System is 2 years old (except the case and PSU are brand new). For the last few months I've been experiencing hard resets, more often when the system is under stress (3DMark Vantage, games), but randomly as well. Eventvwr in Win 7 64-bit shows nothing other than the system recovering from an unexpected error, i.e. hardware fault. Speedfan reports Temp 3 (on IT8718F) getting up to 86 C. Temp 1 and Temp 2 are also on IT8718F, I think that's just the hardware monitor on the Super IO (?). Temp 1 and 2 are low 40s. HDDs are late 20s / low 30s, CPU idles at mid 30s. Not sure what Temp 3 is though. My suspicion at this stage is that perhaps the Northbridge heatsink / pipe wants to be disassembled and have the thermal paste removed and re-applied (I have some Noctua paste I can use from my CPU HSF). The system has been left on 24/7 for the last 9 months folding, when not in use. Not overclocked very often, when I do I use AMD Overdrive, for the duration of a gaming session. From memory this temp has always been this high.
Is anyone able to give me any pointers on determining if this temp is too high, or normal, and instructions on removing the big copper heatsink / pipe on this motherboard? The CPU is only a few months old.
Thanks, Soundgardener.
