just upgraded wish i didnt.... 1

[p0p]

i just put a new copper heatsink on my aunts P3, and a new 430 watt antec PSU, and they seem to have fried my board...the PSU fan barely moves, and the cpu fan doesnt, i pu the PSU in anouther comp. and it ran it fine, its just this one. i tryed the heatsink fan elsewhere also and it ran. i dont know what to do. the comp worked fine (slowly but fine) before i touched it. so what do you think bad motherboard???

anyhelp is much appreciated
,
p0p

 

[franklin97355]

Sounds like you have a short somewhere.

 

[norty303]

I'm slightly confused why you chose to upgrade parts that have absolutely no performance boost whatsoever on a system that I assume was working ok beforehand..

 

[p0p]

how do you figure they dont have performance boost? the more power coming in the better the performance of every device in the computer, and the more heat absorbed by the heatsink the better the performance of the cpu...

anyhow, i know there must be a short somewhere..i cant find it though, im really stumped, i reseated the motherboard, and nothing was shorting it there, no screws or anything odd, i unpluged all peripherals and everythng still runs like crap...so i can only think that the short is somewhere in the motherboard and i neeed to get a new one. what od you think?

 

[nlm9802]

have you tried taking the motherboard out of the case and seeing if it runs? it could be as simple as grounding out on a mounting screw.

as far as performace. There is no <performance> gain to be had upgrading a power supply. If the pc was able to run with the old one and not shut down when opening cdroms, spinning up all drives etc, it was ok. Upgrading the power supply is usually only necessary when upgrading to a newer motherboard/chipset, or adding peripherals that run off of system power, such as usb printers, scanners, and cameras.
Upgrading the heat sink will also provide no noticable performance gain, unless the cpu is being overclocked. The cooler the cpu stays, the more stable the system will be. If your cpu temp was 55C with the old heatsink and is now 45 with the new one, that is good, and probably worth the 10-20$ you spent, though not for performance.

That being said, the problem you were having was likely a software problem, and could probably have been fixed by reinstalling windows, or performing some extensive file cleaning, spyware removal, virus scanning, defragging, and updating.

Try pulling the motherboard back out, set it on a wooden counter or something, set the power supply and hard drive next to it, have the video card (if not onboard), memory, cpu, heatsink, and fan on the board and seated properly, then power it up and see how it goes.

 

[p0p]

im sorry i disagree with you about the heatsink and psu upgrade having effect on the performance, but i appreciate your help and i will try that right now thank you very much.

 

[p0p]

that didnt work... you think its just the motherbord?

 

[Freestone]

What happens if you attach the original power supply? The new heat sink isn't shorting anywhere is it?

 

[p0p]

same thing with the old psu. and the old heasink doesnt work on it either so the newone cant be shorting it....

 

[BadBigBen]

Sounds like you might have damaged the capacitors as you installed the the new HS-Fan... take a close look at them...

Ben

PS - your reasoning about the Performance is wrong... a better thermal regulation doesn't make a Processor run faster or shovel more bits back and forth... like said before it just makes for a better stability... Powersupply can make a performance boost, but only when the old was on the limit of its WATTAGE, the higher the wattage the more reserve for peripherials there is...

 

[p0p]

right i knw, the old was like a 250w, and the new one is 430w, so thats a boost, and i know that a new heatsink wont improve cpu sped drastically, but it does improve the cooling effiecy bringing down the cpu stress.

i kinda thoght about that (amaging the capacitors) because they sit very close to the cpu. i think you might be right i have new mainboard on the way so i guess ill see if that works and update you guys later, thanks for all of your help,

p0psickill

 

[cbs604]

Agree with everyone else about the performance boost - the components will draw their current from the psu up to its capacity. Exceed its capacity and you have problems. Provide more capacity and the components will still draw what they need and no more. Think of the psu as a dam. You will still draw the same amount of water at your house whether the dam is full or near empty.

About the problem. Is this an AT motherboard by chance and if so, is it possible you connected the power plugs around the wrong way? They are not keyed so it can easily happen. The connectors should have the black wires side by side.

Cheers,
Brodie

 

[jfryer]

Lets say I had a P3 that ran at 800mhz and it was powered by a 250W PSU.

That CPU runs at 800 mhz, now I attach a 550W PSU to the computer and funnily enough that CPU still only runs at 800 mhz that is its rated speed, that is the speed it will run at regardless what power you give it, it has absolutley nothing to do with the amount of power you supply it, it is totally depended on the clock speed and bus speed.

This CPU of mine is also running at around 40 degrees surface temp, so I put a huge whopping great big heat sink on it made out of copper (ooo shiney!), so now it is running at 30 degrees surface temp but funnily enough the CPU is STILL only running at 800 mhz (abeit a little cooler then before), a lump of copper cannot by the law of physics change the internal speed of a CPU (and if you have one that does let me know!!)

Increasing the power to a CPU DOES NOT increase its performance UNLESS the power supplied to the CPU originally was not enough, and even then it will not increase its performance in terms of raw mhz, it will just increase the stability.

IF you want to upgrade a computer then give it faster/better/more RAM, or hard disk, or CPU (all of which may require an increase in available power), but just increasing the power is pointless unless the computer was underpowered (unstable) before hand.

The only time a more powerful CPU and a better heat sink is useful is AFTER you have increased the powermance of a computer by overclocking, because it is then that he CPU may require more power and a better heat sink.

You mentioned you installed a new heat sink, I would check the capacitors around the heat sink and make sure you have not damaged any of them when installing the heat sink, and check the motherboard around the heat sink area also, in case you damaged the board, or damagedthe CPU by pushing down too had on the CPU when putting the heat sink in.

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There is no magic, only onions
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[p0p]

i neve siad that i thought the psu would improve cpu speed, nor did i say the heatsink would, the only way to increase cpu speed is to over clock, the cpu was running to hot, so i was running ineffiecently(pardon the spelling), so i put a more conductive (copper) heatsink on the cpu (the old one was aluminum i.e. less conductive) the compnents were drwaing to much voltage, hense slowing the computer down by hogging volts, so i put a stronger psu in, thus increasing the amount of power to go around and increasing perfomance. cooling a cpu does improve perforance, they would not sell hydro cooling kits and thermal gel/grease if it didnt, i didnt say speed, i sais performance.

the board is an atx, but thank you for the suggestion cbs

 

[jfryer]

Define "performance" as you see/think it is.

If you define it as "better stability" then I agree with you, both a stronger PSU and a better heatsink will increase your "performance"/stability, but ONLY if you were experiancing stability problems before hand.

A hot CPU does not run inefficiently (although it may run unstably), putting on a bigger heatsink only allows the heat to disapate faster, it does not stop the CPU from generating that heat in the first place (replace it with the old heatsink and it will get as hot as it used to, therefore it is still producing the same amount of heat regardless of what heatsink is on there, so there is NO CHANGE in the amount of heat produced, just a change in how you get rid of it).

And if the components in your system were drawing to many volts the cpu does not deciede to run at a slower mhz to compensate, nor does it pause for awhile to wait for more voltage, it simply crashes (or your RAM produces faults, or your HD glitches etc). What led you to believe that if another component draws off too much power from the PSU, the CPU runs at a slower rate (especially if you were not experiance system instability in the first place)?

They sell water kits and thermal gel to improve heat disapation because some cases (or the rooms they are in) have poor airflow and that can cause the CPU to heat up to a dangerous level, causing it to become unstable and stop working (or melt if you are really lucky). I replaced the stock aluminium heat sink on my Athlon 2800+ not because I thought I would see a performance improvement, but because the room the case is in gets hot in summer and I didnt want to risk the stability of my machine by letting it get over heated in summer. My CPU was reaching temps of 55-60 celcius, now it is a rare day if it reaches 45 celcius under full load (it still produces the same heat, but my new heat sink disapates it better so the on-diode temp does rise as much), but there was certianly no improvement in performance (however you measure it).

So again, how do you define performance, if it is not a speed measurement? Answer that and then we will know if we are talking about the same thing or not.

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There is no magic, only onions
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[paparazi]

nlm9802 regarding (star post)quote:
Upgrading the power supply is usually only necessary when upgrading to a newer motherboard/chipset, or adding peripherals that run off of system power, such as usb printers, scanners, and cameras.
Sorry to point this out but: printers/scanners and camera's generally are not USB powered and changing the motherboard/chipset in itself doesn't necessarily use more power.
Non powered hubs, and periferals that don't have their own power supply or batteries are designed to use USB power, and swapping out a motherboard/chipset but keeping the existing CPU will make a negligable differance to power consumption.

Performance is relative, I would say a rock solid and stable setup has good performance regardless of it's speed, I guess how pOp described it was a little unclear.
Martin



Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[nlm9802]

I think the point has been made that stability is part of performance, but is not the same performance the parts were upgraded for. I am referencing the original performance quote (just prior to my first post):
how do you figure they dont have performance boost? the more power coming in the better the performance of every device in the computer, and the more heat absorbed by the heatsink the better the performance of the cpu

as far as changing the motherboard/chipset, this usually will require a new cpu (though not always) so power consumption will increase unless you are downgrading
as far as peripherals, I wasnt referring to usb devices as the sole power hogs. If you have 4 IDE hard drives, 2 optical drives, 6 fans, an AGP Pro video card, and a water pump to power you will likely find a 250W power supply lacking the oomph, while the guy next to you with the p3 500, 40 GB hdd, and cdrom will be fine with it.. In this case upgrading the power supply would be a performace increase (for the first PC) in the sense that you won't be trying to pull more power than you have, so the system should be more stable. It will not free up watts for the CPU. The analogy of the dam was a good one. Think of a 250 watt power supply as a 250 ft tall dam filled to capacity, and a 430 as a 430 ft dam, also filled to the top. But.. all 430 watt power supplies are not created equal. Some have dual fans (in and out) to keep the power supply cooler. A cool running power supply is a happy one, and you will find as temperature increases, the actual ability to provide power decreases.

Also, note that when purchasing a heatsink that lowers your cpu temp by 10 degrees, this heat does not simply cease to exist. It is instead transferred to the air inside your PC. If you don't get the hot air out you are just wasting your time and money. As case temps increase the cpu will eventually hit the same temps as before. You should at the same time purchase an additional (or higher flowing) case fan to remove the heat from your system.

I think the horse has been thoroughly beaten now..

p0p: have you tried powering up the motherboard/cpu/ram/video/hdd/kb/mouse outside of the case?
what motherboard do you have? do you have access to a good p3 board that supports your cpu and memory?

 

[p0p]

well, i agree with the point nlm made, the dam analogy was perfect.

i put two case fans in to get the heat out of the case, so i thought of that too

i tried the motherboard/ram/cpu out side of the case thing and it didnt work, i did get the new p3 board in the mail, and it is running now, so it must have blown somewhere.

i would define performance as the effiencey (spelling) of the act of perfroming a purpose, not th speed, but that is just my defininton, im sorry if it doesnt match the correct/or anyone else's

but the pc is up and running faster now, it could be the second hdd, or the new psu, or both.

i dont undersatnd how you can not think that other devices drawing voltage wouldnt take away from the cpu's voltage?

 

[BadBigBen]

common misconception about the voltage... voltage stays the same, no matter if you have 1 lightbulb or 10 on a line... wattage is what is to be considered, a one lightbulb at 100w is minimal whereas 10 at 100w (are just that 1000w draw)... get the point...

Ben

 

[p0p]

oh my lord... i know...

look at wattage as a pool. and the devices as animals. each animal is going to draw from that pool. if i have a 250 foot pool, they have enough wattage (water) to drink, so long as a larger device or a device with a larger thirst doesnt come along. assuming i get a new device, or a larger animal, it would be a good idea to get a bigger pool for the animals to drink out of if the 250 foot pool was just big enough before. now the devices that require the higher voltage are getting it, with out sacrificing my overall wattage, and then some, so now my processor is getting 100% its required volts, and all of the devices are getting their required volts, and now when the want to burn a cd there systme doesnt lag.