin’ hot so it’s a good guess. I know it’s not the video card or video card drivers because I switched video cards last night to an NVidia GeForce3 and crashed then as well. You can chalk it up to bad hardware karma (you know who you are) but I say I control my own karma 🙂



The screenshot above shows my CPU and MB temperature dropping from 52 (after several minutes at full load via SETI@Home) to 42 degrees after stopping it, leaving me with a mostly idle system with only firebird and the usual array of tray apps running.


Anyway, if anyone out there has a remotely comparible system could you install Asus Probe 2 (latest version) and post what sort of MB and CPU temperatures you get during normal use, and (if possible) during 100% cpu load, and how high the temperature rises. Even the BIOS temperatures (which I don’t have for this system right now, but I know it’s a bit different than what Asus Probe reports). If you’re an A7N8X user do you use the “q-fan” control, and if so, what are your settings? (I disabled mine tonight to see if it made a difference).


If I have to I’ll re-organize things or get a different case or more fans to deal with this, but I want to know I’m attacking the right problem. Maybe I should be reinstalling my OS…. who knows?


Anyway, many thanks for any info you can pass on for me to look at.

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Category: Hardware

7 Comments on “Need Some Athlon XP Temperature Comparisions”

  1. If your computer is too hot, then just put some ice on it to cool it down!
    Seriously, though, it looks like you have a bad mobo. Alternately, the ATI card/drivers suck. according to
    http://www.benchtest.com/tester.html
    50 degrees F is great (given, you might be talking C….).
    A quick trip to google and you can get plenty of links like the above describing at what temperatures your computer should run.
    here are some more “good” links:
    http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Articles/CPU/CPU%20Temperatures.shtml
    http://www.a1-electronics.net/Cases/2002/CasePCcooling_pg2.shtml
    hope that helped.

  2. Overnight with the window Open CPU temp went down to 36C, and after running 3dmark it’s up to 49, but no instability so far. Thanks for the links dude!

  4. After a while when I first got my 1800 XP I was getting really strange crashes, lockups and whatnot. I just assumed it was 98se being stupid and needing a re-install. After a while I installed Asus Probe and lo-and-behold I got all sorts of warnings!
    I poked around until I was in my BIOS and noticed one of the fans was “off” … I think I “forgot” it when doing some upgrade or other. (my bad)
    I seem to recall that when the CPU hit 50C was when I started having problems – I know the posted website above says something like 80C or 90C is the “critical” for my CPU, but mine seems a bit more finnicky.
    I think my average temp is around a low 40C – I believe I have the CPU Temperature alarm at 50, but I’ll be checking tonight
    Neil…………….

  5. Hrm, my cpu never goes higher then 45 anymore AMD 2500 barton core, even when i oc’d it it never went higher then 55, 50 shouldnt’ be a problem at all.

  7. I recently purchased an Athlon XP2800+ (barton) and Asus A7V8X-X motherboard to put in an old case as replacement for old Athlon 700. When CPU loaded to 100%, CPU temp rose to 77C+ and was still climbing. I purchased a new Antec SLK 1600 case with more space over CPU fan and also added a back case fan to pull out hot air. Now CPU runs at 35-40C idle and around 40-50C when 100% loaded (runnig WarCraft III). Updated system now runs solid, therefore new case and resulting CPU temp is OK.