I just bought another system on ebay, this time for my Mom. This one I'm having some trouble with. There is a loud fan noise coming from what I now know to be the CPU fan. It has been there since I first powered up. At first a couple of taps on the side of the computer would quiet it but not now. This fan, which is attached to the motherboard (another M810LMR) is "moaning" and vibrating pretty strongly and is shaking the whole motherboard. I finally figured out how to get into the hardware monitor to check the temp. After about 2 minutes the CPU (1.2Ghz Athlon) temp was up to 120F and after 15 minutes (with only the hardware monitor screen running) it was up to 125 F at which point I shut it down. I have no idea how hot it got during two installations of w2k when it was processing for over 1 1/2 hours each time. The fan rpms seem all right at about 6100 when cool and dropping to 5700 as it heats up. There are three other fans in the system, one intake below the power supply, one exhaust in the power supply and one extra exhaust in the front bottom of the case.

My questions are these:

1) What are the chances that I have damaged the CPU by running it before I knew the temperature was up?

2) How would I diagnose or recognize such damage?

3) Is there a way to pull up the hardware monitor besides holding down "delete" during initial startup?

4) At what temp does damage start to occur?

5) Does this sound like simply a fan problem or something else?

6) If fan rpms are up why is CPU getting hot?

Thanks for any answers you can give me. I can get the fan replaced locally easily enough but I need to decide if I should insist the seller replace the motherboard and CPU on the chance it was damaged. Likely the fan was damaged by UPS in shipment.

It’s not the fan slowing as the Temps go up.
But it’s the temps going up as the fan slows down.

Replace the fan ASAP. Don’t run it until then.

The High may have shortened the Life time of your chip.
There is no way to tell how long it will last,
The Tbird is rated as safe up to 95C

You can install and run a temp monitor program . MBM 5
For example allows you to set the Max temp and When that temp is reached it can run a program to shut down your system.



------------------
To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

125° F is about 50° C so it wasn't too bad...but yeah, replace the fan and double check everything mounted to the motherboard, the vibration you spoke of could have loosened some connections.

------------------
mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Replaced the fan and heatsink and it is running smooth and quiet now. Temp is staying about 122-123 F. This is about 10 degrees cooler than my other system which I decided to check. Are these temps okay?

Those temps are normal for many systems .
Airflow is the most important thing.
I also have one system that runs at 50C with No ill effect.

Your best bet is to keep the air intake clear ,
Make sure the exhaust fans are working and correctly mounted.
Pulling cool air over the S/H fan

------------------
To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !