D975XBX / Fan Speed / Memory Upgrade

[teeveetech24]

Hi everyone, new to the forums, but after googling this to death, this place seemed to have the most knowledgeable and friendly group actively discussing these sorts of issues. Hopefully some of ya'll can help.

Have the Intel D975XBX and recently bought 4 GB (2 x 2G) DDR2-6400 800mhz GSKILL memory to upgrade for the heck of it (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820231122). I'm running XP (so I know XP supposedly won't recognize this much RAM, but will be upgrading to Vista this week)and an E6700, but I don't think that would be why this issue has popped up. Since I've installed this RAM, the heatsink fan has been running very loud and fast. Enough so that my wife now makes me turn off the computer at night, he he he.

I had 2GB PC6400 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Memory (1GB x 2) generic memory running prior to this with no issues. Thanks for your help.

[teeveetech24]

By the way, I have done zero overclocking to the board, the memory, the processor ... everything is default.

[Apoptosis]

Welcome to the forums!

As for the memory remember that both Windows XP 32-Bit and Vista 32-bit will not be able to utilize all 4GB... Only 64-Bit Vista or XP will.

The heat sink running hot after the memory upgrade is indeed strange. Could you have bumped the heat sink or something when you installed the memory? If you have thermal compound available I'd remove the heat sink (use compressed air to clean the fins), clean off the base and re-install it with new thermal compound. If you didn't overclock it or increase the CPU Voltage it should be running hotter... plus it's winter in most places.

[teeveetech24]

Hi there

Thanks for the speedy reply!

Well, a couple things. Forgive me here (I might have made a mistake ...), I wonder if this could be an issue. When I went to install the new memory, I noticed the top of the fins on the heatsink had a fair amount of dust buildup. I popped off the fan and manually, but gently, removed the dust. Could touching the fins have an impact like this? Would it only disrupt the thermal paste and need only a new paste job? Could it have affected the processor? And what's the best kind of local shop to pickup paste? About a month ago I had tried using compressed air, but the dust was too caked on there, so it didn't do a good job of removing it.

I replaced the new memory with the old memory that had been running fine prior to this. I still seem to be having a fairly loud fan. At boot in BIOS hardware monitoring, Processor temp slowly rises to about 72 c and fan speed seems to be maxed out at 3800 rpm. Thanks again.

[teeveetech24]

Update ...

Anyone who reads this thread is surely going to have a great laugh at my cost on this one ...

Just like you said ... it didn't make sense for a memory upgrade to cause my heatsink fan to go crazy. So I started to look around inside and tinker a bit ...

When I put the fan back on, I put it on upside down.

So now if we can runaway from that thought as quickly as possible ...! I do have a few questions I hope you could answer.

In general, is it common place to reapply thermal paste once in a blue moon?

I think that my stock, factory Foxconn heatsink is cheap to begin with. Any recommendations for a powerful but quiet heatsink that will work on the d975xbx?

Should I be slapped silly for touching the metal fins on the heatsink?

Thanks again.

[teeveetech24]

I think asking all those questions about HS in the memory forum makes me a bad person. I've corrected myself and made a more thorough post in the HS forum. Thanks for your help over here ... http://forums.legitreviews.com/about12709.html#p88929 is where I'm now looking for help. Case closed!