My specs are:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP, 3200+
Motherboard: PCChips M848A
Motherboard Chipset: SiS 748
System Memory: 512 MB
BIOS Type: AMI
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9200 SE

I've been having trouble with my PC restarting at random. The restarting happened to stop when I disabled the internal cache, and the CPU temperature is very high 63 °C. The cooling fans are running at 4688 RPM. Everything was running fine a couple months ago, when I lasted used it, I don't know where this problem came from. I'm guessing it has something to do with the motherboard...
thx

z3snap, there is a really good chance that you're right, and the motherboard is to blame. Here are a couple reviews. Granted, these were comments about the PCChips mobo that I had, but it doesn't bode well for the quality of the manufacturer. Especially if you've tried to do any overclocking or anything. Personally I wouldn't even consider buying another PCChips mainboard, and recommend you replace yours even if you can get it working. You'll be amazed at how much faster your current hardware can run.

*************

The system keeps on locking up, cannot be rebooted, can only be turn off from power switch in the back. Deadly blue screen appear frequently, with fatal message like "CANNOT WRITE TO HARD DISK", "PROGRAM YOU ARE RUNNIN HAS CAUSE AN ERROR IN KRNL386.EXE, the program will now close", "WINDOWS PROTECTION ERROR" and all kind of otheer weird messages. But despite all these alarming errors message, MICROSOFT is not the culpit, the motherboard is. The stores/manufacturers said it is the heat or faulty battery, but the real cause of all these malfunction is the "leaking capacitors"-please search for more details. BUYERS BEWARE, especially for low price private labels.

*************

Good Points
Zero

Bad Points
Bad capacitors render it useless in a few days or few weeks.
secrective scratch your Hard Disk

General Comments
If you value your money and time, don't buy it, it is totally junk.
I bought one in January, it crash every couple of hours, then deteriorate to every few minutes, the crook blame my monitor, my RAM, anything that did not bought from them, then I found out all the freeze, cannot be rebooted, lose of BIOS data, MS Blue Death Screen are symptom of defectve capacitors that will cause system to be unstable and premature death. The crook sold them and kept up scam people by charging extra for repair and diagnosis. But they know all along this motherboard will cause endless problem all along.

*************

By the way, it is customary to greet new members, sorry about that.

Welcome to the PCGuide forums!!

thx what motherboard do you recommend

There are a lot of people here way more educated about hardware than I am. Here's a link to a great sticky thread you should check out though:

http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=39018

thx 4 ur help
but i'd still like to try to get my mobo working 1st

That's understandable. Maybe someone can offer you some advice, since I am not an expert on this subject. You might want to google "leaking capacitors" while you're waiting though. They are suspected of causing the symptoms you're having in other motherboards. Maybe you ended up with a good one though. Best of luck.

thx i found the search useful, but i don't have any leaking capacitors. every looks fine... thx 4 ur help again

Hmmm... that's an extremely high temperature for a CPU. Most of us start to get nervous at 50C, and yours is well above that! :eek: First thing to do is some spring cleaning. Get some compressed air and a vacuum and get the dust out of there! With the CPU fan spinning so fast, at least it looks like the system as a whole is in good enough condition that it recognizes a problem and is trying to compensate. But the first thing you need to do is get that CPU temp down!

Does that AthlonXP have the stock cooler on it? Has this ever caused you any problems before? If the spring cleaning doesn't help, you may have to reseat that HSF unit on the CPU. It's not a huge deal, but it is annoying... Let's hope it's only dust...

I agree with saphalline, with random restarts I always look for heat and power supply problems first. If you want to confirm it, open the case and clean out the dust then run it with a small fan blowing inside. I would almost bet it will stop rebooting even before replacing the thermal compound, which would be the second thing I would do. Arctic Silver (http://www.arcticsilver.com/arctic_silver_instructions_big2.htm) has some good instructions, that procedure works well for any type of thermal compound I've used so far.