Hello all, I'm new to the board. I did a search but hadn't come up with anything; please forgive my (slightly) inebriated query...

I built a system around a P5k-e about a month ago. Everything has been great up until an hour ago or so. Suddenly things slowed to a crawl. After a hard reboot I ran Asus PC Probe (or whatever it's called) and found that my mobo temperature was at 45c. After letting it cool off a few hours I tried again, but the temperature slowly crawled back up until I had to shut down again. The heat is concentrated in the cooling pipe near the CPU, but the CPU itself is OK.

Of course, this has all happened just a few days after newegg's 30 day return on the board has expired.

So my question is, is this board faulty? Can the problem be remedied with more powerful fans, perhaps a better case, etc? I'm very nervous because this is my work machine- it pays my rent. I've built quite a few PC's before but this is my first since the 478 days. This machine replaced my old intel 478 1.8g dinosaur I'd been using.

Specs: Asus P5k-e, Intel Q6600 2.4 (no OC), 4gigs Kingston KHX series 1066 RAM, 2x Seagate 250gig SATA HDs (no RAID), Asus EN7200GS 256M Video card (fanless, admittedly generates a bit of heat), 1 LiteOn SATA DVDR, 1 LiteOn IDE DVD rom, floppy drive, internal 3.5 USB/FW hub, Zalman CNPS9500A LED CPU cooler (fan speed turned up max for now), Zalman ZM750 PSU. The case is the same Lian-Li PC-61 case I was using for my previous build (large aluminum tower case). Three 80mm case fans (2 front, 1 rear). Currently they're all connected to the mobo. I'd like to replace the rear fan with something better.

This PC is a dual-boot running Windows Vista Ultimate (32) in which I experienced the problem, and XP home. It's configured as a music production/DAW/Pro Tools system. The problem occurred while running a particular Pro Tools session which had a lot of processing but still was not taxing the CPU very hard.

Any ideas? Or do I need to contact ASUS?

45C is not that hot. PC probe is not very accurate though.

Are you sure you didn't just pick up a virus or something that caused your system to work hard and stole your CPU cycles?

My PC Probe will also report 45c or even 48c when working.

Thanks for the reply.

Interesting. I suppose I had assumed that it was hot since the alert threshold was set there. I am not used to seeing such high temperatures since my older 478 systems obviously did not generate so much heat.

I suppose a virus is possible. However, the computer keeps locking up at around the same temp.

Last night I tried running it again with the side of the case taken off. The temp hovered at 42 for a while and seemed OK until it crept up a bit and then the computer stopped working. I was able to move the mouse cursor but everything else was frozen. I was forced to do a hard shut-down.

I guess I'll try running some antivirus to rule that out. But it seems to be behaving as if heat is the problem. My CPU temps are still fine, though.

I really hope I don't need to replace the mobo, though.

Well, as I said PC probe isn't the best.

I have to wonder if your northbridge somehow got overvolted.

Make sure the northbridge heatsink is on well and not pulled away...

It's pretty odd for a board to suddenly start overheating, but I guess if a voltage regulator failed that might do it.

Thanks again. I'm pretty worried about getting this machine running smoothly again since I need to get working soon.

Just a minute ago I booted up my XP partition and installed speedfan. After only having booted up a minute ago, it's showing me a couple hot temps, if I'm reading correctly:

I was worried about that "AUX" temp but now realize it means nothing. I guess the above graphic doesn't help for now.

Still, I'm about to poke around the case and see if there's anything wrong. But I'm beginning to fear a mobo replacement. Say it ain't so!

Supposing I do need to swap mobos, should I get something else? What would be comparable that would run all my same components, or am I getting ahead of myself?

Well, here's a rather embarrassing update. It seems two things must have happened simultaneously. I've been running the PC all day and the temp has stayed around 42/43. What I now believe happened is that something was conflicting with Vista. Exactly what I don't know. But I saw the alert in PC Probe and assumed that was the problem.

Yesterday was my first day off in several weeks. My troubleshooting skills must have been considerably dulled by the couple of generous glasses of Scotch that I had.

Yeah, the thing is an overheating NB should produce crashing and errors, not slowing. An overheating CPU will throttle back.

42/43 "sys" idle temp might be high... I can't really say too much about this chipset, I don't know. If XP continues to be happy and healthy then obviously it's just a vista problem... could even be a driver issue.

I used a P5K board on a friends build (slighly less cooling for NB) and it seemed to idle at around the mid 40c as well, and its still running strong after more than a year. I think the P35's are a little hot and as Prox said the PC Probe isnt real good for temps. Id be happy with what youve got, adding some more air flow to the case couldnt hurt. Without looking the case up maybe you can add some nice 120mm fans instead of the 80's?

Thanks, guys. I'm using SpeedFan now. I think it was something else (driver or something) causing the problem but I saw the alert and assumed that was it. It seems OK now.

I'm keeping an eye on it for now. I think (and hope) that it will be OK.
Thanks again.