Northern Computer Technologies

FAQs

Question	-	The issue is an over heating problem that is stemming from the AMD supplied fans. The gray heatsink tape or compound seems to be what is causing the overheating. How do we fix this problem?
Answer	-	AMD has seen something similar to this with some Gigabyte motherboards. The problem seems to be due to the thermal shutdown circuitry on the motherboard. This circuitry reads the output of the Athlon XP's thermal diode, and if the CPU is above some threshold temperature, the board shuts down. The problem on these motherboards is caused by the circuitry that reads the diode. Its threshold is too low. This becomes a problem when the board is turned on with a new heatsink where the thermal phase change interface material hasn't melted yet. Until it melts the first time, the processor gets hotter than normal. However, this circuitry doesn't allow the processor to get hot enough to melt the material. The only way around it is to use grease because it doesn't need to melt.

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