Broadband Ram Question.

  

yrag scratches head......  

What, exactly is the question???????

I run AutoCAD and it's a hog. 1 gb should work Ross. That Celeron processor is probably more responsible than your physical memory.

Oye...

broadband

fan

ram

= What?

OK, I'll try to make this real simple, then.

My motherboard keep getting hot. Hence, the fan keep kicking on.

What can I do to make it stop?

I have 1 gig of ram and I know I need more. I've read people having as much as 4 gig's. How much is enough and what is to much? Is it a simple thing as just getting a better processor or do I need to go to extremes and get a new motherboard?

Ok, Ross, now I got ya. The CPU fan is always on, but it might have cycled up to compensate for heat. What makes you think the 'board' is hot?

I think you're right about the processor.
I just needed a second opinion.

Thought someone might know something else that I may have over looked.

I'm just guessing about the board.
The fan doesn't stay on, but it does go on from time to time.

The heat could be caused by any number of things. Case fans, power supply, dirt and even room temperature. Make sure all the fans are running and leave the side of the case off and see if the CPU fan goes back to normal. If your machine is hot, it will slow it down. I don't agree about the CPU update versus the memory.....I'd go for the RAM. Very honestly though, your setup is fairly well balanced...I'd leave it be.

The fan doesn't stay on, but it does go on from time to time.

I typed the above before I read that. That's your 'heat' problem right there. It should be running all the time. Either take the fan off and clean it or use compressed air with it on.

You might want to try to download SpeedFan to see what is going on:
WWW Link

Oh and more details:

SpeedFan allows you to have a deeper view of the status of your computer. Almost every computer includes support for hardware monitoring. Accessing digital temperature sensors is really useful. If you are trying to figure out why your pc hangs when under heavy load or after some hours of usage, SpeedFan might help you to find the real cause. Very often it is a poor power supply, or an improperly installed heatsink that lead to behaviours that we tend to associate with errors from the operating system, but that are not. SpeedFan automatically searches your computer for interesting chips: the hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can expose voltages, fan speeds and temperatures. On rare occasions, the BIOS doesn't activate such features. SpeedFan tries to enable them as long as this is a safe thing to do. Not only the motherboard is searched, but also some video cards and almost every recent hard disk. SpeedFan can access status info from EIDE, SATA and even SCSI drives, showing, in a consistent way, internal data that can be used to diagnose current and future hard disk failures. This is known as S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology). At the lowest level, SpeedFan is an hardware monitor software that can access digital temperature sensors, but its main feature is that it can control fan speeds according to the temperatures inside your pc, thus reducing noise.

Thanks yrag. Good points.

And thanks Larry. I'll check it out. Very useful advice.

That speedfan program can't be right. says my HDD is running at a temp of 122F. That's not right at all.

Sorry to say, I had to delete it.
You don't want it running while you're doing "anything".
Computer kept seizing up and major delays.
Maybe, I was just using it wrong.

I don't agree about the CPU update versus the memory.....I'd go for the RAM. Very honestly though, your setup is fairly well balanced...I'd leave it be.

I wasn't recommending a CPU update I just meant that for the Fan issue it was a more likely candidate than the amount of ram if DSL service is causing the fan to ramp up.

OK, after all this fantastic feedback, what I'll probably do it boost my ram up 1GB and update the prosessor.
With Vista coming, I'm probably alright, but I think it couldn't hurt.

Thanks everyone.

I think you are overthinking this, frankly. Most likely what is happening is your fan is either dirty inside or dying, and instead of kicking on and off, it is just spinning down because it isn't working properly. I've seen computers run with a fan like that for a long time, and with processors far hotter than should be survivable.

I wouldn't upgrade anything until I needed to. It would be a shame to waste money on upgrades only to find that you'd be better off just building/buying a new machine for Vista. Once you have your fan issue fixed, I'd assess whatever else might be wrong.

It should have nothing whatsoever to do with your connection speed, though.

I've found that whenever I watch movie trailers one right after the other, 4 or 5 times that the fan kicks on.
OR, if I run Skin Studio and reapply a wb skin multiple times, then the fan will kick on, just for a few min.

I know I'm eating up the memory....
I will agree on the connection speed. It's not what it's doing. It's what I'm doing, that's the problem. Need to get my computer compatible with ME.

ME? Well, that could be part of your problem right there.

I guess one thing I'd have to ask is what the real problem is. If your fan is supposed to be kicking on, and it kicks on, why worry about it? If your performance isn't degrading, then you don't have a problem.

If you computer is running hot, again, you don't know how many fans I've replaced from people over the years who had me there to "overhaul" a slow system. If your fan is clogged or wearing out, you'll have system slowdown as the computer gets hot. If you aren't having problems, and you think the fan thing is your computer purposely controlling it, I don't see really what there is to fix.

Maybe I'm not being clear about the fan.

You see if your computer controls the fan, it gauges the RPM. A new, well behaved fan might maintain a good RPM without much noticeable effort. As it wears out and get dirty inside, it slows down and is more difficult to turn.

The computer sees the RPMs drop and sees the system temperature and decides to throttle it up. This would make it seem like your computer is hotter and working harder than normal, when in reality your fan is just slower and having to work harder to keep the RPM the motherboard is requesting.

Regardless, it would be a serious mistake, imho, to put more money into this system before a) you know what is really wrong, and whether not it CAN be upgraded to work well with Vista.

Need to get my computer compatible with ME.

I meant to say, need to get it compatible with (myself), not "WindowME".
Too funny.

Thank BakerStreet. I'll take it into concideration.

OK, after all this fantastic feedback, what I'll probably do it boost my ram up 1GB and update the prosessor. With Vista coming, I'm probably alright, but I think it couldn't hurt.

I can't believe people are upgrading to Vista. I can't wait to say "Told you so."

Kona, if you are ever in the position to say 'told you so', you relish it, mmkay?

I have to agree with BakerStreet, on this one, kona.
It's not a "want to", but more a "have to". Long story. (Skinning in general).

---

Even after I thought what I was going to do, BakerStreet has made a few good points, also.

For now, I think I'll wait and see what happens.
Get my fan running right and go from there. Nothing major, yet.
Thanks.

Kona...Kona....Kona.....what are we goin' to do with you?   

Lantec: didn't mean for my 'disagreement' to sound so ...ah....disagreeable. Sorry 'bout that.  

Z71: Clean that fan and I'm sure all will be right with the world again. Baker's right; find the problem, then ponder grander things. Don't want the lack of a machine to put a damper on your well-honed skinning skills  

My CPU fan is controlled by a rheostat [knob] on the front of the PC...and I run 'Motherboard Monitor' giving me a constant temp readout for case and CPU....so depending on load and/or climate I simply adjust manually.  Currently both are at 35c...

I fixed a friend's machine the other day...she'd thought she had trashed it when it locked up during a kid's game...and she yanked out the power cord [without turning anything off].  I was expecting all sorts of 'spikes' having killed mobo/cpu/ram or simply the PSU....but it fired up for me ok.....

Closer inspection....the P4 'standard' fan/heatsink was only clipped in on one side...so there was no proper contact with paste, etc with the cpu.....hence the lockup....overheating issues when in the game.

Heat can often be overlooked as an issue...

BTW....NEVER yank out a live power cable from ANYTHING.

It is ONLY a last resort in a life-threatening situation, as it itself is life-threatening...