I'm embarrassed! I wandered and missed all these posts. Thanks for the advice, everyone. Here's my experience: For a few weeks, I kept my Gigabyte's board "Smart 6" overclocking turned on to keep away the electronic chatter. I wasn't really interested in overclocking, but it seemed easiest option. H...

I've just assembled a new system (parts below). The power supply was making a regular faint noise, like interference : chk-chk, pause, chk-chk, pause. The same PSU was in my previous computer and worked fine for a year. I ran Everest's CPU stress test and the sound went away. Stop the test and it co...

Count me in.

A last update in case anyone finds themselves with a similar problem. The problem was not with the Antec power supply. Instead, the Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard had its default VCore set too high for an Athlon 64 3200+ rev E3 processor. There's no way to change the VCore through the current BIOS, but...

> It really sounds like some kind of over-temperature > protection kicking in, though. I tried an experiment, allowing heat to accumulate in the case without pushing the CPU too hard. (I threw a duvet over it. High tech.) Before, under a heavy load, the system would power down exactly at 50 degrees....

I'm now leaning toward the BIOS too, although I feel like I've checked every setting and subsetting. However, I see other ASUS boards have a CPU Overheating Protection (COP) feature which triggers a heat-based shutdown much like I'm experiencing. I'll check with the Asus forums and tech support. I d...

Okay, setting the target CPU temperature to 62C did not affect when the shutdown happens -- 50C. (I've lowered the setting to 44C to make the system more usable for now.) Asus Probe actually gives two temperatures: CPU and PWR (which I took to mean "power" or "power supply" -- perhaps a reach, since...

The target temperature was originally set at 50 degrees, which made it seem like a likely suspect. I've previously moved it up to 56 degrees, but the system still shut down at 50. I'll go try moving it to 60.

Tim Mitchell

I was pleased with the stock cooler's noise level too. What's the rest of your system like? I have an AMD 64 3200+ too and I reach 50C under stress testing fairly quickly. It's an inexpensive quiet-not-silent system for my wife, so I haven't done a lot of inventive cooling. How are you adjusting the...

The PSU fan monitor wasn't originally plugged in, but I did plug it in while trying to solve this problem. No difference, except I can now monitor the PSU inside fan's RPM (just over 1000). With DOS, I was talking about the bootable version of memtest. I think it runs under DR-DOS, although I've bee...

I should mention that the other reason I'm wondering about the SP-400 is that it has a variety of protection circuits. Devon Cooke and MikeC's review of the SP-450 mentioned a bum unit that tripped its protection too soon, so I started to wonder if I was seeing something similar.

Tim Mitchell

I have a new PC that consistently powers down when the motherboard temperature monitor reaches 50 degrees Celsius on the CPU or Power readings. (The two stats are always within a degree.) There's no freezing. The system just powers down. This happens in Windows and DOS. I've gone through the BIOS se...

Do you mean you're getting a lot of yellow unknowns in your Windows Device Manager setting? If so, you may need to apply Intel's Chipset drivers. I had to do this just the other day. Here's an excellent walkthrough: http://www.techsupportforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7599&forumid=15 Tim Mitc...

I like the simplicity of the foam option, but I suppose there isn't much hope of silencing more than one drive this way. I must admit, setting a hard drive upside down and on foam seems frighteningly casual to me. My hard drives usually demand that I sacrifice birds to them or they'll go pfft. But n...