Desktop

Ask something
Discussion Locked

unexpected shut down

0 helpful
5 replies

by idi_slt

Closed to new repliesThis discussion is closed. It stays readable, but it takes no new replies.
I just recently upgraded my computer to a mother board, a processor, memory, and hard drive that my friend gave me. I am now running windows xp sp2, have a 300gig hard drive, p4 CPU 3.00GHz, and 768MB of RAM. When I first got the motherboard. He told me that he just couldn't get it working. I found hardly any heat sink compound between the CPU and heat sink. (I fixed that) Then I noticed his 400W power supply was dead and I am currently trying to use my 250W pwr supply. I also noticed that everything in the case was getting hotter than my last components. So I just added a case fan, which seemed to help also. My problem now is as I am doing something the entire computer will just shut down for a moment the restart. It will continue this cycle until I can turn it off and let it set over night. The next day I will get a few hours out of it then the process starts all over again. How do I go about to even troubleshoot this problem. My assumption is that the CPU heat sink and fan (which seem fairly small and not really keeping the temp down like I want) and the pwr supply need to be replaced with bigger and better ones to fix this problem. Thanks if you can help.

5 replies

by zlitocook

The first thing is replace the power supply if it had a 400/watt put at least a 350/watt or better. It sounds like over heating, down load a free ware heat monitor and watch it as you work on the computer. Memory can become vary hot also, they sell memory coolers to fix that.
Check the motherboard for heat damage, there were some that had bad capacitors on them and would cause lots of problems.

by mjd420nova

Yikes, replace that Power supply before you
harm the processor. If it had a 400W, replace
with the same size. Like putting a 10 amp
fuse in place of a 20 amp, it might work for
a while but a good P/S will protect itself
and shut off. After a cool down it'll still
work but not for long.

by cmiller5400

Replace the PSU with an Antec 400W one, I love my antec and it consistantly produces the voltages correctly. I would also invest in a good copper heatsink and fan unit for your processor. Use a high quality thermal compound too. It definately sounds like a heat issue. Make sure that your fans are blowing in the correct direction. Good luck!!

by papedro

Yap first thing is a new power supply.

But that won't fix your problem, to stop restarting just change the CPU Fan to a better one, don't use the one that come with it ( from Intel ), my PC have done the something to me, I've changed my 250W Supply and CPU Fan, and everything works fine now.
If you can watch in the BIOS the CPU Temp from time to time, and you are going to see things getting really hot.

This discussion is closed to new replies.