Hi guys!

I've been having a restart problem for a week now. Whenever i'm playing games and reach exactly 51c/123f my system will restart. I've bought a new case, got 3 new fans, new power supply, new ram.

I've been googling for solutions since it started and I recently found this dead topic:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic47444.html

Sounds exactly like someone suggested:

The mobo/cpu is rather old, roughly 4 years. However, i'm broke and cannot afford buying anything, not even thermal paste. Is there a test I can do to see if it's really tripping at the wrong temp? (i've already turned it off in bios) and if it is, is there a fix for this?

Another thing I should mention, problems started when I downloaded omega drivers for my ati radeon x850. I uninstalled them but is it possible it set a shutdown temp for my GPU?

Thanks for all the help, I appreciate it.

Try running the computer with the case sides removed

I did it (also tried it with neons/leds removed), just takes longer to reach 51c/123f but then afterwards restarts just as often. This only happens when i'm gaming, because the system idles at much lower temps.

I also just set my fans to run at 100% all the time.

With all that you have done so far, your only other choice is to remove the CPU's heatsink and fan and clean off the old thermal paste real good and apply some new paste. It only takes a very small amount. Do you have a friend that might have some thermal paste?

I have tubes and vials of the stuff. Of course, I build and repair computers. You must know someone that builds computers?

Are you sure that will work? If you're sure (and I won't have to put anymore money into it) i'm willing to go downtown, post myself on a corner and scrap up some cash. It's just that, after buying all that I don't want to put in more money and end up having to replace more parts.

And how does that work in fixing the circuitry or thermistor or whatever it might be, is it just going to sort of lower temperature? I'd like to find out how to set it so it doesn't restart at 51c/123f - is there a program or something I can use to force my cpu and gpu to a different setting?

Either way, all your help is appreciated, i'm going to pick up the paste on sunday.

anyone else have any ideas?

Pick up the paste on Sunday... and make sure you have some rubbing alcohol to clean off the old paste. It is very important to clean the old paste off thoroughly

I bought some isopropyl and the paste. The paste came with a heatsink, a mini heatsink and a fan. Should I replace the heatsink I currently have, throw away the two new ones or just stick them on with the double sided tape?

I just finished installing, i'll post back later to see how it all goes. When remove my cooling unit, the old paste was all dried up and cracked - I think it was the right fix.



By heatsink, I meant the green things on the upper right, that's exactly the kit I bought.

This IS NOT a CPU heatsink kit. It is a chipset heatsink. If you found a place to put it, I hope it was not on the CPU. Do you know what a CPU (Central Processing Unit) is? A Chipset is much smaller...

The thermal paste is in the left upper corner. I hope you used this on the area between the CPU heatsink and the CPU top. DO NOT tape the small chipset heatsink on the larger CPU heatsink and fan

I know what a CPU is, I figured I could use the paste for it. I only used the paste between the CPU and heatsink and left the rest alone because I wasn't sure what to do with it, which is why I posted. I guessed the fan and green things (lack of word, used the word heatsink) replace the one I have on there which is under my CPU and next to my ram - I didn't touch it becuase i'm not sure how to remove it.

So now you know what a chipset heatsink is... There's no reason to mess with the rest of the kit. You kind of scared me :haha:

It worked for the first couple hours then it started restarting rarely, and now it's back to where it was.

Is it possible for me to maybe add thermal paste on the GPU on my graphics card? (radeon x850) or something? Or is it possible I may have wired something wrong when I changed cases?

The problem started after installing some Omega Drivers for my graphics card. I think it was either that it set a shutdown temp on my graphics card or tried overclocking it and it did something bad?