AMD Athlon CPU heats up, fans screaming like there is no tomorrow

[SilentSoul]

I've been using PCLOS in my laptop few years now. Over the last six months the CPU has began heating a bit too warm which is stopped by the cooling fan screaming on full power for few minutes until it cools down again.

I used to monitor the CPU temperature and discovered that the heat in the beginning was 50 Celcius (122 F)and it rose up to 75 - 83 Celcius (167 - 181 F) before the fan kicked in. I browsed through this forum and found some tips like using cpufreq and stuff. I installed every one of those programs mentioned and tried to run them either in Konsole or GUI - without results. I either could't alter the CPU's frequency or the program was silent as a stone.

Then I found out that installing a a.64-kernel might help. Right now I'm running 2.6.32.21-pclos1.a64 kernel. I cannot say it has made an improment to any direction. The heat is still as high as before and the fan screams as before.

The older version of PowerDevil allowed me to manually control the CPUs, but on this latest version I cannot do it. The only option in the CPU -tab is to tick the "allow system power saving system in this machine" (or something like that). I remember this had more options in it before.

Some specs of my machine:
HP Compaq 615 laptop
AMD Athlon(tm)X2 DualCore QL-64 (x2, DualCore)
CPU Frequency 2100.238 at the moment of writing
And a long list of misc stuff: ‎fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni cx16 lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy 3dnowprefetch osvw skinit
Also it says that the CPU has been protected from modifications which indicates that I cannot manually play around with it's frequency.

That is unfortunantely all the information I can come up on this matter. Please let me know if there's anything more info of my machine which you may find helpful on this matter, and I'll see if I can dug them up.

I appreciate all help given at this moment.

[scoundrel]

1 ? .. have you opened it up and cleaned it ??

also you'll need to check your BIOS for CPU temp and fan levels .... since pclos worked fine before .. my guess is dirt

[Was_Just19]

......  and while you have it open for cleaning take the heatsink off the CPU and clean both off and then replace the thermal compound that goes between them ........  make sure you get the compound before attempting this   

[SilentSoul]

The opening is a bit of a problem for me since I don't have the appropriate screws. I have to have a look on this matter later. I did buy a can of pressurized air and blew it through the holes of the case - no dust came out.

I cannot check anything from BIOS because there is nothing I can change there. I only see that I have a double-core CPU.

[ElCuervo]

Have you tried monitoring the CPU activity via top, gkrellm, or similar to see if there is some process working it to death? Running at 100% of capacity can really warm up a CPU.

[SilentSoul]

Have you tried monitoring the CPU activity via top, gkrellm, or similar to see if there is some process working it to death?

By choosing Ctrl+Esc I can see the table of processes. The most my CPU uses right now are Ktorrent (5-7%), Firefox (4-6%) and X (5 - 15%).

I'll be taking this baby to a shop in the near future and aske them to open it and see how much dust and cr.. eh, fertilizer really is there.

[T6]

"even though i would not do it on a portable machine, dont trust the techs that much"

thanks for that! 

[vjeko]

t6, dont think youre ever seen the most sincere tech handling stuff at the shop, not a nice sight, like an elephant in the china shop, theyre not accounted for, since they received the stuff checking it on visual basis, the customer is to pay for the negligence and mishandling in the end

[T6]

thanks for that too 

[scoundrel]

well... glad you two got over your wee spat ...  lets keep to the topic shall we ??

[Dragynn]

Okay, coupla thangs need ta be said here...

1. pressurized air in a can. What a friggin ripoff, do NOT support this nonsense. If you don't own a compressor, take yer machine to a friend that does, the canned air does not have enough pressure to do SQUAT!

2. Thermal paste is another ripoff. I've been using the same synthetic wheel-bearing grease that I use on my 4-wheel drives for years, it's 10 times better than that overpriced junk they sell you, it's actually made to withstand much higher temperatures, and yet still retain it's viscosity and heat-transfer abilities. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper.

just sayin'...

[T6]

"it's actually made to withstand much higher temperatures, and yet still retain it's viscosity and heat-transfer abilities"

it could be harmful to the processor, it could release minerals that can cause problems on the components

the thermal paste properly applied should last for 3+ years on most processors and since you buy lots of it to put on almost 10 processors, the thermal paste still sounds good to me

[Dragynn]

"it's actually made to withstand much higher temperatures, and yet still retain it's viscosity and heat-transfer abilities"

it could be harmful to the processor, it could release minerals that can cause problems on the components

the thermal paste properly applied should last for 3+ years on most processors and since you buy lots of it to put on almost 10 processors, the thermal paste still sounds good to me

What minerals might that be exactly? Any proof of that statement? It seems a bit implausible since wheel-bearing grease is specifically formulated to not only be used on metal parts on a daily basis, but is specifically made to prevent damage to them.

You check out a processor thats had that crappy paste applied after 3 years, it will be STUCK to the processor, think that it's still performing the job it was intended to do?

I just replaced the processor in my motherboard after 5 years of daily use, because I wanted to upgrade to a dual-core, not because of any failure, the old processor still looks brand new and works great, and the heatsink was not stuck to the processor like thermal paste will do, it slid right off and the grease was STILL in great shape and doing it's job...let me just re-state that: 5 years.

I can provide a picture of the old processor if you like, even magnified if you want so you can see there is no "mineral" damage, whatever the heck that is.

Grease is grease. Some is better than others. The stuff they foist on consumers as being "thermal paste" specifically for computers, is just plain old white lithium grease, available at your local auto parts store for a FRACTION of what you pay for "thermal paste".

Save the propaganda for the sheep brother.

[T6]

this forum is not what used to be 

i said could, about thermal paste, i know something about it, i work with it, 12 years and counting, if you don't agree with what i wrote save your opinion for yourself and go to any other place with your propaganda crap, useless here when all i wanted was to share with others the few things i know

[Dragynn]

this forum is not what used to be 

i said could, about thermal paste, i know something about it, i work with it, 12 years and counting, if you don't agree with what i wrote save your opinion for yourself and go to any other place with your propaganda crap, useless here when all i wanted was to share with others the few things i know

Yeah I hear ya, got almost 40 years experience with it myself, my father actually helped develop most of the heat-transfer substances that are in current use today back in the 60's and 70's when he worked at NASA, I got my degree in electronics roughly 12 years before your "experience" started...

As for my opinion, why should I save it for myself? It's okay for you to post opinion, but not for me? I need to take it elsewhere? wow.

But I understand, you have been here a long time, and I am new, so I will stand down now, and say i'm sorry if I offended you in any way.