SSBA

Had the CPU loaded up today and all of the sudden she just completely turned off, nary a warning or anything....booted it back up after about 10-15 mins and it went down again almost right away...waited about 1/2 hour and tried to boot it up again, no luck whatsoever. Unplugged it, waited 2 hours, plugged it back in and here we are...


Is this a really, really bad thing? And does anyone know what could have caused it and if it might be a perm. problem?

thermal problems. overheating. if you have a cpu monitor coming with your mainboard, thry to check the temperature ... or maybe your BIOS has some setting for that. Usually modern mainboards are configured to turn off (not shut down, completely power off instantly) once the temp reaches a certain level ... simply to prevent damage to the HW.

But of course, doesn't tell you WHY the overheating takes place:

most logical reason: the cpu cooler is gone. just open the case and watch the mainboard/cpu cooler open booting, if it's a fan, does it work (passive coolers i have no idea how to check those)

unlikely reason: your cooling fan in the case died, and the inside of the computer overheats. This is even easier to see, as the fan simply doesn't run.

yeah, it's most likely overheating.  it *could* be bad RAM, but you'd likely get a bluescreen from that, not the computer shutting off.

The good news is it's much cheaper to replace the fan/cooling than a CPU/motherboard.  The bad news is I wouldn't run it until it's fixed.

and if it's like that (cpu overheating) it will run longest when the PC had been turned off for a couple of hours, and shorter (before shutting down) the earlier you start it again.

Thanks alot Tom+Derek

I opened er up and the fan is running, looked up on yahoo answers how to check the coolant and i did that, it was good

i think maybe the problem was the tower was up against the desk...and that was blocking the vent....i've been monitoring the temperature and it seems nice and normal