A4000 over heating!!!

Hey guys,

I have a minty condition a4k in its original (cramped) case. It has been expanded considerably, and I am finding now that the weather is warming up it starts to behave erratically (and unstable) after running for more than 10 minutes.

It will crash, get recoverable alert after recoverable alert and the mouse will start jerkily moving about by itself!

Several of the chips on the a4k board get very hot, as does the 060 and daughterboard.

I was going to simply add one of those PCI slot vent fans... but I have no zorro slots free!

The machine is as follows:

A4k desktop with ks 3.1 and 16 mb fast on mb
Deneb USB Card
Cybervision 64/3d Card with Scan Doubler Module
DKB 3128 card with 128 Mb installed
Ariadne II network card
Cyberstorm Mk III 060 (overclocked to a modest 56 Mhz) 128 Mb on board
Seagate Cheetah 73 Gb Scsi HD
IDE DVD Burner
IDE Compact Flash to IDE Adapter with 4GB Card
350watt ATX PSU adapted to the original a4k psu case
USB 3d Sound Card plugged into the internal usb port of the Deneb card

The a4k and most boards have had caps replaced etc. A4k mb has had new battery, op amps etc installed.

It seems to me to be a heat problem (I have run memory test programs dozens of times with no errors found), but how do I cool it down?

it may be a PSU problem. get a multimeter and check if you have right voltages on 5v 12v lines. If you are still using the stock a4000 psu it maybe having its final moments. You may need to convert a ATX PSU.

Lol, you are aas bad as me for reading posts! :)

Psu has already been upgraded to a 350watt ATX psu (all voltages within 5% of norm).

oops sorry :)

Lol, think nothing of it. :)

would it be so bad to fit a case fan? ....

i know drilling a 80mm / 100mm hole in the steel case could be a problem?

i'll be in a similar situation if i can ever afford PPc in my A4000

Take the top off and put a fan on it to see if it still overheats.

Have run it simply with the case off and seems to run fine for over an hour. Put the case on and within 15 minutes its going crazy again.

Fitting a case fan would be a shame - to butcher a mint a4k case. Having said that, if I knew a single fan in the right place would fix the problem I would probably just bite the bullet and do it. Problem is, where to mount it? There is no space left in the case to mount anything! :(

i think id experiment with somehow placing a case fan over the cpu card area and testing it? i would think an 80 / 100 or even a slow spinning 120mm fan above the cpu area blowing or sucking .

i know about not wanting to fit a case fan on a mint case but needs must...

ive spent many years with poor pc cooling doing the same thing lol !! i gave up in the end and bought a mac - no fan noise , bliss

Got any photos of the inside?

One slightly nutty idea that would give you more space inside and give you a bit of flexibility would be to remove your CDRom and go with an external system.

Otherwise what about mounting a Slot exhaust fan on the grill at the far right hand side (from the back) internally.

http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...8HGYdROtLBdPBw
You may have to bodge it a bit, but with a bit of searching and measuring you might find something that would fit.

Either that, the simplest option would be to towerize the whole lot for when it gets warmer.
That would take a bit of hackery to get some supportive structures to hold the daughterboards etc, but it would be your best option I suppose.