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I've been having overheating problems with my myth box lately. It's an AMD 64 3200+ machine. A few months ago, I switched the CPU fan and put in a Zalman quiet fan because the cheapass $15 fan was too loud for my bedroom. That thing worked well for about a month, even when I turned the fan speed all the way down. Now, even with the fan speed turned up, the CPU heats up to 70C and the machine shuts off whenever I use the CPU at 100% for about 10 minutes. As a result, I am not able to transcode DVDs or transcode the shows I record to a higher compression level.

Strangely enough, the system used to work ok when it wasn't so cold out. I think the internal room temperature is still the same though 65-70F. I have even opened one panel of the case but that doesn't seem to help either. Thinking that I might have not applied the thermal grease correctly, I took off the fan and reapplied the grease properly.

What options do I have at this point? I can try going back to the old cheapass fan, but that requires taking off the motherboard which is a pain and I'll have more noise to deal with. Any suggestions?

What's the rest of your setup look like? Hard drives can generate a ton of heat, and so can your GPU. Just having a sweetass cpu fan doesn't really help much if you have no means of pulling in cool air and exhausting the hot air. If your power supply fan was your one single exhaust fan, make sure it's not dead/dying. Also, you *did* make sure your CPU heat sink wasn't all clogged up with crap, didn't you?

I have just one SATA drive and the graphics card is a passively cooled NVidia FX5200 which does not generate too much heat, especially when I'm not doing anything other than displaying the Myth menu on it.

As for the power supply fan, it is a fairly new power supply although it is a cheapass thing (see the trend here? It's a TigerDirect machine). With the case lying entirely open, I doubt if circulation is the problem. And yes, there was crap in the metal fins of the heat sink which I cleared up when I remounted it. What puzzles me is that the system used to work ok in fall, but now it's misbehaving. I'm in the process of moving, so I suppose I will be able to experiment a bit more when I dismantle my setup and set it up again at the new place.

I wonder if your thermometer is accurate then - I've had really good luck with the zalman stuff.

coolfrood wrote:What options do I have at this point? I can try going back to the old cheapass fan, but that requires taking off the motherboard which is a pain and I'll have more noise to deal with. Any suggestions?

Have you checked the fan? Is it clean and free of dust? Is it still mounted correctly? It the heat sink compound still good?

I'd pull the fan, clean it and remount it (with new grease) and see if that helps. Some fan designs just load up with dust quickly.