• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Help me! PIII Overheating!

atari2600a said:
He claimed it to have dropped the tempurature to 40-something degrees ferinheit. Does this sound realistic to you guys?
Click to expand...


Wow, does he keep his computer inside a refrigerator? Perhaps he dropped the cpu temp BY 40F, say from 130F to 90F. It's possible, I suppose, if the room was rather cool. As I mentioned earlier, my Athlon 3200+ now idles at 91F with room temp being about 76F. And this is actually with a physically smaller heatsink, but a better fan. A bit noisy, but I can live with it if my computer is stable.

Kent
 
Hm, well any opinions on whether I should install 256MB more RAM & cut off the PageFile, or whether I should replace the Graphics card with a dual-VGA one or just install a PCI VGA card?
 
mbbrutman said:
No, not unless the machine was in a refrigerator first.

A fan and heat sink can only help make a device as cool as the air blowing across it. If the room temperature is 72F, all of the fans in creation won't get the temperature of the CPU down to 71F.
Click to expand...

According to the laws of thermodynamics, you won't even be able to bring the temperature in the wake of the fan all the way down to exactly 72F, there'll always be a certain amount of loss (entropy).

--T
 
Dual head is overrated, IMHO. Unless you work with video editing, some form of DTP/3D modelling or other application requiring big windows open, two displays next to eachother is only annoying.

RAM or a swap file? Well, they don't fill the same function. If you want to put the swap on a separate disk, maybe you can find a reasonably fast 8-10 GB disk to add to your system. IIRC, Windows 98 can't utilize more than 256 MB in an efficient way anyhow, but maybe you are using 2000 or XP.. Did you check the current SDRAM modules which speed they are certified for, if you're going to reset the settings to obtain the original 533 MHz? Maybe you'll find a boost in speed going from ~400 to 533 and getting compatible SDRAMs. Once you have PC-133 and have checked which CPUs your motherboard supports, you could go out shopping for e.g. Pentium III 800 or 1000 MHz or higher as you wish.
 
Well though I do do video editing & other things that require large windows, I won't be using my PIII for it. Maybe Macromedia Director MX 2004 might work at 533MHz, but not Adobe Premiere!

I do, however, plan to do alot of HTML programming on this machine. Having a dual monitor setup will make things easier, since I wouldn't have to keep maximizing & minimizing my Firefox &/or Notepad window.
 
Last edited:
Semi-Great news! After just recently skimming through my Motherboard's manual, I realized that I don't have one or two jumpers set properly! Do you know what this means!? My CPU is still locked! This means that my CPU was running at standard speed the whole time! It wasn't set to 3x133MHz, it was at 4x133MHz! The only reason CPU-Z says my CPU is running at 495MHz was because the bus speed was 124MHz!
 
Atari, about the pagefile being on a flashcard it really isn't that expensive. It's old technology and I found it all at geeks.com for less than $100 after you add it all up.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=CF_ADP-DT&cpc=SCH&srm=0

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=JJ-PC1012-DT&cpc=SCH&srm=0

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SDCFB-512-R&cpc=SCH&srm=0

32.00+11.00+17.00=50.00 for pci pcmcia adapter, pcmcia-flash card adapter, and the 512mb flash card. The stuff's been around for a long time and isn't hot caca anymore. Long way to get to the barn but it works. The prices I quoted are rounded up and doesn't include shipping, though. Just a thought for ya. I did my swapfile experiment on a laptop that already had a pcmcia slot.

Nathan
 
495 MHz? I thought you said 405 MHz earlier in this thread. In any case, if the motherboard is supposed to support higher bus speeds, try to figure out why it was clocked down. Maybe SDRAMs are functional with a bit of overclocking, but not all the way to 133 MHz. I can not stress enough number of times the importance of understanding that running on a higher bus speed than the memory is designed for can be a big risk for crashes.
 
I thought it was at 405MHz, but remember that the CPU was locked & I didn't realize that! The whole time, the Multiplier was at 4, when I thought it was at 3! It's running at 496MHz because it was overheating (Remember?) & I turned down the clock speed. (For all n00bs, clock speed isn't locked by the CPU)

Also, why did you buy a PCMCIA-tO-PCI adapter & then buy a PCMCIA-To-CF adapter when you could of just gotten a PCI-To-CF adapter? (Yes, they make those now)
 
...or, just install a PCI<-->USB card and one of those 8-in-one card readers. ('Round here, we use SD/MMC, CF, SmartMedia, as well as straight PCMCIA Flash, so that seems to be a good solution for about the same cost (cheep!)).

--T
 
Yes, but the data would have to go through too much unneccissary IC's before it'd got to/from the CF card. I mean, If it was going through USB, I minus well be using a thumb drive!
 
If your apps are thrashing your hard drive too much, you should consider enlarging your pagefile, so that it will hold all of the data that the program needs, instead of paging portions of it in and out constantly.

--T
 
Of course, if your pagefile exceeds your (available) RAM, then a certain amount of paging will still be necessary (at which point, you should consider either upgrading your computer, or downgrading your software to something that the hardware can handle more easily).

--T
 
Last edited:
Another stick of 256MB wouldn't be expensive (on eBay, they go pretty cheap). 512MB would help things a lot. As I mentioned before, processors are cheap, especially if you offset the cost by selling your old one. What is your mainboard?

I still think that setting the system to factory specifications, a nice fresh install of Windows 98SE and the latest drivers, you'll end up with something really quite useable for emulators and such.

And get that thermal paste sorted out :lol:

I have a system here, AMD K6 333MHz, 256MB memory and a 20BG hard drive, it runs really nicely.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top