Jaunty Frying my motherboard????

**AoSteve** · June 15th, 2009

I thought I'd just pop in and tell you of a little experience I had with my friends first Core2Duo..

He got a nice little box picked and we ordered the stuff off of newegg. We got the system all built, with the OEM heatsink.. Windows Vista Home Premium installed and ready to play.

I install "SystemFan" an application for sensor monitoring on windows. He started playing with it and the normal temperatures ran from 35-50C ranging on how hard he pushed it. Well, I watched long enough and said it was time for Orthos. Sure enough that processor hit 70C and I was worried. That's just too hot.

I modified the heatsink that came with the process (retail E4400) and used some artic silver 3 for the thermal grease. After all of that, it ran about 10C cooler and never thought about getting over 60C much.

**ceejay** · June 15th, 2009

Hi AoSteve

Indeed, my thoughts are turning to the heatsink/CPU coupling, I may go and get some stuff tomorrow.

The other thing I notice is that the fan at the back of the case, although running, is running very slowly ... I would have hoped that some part of the system would be reacting to high temperatures and turning it up to hurricane force but no, it is just idling away, hardly pushing air out the box at all.

I don't really understand the mechanisms that ought to be at work here, but I can imagine that something might be broken by an upgrade. Improving the heat sinking, although a generally good idea, can't be the whole answer.

Ceejay

**AoSteve** · June 16th, 2009

Well, take this example to heart. As operating systems with Microsoft got newer, the ability to use the processors better grew. This leads to more heat in any sense. A good example is in fact a stock Pentium 3 450mhz system that I had. In windows 98, I'd hold an average of 50C (which wasn't bad for those processors as much heat as those Katmai cores pushed out). I went to Windows 2000 with the SAME setup, and during usage of the processor, it got hotter. But there was noticeable increases in performance in things as well, specially with burning CD's or encoding MP3's. This may be your case.

When I first got my Pentium 3, I took the heatsink off first thing. There was a "thermal pad" on the stock heatsink transfering the heat to the heatsink. With this setup, I saw temperatures reach over 60C in normal operation!!! So, I downloaded a program to help synch the idle for the processor and it helped when the processor was idling, but not at full bore.

When my (newegg rocked then, and still does) package of a heatsink, fan, and artic silver came in I quickly installed the setup. I never saw temperatures over 55C again.

So, this could be a good bit of your problem. If anything, I'd look for some Artic Silver. I've been using it for years and you couldn't get me to change. If this stuff will last for 6 years on a heavily overclocked AMD Athlon Thunderbird setup, it's good.

**ceejay** · June 16th, 2009

At this point I started following another direction. I found some other similar threads including http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1186622 which led me to a long discussion about DSDT files, I come in at post number 102 ... http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=102

Still unresolved at this time. Am I caught between a possible kernel bug and some undesireable BIOS behaviour? Will applying some magic paste be enough to keep my system working? Will I give up on Ubuntu altogether?

Hmmm, tricky. But if anyone reading this has a bright idea, please do chip in.

Ceejay

**ceejay** · June 17th, 2009

OK, I have an update in case anyone is reading this ... the problem seems to be in the kernel. If I downgrade to the Hardy kernel (2.6.24-16-generic) then the core temperatures at idle immediately drop by about 15C.

I also tried Intrepid (2.6.27-7-generic) but as expected this behaves in the same (hot) way as Jaunty (2.6.28-11-generic).

So the "fix" was simply to move the Hardy kernel to the top of the grub boot list and reboot!

As it happens the browser problem which was the reason for me upgrading in the first place still seems to be fixed with this combo, so I guess I'm happy.

Thanks
Ceejay

PS: see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/264290