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#261552 - 27/07/2005 05:32 beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Wow, what a series of events.

Last night storms came through my area, and the power went out. My UPS normally keeps my two desktops powered for 5-10 minutes, and the outage was longer than that. The UPS daemon which powers down my systems wasn't configured properly, so I had to manually shutdown both desktops, which I did. Power comes back on, I begin booting the desktops again, and my AthlonXP-powered Linux fileserver is up for about 5 minutes when suddenly I get the dreaded high-low-high-low PC beep indicative of a dead fan, borked CPU, or other "uh oh" condition.

When I open the case, the HSF (Vantec Aeroflow) is super hot, and the fan is not freely spinnable. I take the fan apart and there's a piece of copper that's somehow dislodged itself from the fan's motor and caught itself so that the fan can't spin. After dislodging the copper, the fan spins freely by hand, but the motor is apparently dead, because when powered on, the fan doesn't spin. Not a good scenario for our hero.

Luckily, or so I thought, I've got a spare Athlon HSF lying around, though not the best in the world, it should get me by for a couple days. As I'm swapping it in, my power goes out again, this time for a good 5 hours. It just came back on an hour or so ago, during which time I've swapped in the new HSF, to no avail. The CPU POSTs, and I can just about get to a GRUB boot loader screen before the nasty H-L-H-L beep comes back.

Right now, my *guess* is that the fan I'm using (stolen from my idle Duron 800 box) isn't beefy enough to cool an AthlonXP 1800+. I've never had an AMD chip fail before, so I don't know if it's possible the CPU's already been damaged or not. Can an AMD CPU be damaged from overheating and still POST, or no? I'm trying to figure out whether I need to order just a replacement HSF or also a new CPU.

Also, anyone able to recommend a good, reasonably priced replacement HSF that I can order from NewEgg?

Oh, and just for added intrigue, my RAID-5 array is running in degraded mode, so if one of my drives dies during this exercise, I lose 500GB of data. Wooooooo!
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- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#261553 - 27/07/2005 11:38 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: tonyc]
Dignan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
Well, I'm not sure if you'll consider this reasonably priced, but I love my Zalman HSF. It seems to do the job, and looks quite impressive through my case window
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Matt

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#261554 - 27/07/2005 11:45 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: Dignan]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Yeah, $40+ for a HSF is a bit more than I was looking to spend. I don't care about looks for something that's inside an opaque case. I just want good cooling, and something that won't break in a little over a year like the Vantec Aeroflow did.

Anyone with an answer to my other question? If the CPU passes the POST, is it highly unlikely I did any damage to it?
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- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#261555 - 27/07/2005 12:35 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: tonyc]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
I suppose you won't really know about CPU damage until you get the thing booted and running. That RAID issue sounds even more pressing. Keeping your CPU happy sounds like something that's worth a few extra bucks. If you buy some fancy Zalman cooling system and it turns out your CPU is hosed, then you can always get another. At least you've got Moore's Law pushing down the prices for you...

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#261556 - 27/07/2005 13:31 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: DWallach]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Quote:
That RAID issue sounds even more pressing.


Sorta. It's weird. It's a 3Ware Escalade 7500-4LP, by all accounts, a good RAID card. It's been happily working for at least a year now, and a few weeks back, one of the drives (drive 2) showed up in the BIOS status screen as "not in use." Rebuilding the array brought it back. Then, a week later, a different drive (drive 4) did the same thing, another rebuild, and now it's drive 4 again. I'm left wondering if it's really the drives having problems or if the card's just flaking out. Each time, rebuilding the array brought it back in several hours with no data loss.

I have yet to find out how to get SMART status or any kind of readout from the drives themselves, though. I'm also wondering if it's a heat issue, I don't have any drive coolers or anything in there and the 4 drives are right on top of each other. A lot of variables to figure out.

I guess the "right thing to do" would be buy the HSF *and* some new drives to cover all my bases. Grrr.
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- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#261557 - 27/07/2005 14:09 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: tonyc]
DWallach
carpal tunnel

Registered: 30/04/2000
Posts: 3810
For what it's worth, maybe the inside temp of your PC is getting high enough that it's causing other parts, like your hard drives and/or RAID controller to flake. That could explain the seemingly uncorrelated HD problems you're experiencing.

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#261558 - 27/07/2005 16:17 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: DWallach]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Yeah, cooling is probably an issue in the case I have. I was going for silence over temperature so I just had one case fan and the CPU fan. I just ordered the CPU fan dignan suggested along with a ThermalTake Shark case which looks like it'll be good with the cooling, and should let me spread the HDs out a little bit with the 7 3.5" drive bays. Hopefully that solves the problems at least temporarily until I can afford to drop more for a serious upgrade with bigger HDs etc.
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- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#261559 - 27/07/2005 20:35 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: tonyc]
Waterman981
old hand

Registered: 14/02/2002
Posts: 804
Loc: Salt Lake City, UT
You'll like the Zalman HSF. I just got one a month ago when I upgraded to an XP3200 and it is fantastic. My cpu runs idle at about 34C/93F. Not too bad for the fan running at 2200 RPM. The fan is a monster though. And heavy! Be prepared to pull your motherboard to install it on an AMD system. I did fry an Athlon 1300 about 2 years ago, and if I remember right it would still post, but then right after it would puke. Of course YMMV.
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#040103696 on a shelf
Mk2a - 90 GB - Red - Illuminated buttons

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#261560 - 27/07/2005 20:47 Re: beeeeeeeeep booooop beeeeeep booooooop [Re: Waterman981]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Quote:
I did fry an Athlon 1300 about 2 years ago, and if I remember right it would still post, but then right after it would puke. Of course YMMV.

Yeah, of course. I'm hoping it's just the cooling issue, though, as I really don't have any good reason to upgrade the CPU on this machine. Right now I've got my trusty old Duron 800 in there, and it's doing a "good enough" job for now. I rebuilt my RAID array again and everything seems okay, but I'm running with my case wide open just in case.
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- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#261561 - 30/07/2005 18:07 *grumble* [Re: Dignan]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
So I get the Zalman HSF, a very impressive unit, and the fscking thing doesn't fit. I have an ABit NF7-S v2.0 mobo, and it's got four capacitors sitting too close to the CPU. A normal HSF that clips onto the white clips underneath the CPU fits, but the Zalman uses little clip mounts that screw into the motherboard. Those fit (just barely) but then they want you to screw the clip into those, and the clip is way too wide. I can't bend the capacitors any further than I have already, and it's just a no-go. So, I guess that's going back to Newegg.

I guess if I had done some Googling, I would have found this out beforehand:

http://www.zalman.co.kr/product/cooler/7000(AB)_462MBlist_eng.htm

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- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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#261562 - 01/08/2005 00:34 Re: *grumble* [Re: tonyc]
Dignan
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/03/2000
Posts: 12338
Loc: Sterling, VA
Crap! I'm so sorry, I should have thought about that. I remember I checked my mobo beforehand, so I was fairly confident. I think the problem that most people run into is that the fan its self hits heat sinks for some mobos' chipsets.

Sorry about that. I unfortunately don't have any more experience with heatsinks other than the Zalman and standard AMD products.
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Matt

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#261563 - 01/08/2005 00:51 Re: *grumble* [Re: Dignan]
tonyc
carpal tunnel

Registered: 27/06/1999
Posts: 7058
Loc: Pittsburgh, PA
Yeah, not your fault, I really should have Googled first and purchased later. I'll just find a well-reviewed HSF on NewEgg and this time I'll triple check that it fits on the motherboard.
_________________________
- Tony C
my empeg stuff

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