Hi everyone. I had an Asus Rampage II Extreme mobo in my pc. I built it, installed Windows 7 on it, played some games on it and did the usual stuff. About a week ago, when I started to play Modern Warfare 2, the PC randomly just powered down. So I powered it back up. During the POST, I got a message on the screen saying: "SB Overtemp" I was a little freaked out about this so I went into the BIOS and checked the temp of the SB. The reading said 89 degrees! and the shutoff was 90 degrees. Confused, I shut the PC down and came back to it the next day, only to find that it did the same thing while I was trying to extract a RAR file. After reading about it for a while (with no real answers) I had to phone the vendor. They told me to send the board in as an RMA. Now I was thinking, when the replacement board comes, should I stick to stock cooling or change it in anyway so that I can avoid this happening again. I have come across some water cooled solutions from "Koolance" but I have never water cooled a PC in my life and have some reservations about it (computer chips and water don't mix). Is there another alternative? There is a EVGA GTX 295 in the 1st PCI-E slot.
I'm having doubts weather new board would repeat the same problem. After all the heat-sink on the South Bridge of your mobo is quite decent. GPU would not have too much to do with the heat problem either. Is your processor well overclocked, I mean with voltages raised and all? If you'd have gone too far then that would explain it all. If not then there's a simple matter of updating your bios that could help, because some software issue could be causing to report false temps. With Asus boards it's dead simple to do, even from Windows. If you exchange your mobo, I'm sure you won't have the same problem. I understand your reservations to a watercooling in your pc, but good watercooling system will be very safe, as long as you follow the installation instructions carefully. Myself, I was a bit afraid of this cooling technique so I went for the Corsair H50 solution a while ago and whilst it's just a basic, CPU only solution, it quieten down the system dramatically and reduced the heat build up inside the case, which aids to all components being cooler and more stable. I'm having thoughts about switching to a complete watercooling system, that will cool down all my system, as I feel more confident that watercooling, if done right is very safe indeed. Hope that helps a bit. Good luck.
Hi synay, I havent even had the PC long enough to start overclocking it yet, it was fast enough. There are 6 case fans in total (Antec 1200) and the CPU is cooled by a Artic Freezer Pro 7 rev2 none of the other temps are above 50 degrees (CPU under load goes up to 48). I think I will update the BIOS when I get the new board. As for water cooling, i will have to keep an eye on the temps from now on and see if they start to rise again. I will stick to the stock heatsink and weigh up my options if something starts to look fishy. Thanks for the help.
Thats wierd. Mine idles at 31c and during gaming maybe hits 45c. I would definitely get a replacement.
