XPC SN45 (v2) cooling problems!
I think I'm losing my mind over this.. I bought a SN45 (v2) box about 6 months ago, and it seems I never managed to get to work properly, that is I've been having cooling problems since the beginning. This is not my main rig, I'm a Mac guy, this is my low-end PC game box.
Specs: AMD Sempron 2800+, 768 MB of PC2700 RAM, 1 x 120 GB Maxtor HD, 1 x LiteOn DVD±R/RW drive, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro. (admittedly, nothing extreme at all). Win2k SP4 is currently installed on the drive, and the BIOS has already been updated to the latest one available on Shuttle's site.
The machine has been crashing a lot, the red CPU Heat LED on the mobo goes on after an abrupt shutdown; for a while last Spring, decreasing the FSB to 133 MHz has worked for most stuff (with the occasional crash while playing a CPU-intensive game). It was suggested to me to re-seat the heatsink/pipes, use better thermal grease, etc.
So I picked up silver grease yesterday (I had previously used white grease, which I guess is the silicon-based kind). Took the machine apart this morning, cleaned up the CPU and heatsink with rubbing alcohol, applied the new silver grease, put everything together again and turned it on. Well, I managed to check my BIOS settings and make sure the FSB was set to 133 MHz to give the box a not-too-stressful first run, saved, reboot, and crashed when Windows tried to load. Unplugged, re-plugged, boot, crash.
So it's worse than before.
Honestly, I'm starting to think I don't know what I'm doing, given the ICE heatpipe cooling scheme is supposed to be excellent. I also have no training in IT or computer-building whatsover, but I do read my manuals and look up proper methods online, so I don't think I'm an uneducated dork who's going gung-ho on my hardware.
What am I doing wrong? It ain't rocket science, unless I severely missed something in the manuals (tho I wonder if the machine would run at all if that were the case). Any help is greatly appreciated!
