WTB: Nforce2 Socket A motherboard

As summer has come my poor 2500+ and 2800+ XP-Ms are running hot. To add to that fact they're VIA and the trash runs them hot. 150F is not what they should be at. Any nforce2 motherboard would be nice, preferably an ASUS if possible.

 

To be honest, you'd probably see a bigger heat difference by investing in better CPU coolers.

Might also want to consider lowering the CPU voltage in the BIOS, see if you can get them running stable on less.

 

Get a MSI K7N2G. Thats what I run my 2500+ XP with for 2 years before I got my 64bit Athlon. Those boards are insanely good. AGP 8X Dual Channel Ram, 3 or 4 fan ports on the mobo for temp monitoring and like 6 or 7 PCI slots. Also its great for overclocking and seems to run very cool. It has large heatsinks and optional fans for the n.bridge and the s.bridge. When I got mine I picked it up for about 150 new in like 2002. You should be able to ebay it for cheap.

I would sell you my old one but I gave it to my brother. My buddy has a ASUS board in his old comp but I dont know if he will part with it. I will ask him next time I see him.

Aside from that, you could try just repasting the CPU to its heatsink. Use Artic Silver if you can find and afford it. Also make sure to be careful when you seperate them as if they havent been seperated for a while the cpu may come out attacked to the heatsink and bend pins. :noooo:


Hope one of those works out for you. Good luck!

 

A better cpu cooler would only be masking the underlying problem. My 2500+ was 100F idle in my old A7N8X-X and now idles at 123-132F in a crappy DFI Lan Party with VIA.

The other is an XP-M. IMO it should never reach the temps it does at an idle rate.

 

Oh man. I was sellling mine about a few weeks ago but they have been sold.

How are you getting your temp readings? From the mobo? Via motherboards tend to be slow and unaccurate. What kind of heatsink you currently have? Try getting a pure copper heatsink and tidy up the case to maximize airflow in it. You're better off checking ebay for a motherboard.

If you are interested in a videocard I have a 9600 Pro all in wonder I'm trying to sell for $50. Comes will all the input cables, manual, and CDs.

 

What "underlying" problem? The problem is the CPU runs hot, and the most likely cause is the fansink setup on top of it. Motherboards really shouldn't have any direct effect on processor temperature (although the northbridge may add to ambient temperature inside the case if not sufficently cooled). Most likely you CPU heatsink is clogged with dust, and during hot times of year like this your system will run much hotter anyway.

To be honest, 123F really isn't that hot for a 2500 anyway. That's about 50C, which is high if the chip isn't overclocked, but still nothing to be too concerned about. Are you on stock cooling, incidentally?

 

Stock cooling for 3 years on my A7N8X-X and it always idled at 100F unless the room temp was high. Switch to VIA and it shoots to 123F. Went from the thermal pad it came with to ceramique. The motherboard is at fault. My XP-M shouldn't be running anywhere near what it is especially with the fact its running with a much better heatsink than what was in the laptop it came from. Right now the readings for the XP-M come off Asus Probe which I found with my old board to be accurate, at least to what the board will supply. I'd try the heatsink swap with copper but it shouldn't be necessary.

Basically what it comes down to is the fact that I hate via and want nforce2. The temps were just the last straw.

 

Stock cooling on XP series AMD CPUs was worthless. I totally understand you preferring Nforce2 to VIA, that's a legitimate reason for replacement if it bothers you that much, but you should be aware that the likelihood is that the motherboard itself isn't causing CPU overheating issues (you should seriously look at dropping some CPU core voltage if possible, the settings may well have been different between motherboards). Anyway, the temperatures you're reporting are not going to be causing problems, so if you are going to replace it, you're doing it purely for chipset preference.

Nforce2 boards should be practically free off ebay by now, so it's going to be cheap whichever way you decide to go.