Toasty hotdogs, get em here...

[Paddy]

Howdey all,

I've recently reinstalled XP and I happened to come across the Asus Probe until for my A7M266-D. I threw it on purely to see how my silent Zalman flower was coping with the XP1800. I was horrified to see that the mobo temperature was 41'C at minimal load! The room is fairly warm, especially with the nice weather we are having at the moment, but I have never seen my case temp exceed 30'C.

I promptly removed both sides of my Lian Li PC75 case and placed a 15'' desk fan over the Northbridge. At the same time I noticed that the stock heat sink over the Northbridge was cool to the touch, certainly not 41'C.

After running the fan for over half an hour I could not get the mobo temp below 37'C. I was able to reduce the CPU temp from 51'C to ~46'C. Infact, the CPU temp went below that of the motherboard!!!

I don’t have a thermometer to verify the temps, and I am aware of the inaccuracies of the internal probes.

I do have a lot of hardware in there, but I was hoping to shove in more.

I guess I need to remove the stock heat sink from the Northbridge and make sure it's in good contact. Any clues as to what the problem may be???

System specs:

Asus A7M266-D, one XP1800, 512 Registered ECC, AIW8500DV, Asus USB 2.0 controller, Adaptec 2100S (gets damn hot!), Tekram SCSI controller - I forget the model number, Live! 5.1, Intel Pro/100 NIC, 4x 7.2K IBM 8GB SCSI, 80GB 'cuda IV and an aluminium Lian-Li PC 75 Server case with four 80mm (two in, two out) fans.

Paddy

[the maddman]

Don't trust the Asus... but you should be a little worried. I've never owned an Asus board that didn't report temps 10 degrees to high, and the motherboard temp probe isn't in the northbridge, it's in the IO chip, which is probably somewhere near the bottom of the board.... I'll look up a pic of the board and see if I can't find it.

Ok, the IO chip is down low (if this is in a tower case) behind the PCI slots, right above the BIOS chip, I'd guess it's a WinBond chip.

Also, check your processor voltage, Asus has a few boards that refuse to run right and consistantly run the core voltage to high. It's like overclocking right out of the box, and I don't like that idea.

[Paddy]

Cheers,

All my five of my PCI slots are filled, and the cables for the SCSI devices do go towards that bottom corner.... Do you think it could just be poor airflow to that small part of the case???

Core voltage is 1.75 volts

[ayoub_ibrahim]

which version asus probe are you using Paddy?
earlier versions had a temp reading problem.
perhaps you should try the latest version from ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/misc/...probe21702.zip

[Paddy]

Thanks! I am downloading it now, but I am quite sure that I am using the latest version.

[the maddman]

Originally posted by Paddy [MU]
Cheers,

All my five of my PCI slots are filled, and the cables for the SCSI devices do go towards that bottom corner.... Do you think it could just be poor airflow to that small part of the case???

Core voltage is 1.75 volts

That could be it right there. With all the slots filled, you just aren't going to get any airflow back there. I wouldn't worry out it all that much. And your board doesn't seem to suffer from the out of spec voltage problem, which is a good thing.