Maybe you've got a faulty RAM chip.

Yes, even though it IS a possibility, i don't think so really. I tested the RAM chips on 2 or 3 other machines and it works great. Also, It seesm that the crashes MAY be caused somehow by the OS. It never dies on me in Linux fro some reason.
Yes, it is a possibility, but I don't think that's the reason.

Overheating?

hmm, out of curiosity, what would overheating have to do with it? It MAY actually be overheating, but how would that make it restart? Also note: Linux doesn't seemto have that problem whenever i run it.

No not overclocking. Motherboard does not support overclocking anyways! I'll check out the Event logs and If i find something interesting or susicious I'll post it here.

"hmm, out of curiosity, what would overheating have to do with it? It MAY actually be overheating, but how would that make it restart"
 
Unexplained reboots for no apparent reason is a classic symptom of a PC overheating.
The CPU gets too hot, system simply re-boots itself.
Not all systems simply freeze or slow down when they get too hot, most just re-boot.
If you were serious in your comment 'It MAY actually be overheating' then you might want to take a look at things, see if you can increase air flow, make sure the HSF is correctly making contact with the CPU core etc.

I see. I think it may be overheating actualy. I do NOT have a heat sink! All i have is a mall fan! Yes, I know you want to shoot me, but I'll look for a Heat Sink and a HUGE processor fan, as well as a system fan soon hopefully. right now college work is getting over my head. LOL

Get yourself some Arctic Silver as your thermal paste.

Sure will. One other problem is that the BIOS seems t reset itself every now and then. I have no idea why it does this. I decided to completely shut down the machine to allow its parts too cool off opnce I received your previous replies, and I started it up to check my mail today and that's what it did. It seems to do it every now and then, so I don't think I'm actually DOING anything to cause it. Any ideas?

Thanc for the info AlecStaar! I'm stunned. Aluminum heat sink it is. I need some help here guys. I have two issues I'm worried about
1.) the BIOS issue (mentioned above)
2.) Where can I get a decet aluminum heat sink and thermal paste online for a reasonable price? how do you set it u when it gets here? I have never done this kinda stuff before so some details would be grrrrrreat. Also, suppsoing i DO get a heat sink and thermal paste, THEN what?
3.) I read somewhere from a questionable* source that the Nvdia GeForce family of video cards seems notorious for rebooting the computer when Max Payne is being played at 32bit textures. How true is this? Note I said "questionable" source because it was a page online and I have no idea how credible it is. Here is the link to it, should you desire to check it out:
 
www.talonsoft.com/techsupport/gamehelp/maxpayne2.php
 
Note, again for reference, here is the system specs:
 
AMD AThlon Thunderbird 1.4GHZ running on an ECS K75SA
256 MB DDR RAM
Nvidia GeForce 2 MX 400 4x AGP (note above note about possibility of problems with GeForce cards)
two Quantum Fieball EIDE Ultra DMA/66 hard drives. One: 13.0GB (12.09GB formatted), the other is 30.0GB (27.9GB formatted). Partition table looks like this:
Hard Drive Number Partition Size File System
1 12.2GB (C: ) NTFS
1 5.33GB (D: ) NTFS
1 6.13GB (E: ) FAT32
1 62MB Linux Native (ext2)
1 128MB Linux Swap
1 3.49GB Linux Native (ext2)
2 12.1GB NTFS

Just replace the motherboard battery. It sounds as if your old one is dying.
 
Don't worry, they are very cheap

Thanx AlecStaar for the info. I shall roll out a heat sink as soon as my new paycheck gets here (if ever). Thanx again.
Yakkoub, I guess the question is, are all batteries compatible? ALso, where can i get one online for a decent price? Note: I would try pricewatch, but good luck finding decent search results for "motherboard battery" LOL.

You should be able to pick the batteries up at any electrical/hardware store - not necessarily a place that sells computers.
They are all really quite standard, just pop out the old one and take it with you to confirm voltages etc.
 
The post about aluminium Vs copper heatsinks follows the laws of thermal well
It is however worth noting that in a lot of the heatsink round-up's the copper heatsinks do perform better.
Copper might take longer to disipate the heat, but they can take more heat before the need to disipate.
The Thermalright SK6 for example quite often tops heatsink tests, pure copper and certainly cooled my PIII better than alything aluminium could do.

Well It seems like Copper is more efficient at absorbing more heat before dissipating it, wheras aluminum dissipates the heat almost immediately. The advantage I see in dissipating the heat more quickly is that less heat is "hanging around" the processor's area, even if it is for a few seconds. This may prove to be a breakthrough for reeeeally small cases like mine. I'm considering getting a bigger case, but right now finances are kinda tight, and a heat sink has priority over a case. Anyways. I would love to hear more from you about Copper vs Aluminum and such. It will help me make a better decision when i come to buy the heat sink. Thanx guys.
By the way AlecStaar, I checked out www.3dcool.com It looks like a nice site. they don't seem to have a section for "heat sinks" though. They have a nice-looking fan and all, but I'm still looking for their heat sink section.
 
Thanx agian guys, keep em coming.

AlecStarr, it looks like you misunderstood me. In my previous post I actually favored aluminum over copper by making mention of the fact that it dissipates heat away from the processor faster. Anyways, I am still open to suggestions.
Also, I did check 3dcool.com's CPU cooling section and they did not have "heat sinks". help me out here!

Oh I couldn't agree with you more, Aluminium disipates heat a lot quicker than copper.
Copper is if you like a 'larger capacity' to heat, so takes more before it needs to disipate it.
I really don't think there is much in it when it comes to CPU cooling.
Sure in larger applications where thermal efficiency is really important, well that is where all the science really comes in to play.
When I had my PIII system I just couldn't find any aluminium heatsink that could give me nice cool temperatures.
Granted I didn't try them all, too expensive to play that game!
However when I purchased an SK6, removed the way too noisy delta fan and fitted a 60mm YS-Tech fan, used some Arctic Silver II and my temperatures took a noticeable drop, amazing I could say.
 
Heatsink/fans's are no longer the £5 off the shelf device and I think you really need to have a good read up on real-world tests.
Didn't Tom's Hardware do a 13 way round-up not so long ago?

OK folks. It looks like I've made up my mind. I think I'm gonna go with an aluminum heat sink (sorry BladeRunner). Right now I need to move off as much heat off the processor and fast as possible! You know i have a miniATX case, MEANING hot air tends to "hang around" there so a heat sink may help. I Also need a decent system fan. Any recommendations?
So noting that I will choose an Aluminum heat sink and a system fan what kinds/brands/setups would you guys recommend? Also Assume I have BOTH the heat sink and system fan here, how do i set them up? and what's the deal with "thermal paste"? Like I said I'm a newbie in this feild so some "dummy" details would be greatly appreciated.
 
Thanx everyone for taking the time, effort and patience to help me out. i really do appreciate it!

Thanx again. I'll let you guys know as soon as I buy one. Right now I'm wating for that distant-looking paycheck, LOL.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that Copper conducts heat better. Electricity was mentioned, but heat is transfered more quickly as well. That is the main reason for copper being pushed, it has a much higher thermal conductivity, I think 4x higher than copper. Gold and platinum are even more efficient, but can see the obvious problem there 8) $$$
 
Such is the logic in the heatsinks with the copper bottom. The copper spreads the heat away from the CPU and the alumminum then quickly dissipates it into the air! It's the best of both worlds. Don't sell copper short, it does have many advantages. Copper away from heat will cool better than aluminum directly on heat, but aluminum the same distance will cool faster. But the heat will be spread there more efficiently with copper! It's quite a cycle.
 
A Copper base with upward forks into the aluminum, and aluminum forks in the air, it's quite a marvellous design, not too expensive, because there isn't too much copper, and get's the best of both worlds.
 
Even if the heatsink is a pour conductor of heat, as Aluminum is compared to copper (4x), heat will always dissipate to an area of lower concentration. I don't care how hot your cpu is, it is still cooler than your cpu, as that's where the heat is being generated to start with.
 
If you think that the price of the copper heatsinks is mostly for profit, take a look at prices for common sized blocks of both Aluminum and Copper. Copper actually does cost a lot more, and being a harder metal also costs more to mill and work with.
 
Replace your bios battery to fix the bios reset problem, take it with you to any electronic store, or anywhere that has batteries, hardware stores like Canadian Tire have them too I believe.
 
Random restarts, could also be a voltage problem on the motherboard, as was the case with mine, though if yoour cpu isn't being cooled I'd place my money there. It could also be caused by an older BIOS. MAke sure you have the latest bios, that can often fix it.
 
And what kind of CPU are you trying to cool? If it's an older one then you don't need a massive anything, just a regular heatsink will stop it from over heating. Even without a fan, a heatsink making good contact would make a huge improvement, an easy thing to do if it's not being cooled at all atm.

I certainly am not buying a Copper heatsink, it's the cost for me, The rest doesn't matter. For regular usage either would work just as well. If you don't OC it won't make any noticable difference to system performance, and very little even if you do. To fill the roll that is needed here, Aluminum is definately the way to go. i just wanted to make sure that everyknew was aware of the heat conducting abilities of copper.
 

Quote:I used to believe that too, this test & experts in metallurgy & electronics convinced me otherwise... as well as the tests I showed above from a reputable tester.  
I'm obviously not going to argue with the metallurgy experts, but I do have a thing or two to say about our good friend Tom.
 
Everything you read is written with a bios, even newspapers, it is unavoidable. The sign of good reviewers and reports is their ability to withhold most of the bias in their articles. Tom often is unable to do that and I will never accept what he writes as unbiased.
 
For instance, Tom was biased against 3DFX. It appeared in every single one of his GeForce/Voodoo articles, and I know a few people that have based their believes of the cards at the time his writtings. At some point in the past, 3DFX did not give Tom a first class ticket to some event. They still paid his fair, it just wasn't 1st class like we was used to enjoying. Ever since then he has harboured a grudge and it came out with every review he wrote. He obviously couldn't lie about facts, but he often trivialized Voodoo features that were most impressive by industry standards, and vice versa for nVidia products. I have always felt the nVidia based cards have been faster, but Voodoo cards have always had higher image quality, sometimes because of Glide, but often not. I have seen him trivialize FSAA, while hailing T&L, even though FSAA could be used everywhere (certainly at a performance boost), while T&L is coded in the software.
 
I saw that happen too many times and people assuming him to be a reliable source have built their "knowledge" on flawed preconceptions of a biased writer. That's in the past that 3DFX can no longer haunt his sleep, but I saw an example of it again a few weeks ago.
 
I don't know if any of you have seen the video he made comparing 4 different cpus, 2 of both Intel and AMD, and what happens to them and to the computer when a heatsink is removed. My problems all lied with the Pentium 4 example. In the video you see a mobo, with CPU and hs/f,a nd directly behind that a monitor. Someone is playing a 3d game, i think it may be Quake 3, I couldn't quite tell.
He takes off the cpu, the computer slows down extremly, but doesn't freeze. I can believe that actually, that not where my concern lies, it lies in what he did next. The next thing he does is remove the heatsink and hold a lazer thermometer directly above the core. On the display you can read some very low number, like 24. That is a small problem, but even more of a problem is the fact that you can't see a red dot on the core. In the other 4 samples you see the red telltale dot of the thermometer, but there is no dot in the P4 one. Why isn't there a dot? How can he take an accurate reading of the core temperature without the thermometer even pointing at is? Very suspicious indeed!
 
After he takes his reading and leaves the computer running for a while, he replaces the heatsink to see what happens to the gaming performance. When he had taken it off, the game in the background got very very slow, and that's understandable. And it goes to follow that when he puts the heatsink back on the game speeds back up. That makes sense right? Now, what get's me is how on earth is the game almost twice as fast has it was before he took the heatsink off in the first place? The light isn't pointed at the cpu, and the games ended off running faster than it did before hand? That doesn't seem right at all to me! I'm not surprised about the burning up amds, I've seen it happen to a friends, no surprise there, but I have a VERY hard time accepting that the P4 runs at 24 degrees under what SHOULD be heavy load, atleast under 3d gaming load without a heatsink, AND speeds up after the heatsink is replaced! I was under the impression, by companies like Intel that a large copper () heatsink would be required, and seen proff for it. I know now that the P4 quite cool, but I remember the early P4s. Did they really change the design that much after the messed up the initial releases? They already had to add a bunch more pins, I can't imagine the temperature went down at the same time.
 
Anyways, I don't trust Tom's reviews take them with a grain of salt. I'll read them often, to see what he has to say, but I will never ever ever use them as a primary source, or even a large one, for my infomation.
 
------------------------------------------
 
One more thing about the copper/aluminum stuff. The metal caps on the tops of my Celerons are, you guessed it, ALUMINUM!!!!!!
 
Right underneath is a layer of copper, and another layer of aluminum though.... both elements have their uses. A layer of copper is between two layers of aluminum.... and in between my aluminum heatsinks and the warm Mendicinno<sp> cores. Just some food for thought